The Mountain Shadow

‘Okay, Lisa, your turn.’

‘If I can’t stop you leaving, it’s time to talk about other things.’

‘As a matter of fact –’

‘Women want to know,’ she said quickly. ‘You’re a writer. You’re supposed to know that.’

‘Women want to know . . . what?’

She joined me on the bed.

‘Everything,’ she said, a hand resting on my thigh. ‘All the stuff you never tell me, for example. The stuff you don’t tell any woman.’

I frowned.

‘Look, they say that women are emotional, and men are rational. Bullshit. If you saw the stuff you guys do, saw it from our point of view, the last thing you’d call it was rational.’

‘Okay.’

‘And women are actually pretty rational. They want clarity. They want an answer. Are you in this, or are you out? Women want to know. Anything less has no guts, and women like guts. That’s rational, in our book, if you’ll forgive the literary metaphor.’

‘Forgiven. What are you talking about?’

‘Karla, of course.’

‘I’ve been trying to talk to you about –’

‘You and Karla,’ she said. ‘Karla and you. On the mountain, and off it. I get it. And I’m cool with it.’

And suddenly it was done: we were two minds, two ways of being, two paradigms whirling apart, leaving phantom limbs where once they’d touched.

‘I can’t shake it, Lisa,’ I said. ‘It’s not Karla, it’s me, and I –’

‘Karla and I have an understanding about you,’ she said impatiently.

‘An . . . understanding?’

‘That’s what the lunch with her at Kayani’s was all about. Weren’t you paying attention?’

Feynman once said that if you understand quantum theory, you don’t. I had no idea what Lisa was talking about.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s not about her, and it’s not about you. It’s about me.’

‘That’s what I was trying to talk about.’

‘No, you weren’t. You were talking about you and Karla. Fine. I get that. But this isn’t about that. This is about me.’

‘This . . . what?’

‘This conversation.’

‘Didn’t I start this conversation?’

‘No, I did,’ she frowned.

‘Was I there, when you did?’

‘Here it is. You can’t love two people, Lin. Not in the right way. Nobody can. She can’t do it, and neither can you. I get that. I really do. But sad and romantic and fucked up and thrilling and wonderful as all that is, it’s irrelevant. This isn’t about her, and it’s not about you. It’s my turn. It’s about me. It’s my shot at the mike, Lin.’

‘It’s what about you?’

‘It’s all about me.’

‘You think you could start this conversation again?’

She looked directly into my eyes, challenging me to stay with her.

‘See, women need to know, it’s that simple.’

‘I got that bit.’

‘And once they know, they can deal with anything.’

‘Deal with . . . what?’

‘Stop beating yourself up, Lin. You’re good at beating yourself up. You could get a prize, if they gave prizes for beating yourself up, and I kinda love that about you, but it’s not needed here. I’m breaking up with you, tonight, and I wanted to talk about it, because I thought you should know why.’

‘I . . . sure . . . of course. What?’

‘I really think you should know.’

‘Can I pretend to know?’

‘Stop kidding around, Lin.’

‘I’m not kidding, I’m just lost.’

‘Okay. It’s like this – I don’t want to explain you any more.’

‘Explain me to your friends, or my enemies?’

‘I don’t give a shit what anybody says about you,’ she said, burning blue into my eyes. ‘And I wouldn’t listen to it. You know that. What I don’t like about what you do is that you like it.’

‘Lisa –’

‘You like having two guns and six false passports and six currencies in the drawer. And you can’t say you do it to survive. You’re smarter than that. I’m smarter than that. The fact is, you like it. You like it a lot. And I don’t want to explain that to myself any more. I don’t like that you. I can’t like that you. I won’t like that you. I’m sorry.’

A man’s a prison. I should’ve told her that I’d quit the Sanjay Company, and the Sri Lanka run was my ticket home. I’d taken a step away from the me that she didn’t like. It wouldn’t have changed her mind, but it was something she had a right to hear. A man’s a prison. I didn’t speak.

‘Karla likes that you,’ she said casually. ‘I think she likes that you even more than you do.’

‘Where did you go, Lisa?’

She laughed, and pretty hard.

‘You really want to know?’

‘Enough with the wanting to know, Lisa.’

She sat up on the bed, her legs crossed. Her blonde hair was tied into a swallowtail, dipping and shaking as she spoke.

‘You know Rish, my partner in the gallery?’

‘How many partners have you got now?’

‘Six. Well –’

‘Six?’

‘So, anyway –’

‘Six?’

‘So, anyway, Rish has been doing a lot of meditation –’

‘Oh, no.’

‘And a lot of yoga studies –’

‘Okay, Lisa, stop. If you tell me there’s a guru behind all this, I’ll be obliged to slap him.’

‘He’s not my guru, he’s Rish’s guru, and that’s not the point. It wasn’t said by a guru, and Rish didn’t say it. A woman said it, I think. I don’t know who she is, actually. But Johnny Cigar gave me a self-help book, and Rish gave me exactly the same book, on the same day. And the quote was in that book – the thing she said.’

‘What thing?’