Throughout his narrative, Jack watched for her reaction, fearing she might turn away like Gia had. But Kolabati was obviously not like Gia. Her eyes fairly glowed with enthusiasm and… admiration.
It was, however, time to shut up. He had said enough. They sat for a quiet moment, toying with their empty glasses. Jack was about to ask her if she wanted a refill when she turned to him.
"You don't pay taxes, do you."
The statement startled him. Uneasy, he wondered how she knew.
"Why do you say that?"
"I sense you are a self-made outcast. Am I right?"
" 'Self-made outcast.' I like that."
"Liking it is not the same as answering the question."
"I consider myself a sort of sovereign state. I don't recognize other governments within my borders."
"But you've exiled yourself from more than the government. You live and work completely outside society. Why?"
"I'm not an intellectual. I can't give you a carefully reasoned manifesto. It's just the way I want to live."
Her eyes bored into him. "I don't accept that. Something cut you off. What was it?"
This woman was uncanny! It was as if she could look into his mind and read all his secrets. Yes—there had been an incident that had caused him to withdraw from the rest of "civilized" society. But he couldn't tell her about it. He felt at ease with Kolabati, but he wasn't about to confess to murder.
"I'd rather not say."
She studied him. "Are your parents alive?"
Jack felt his insides tighten. "Only my father."
"I see. Did your mother die of natural causes?"
She can read minds! That's the only explanation!
"No. And I don't want to say any more."
"Very well. But however you came to be what you are, I'm sure it was by honorable means."
Her confidence in him simultaneously warmed and discomfitted him. He wanted to change the subject.
"Hungry?"
"Famished!"
"Any place in particular you'd like to go? There are some Indian restaurants—"
Her eyebrows arched. "If I were Chinese, would you offer me egg rolls? Am I dressed in a sari?"
No. That clinging white dress looked like it came straight from a designer's shop in Paris.
"French, then?"
"I lived in France a while. Please: I live in America now. I want American food. "
"Well, I like to eat where I can relax."
"I want to go to Beefsteak Charlie's."
Jack burst out laughing. "There's one near where I live! I go there all the time! Mainly because when it comes to food, I tend to be impressed more by quantity than by quality."
"Good. Then you know the way?"
He half-rose, then sat down again. "Wait a minute. They serve ribs there. Indians don't eat pork, do they?"
"No. You're thinking of Pakistanis. They're Moslems and Moslems don't eat pork. I'm Hindu. We don't eat beef."
"Then why Beefsteak—?"
"I hear they have a good salad bar, with lots of shrimp. And 'all the beer, wine, or sangria you can drink.' "
"Then let's go," Jack said, rising and presenting his arm.
She slipped into her shoes and was up and close beside him in a single liquid motion. Jack threw a ten and a twenty on the table and started to walk away.
"No receipt?" Kolabati asked with a sly smile. "I'm sure you can make tonight deductible."
"I use the short form."
She laughed. A delightful sound.
On their way toward the front of Peacock Alley, Jack was very much aware of the warm pressure of Kolabati's hand on the inside of his arm and around his biceps, just as he was aware of the veiled attention they drew from all sides as they passed.
From Peacock Alley in the Waldorf on Park Avenue to Beefsteak Charlie's on the West Side—culture shock. But Kolabati moved from one stratum to the other as easily as she moved from garnish to garnish at the crowded salad bar, where the attention she attracted was much more openly admiring than at the Waldorf. She seemed infinitely adaptable, and Jack found that fascinating. In fact, he found everything about her fascinating.
He had begun probing her past during the cab ride uptown, learning that she and her brother were from a wealthy family in the Bengal region of India, that Kusum had lost his arm as a boy in a train wreck that had killed both of their parents, after which they had been raised by the grandmother Jack had met the night before. That explained their devotion to her. Kolabati was currently teaching in Washington at the Georgetown University School of Linguistics and now and again consulting for the School of Foreign Service.
Jack watched her eat the cold shrimp piled before her. Her fingers were nimble, her movements delicate but sure as she peeled the carapaces, dipped the pink bodies in either cocktail sauce or the little plate of Russian dressing she had brought to the table, then popped them into her mouth. She ate with a gusto he found exciting. It was rare these days to find a woman who so relished a big meal. He was sick to death of talk about calories and pounds and waistlines. Calorie-counting was for during the week. When he was out to eat with a woman, he wanted to see her relish the food as much as he did. It became a shared vice. It linked them in the sin of enjoying a full belly and reveling in the tasting, chewing, swallowing, and washing down that led up to it. They became partners in crime. It was erotic as all hell.
The meal was over.
Kolabati leaned back in her chair and stared at him. Between them lay the remains of a number of salads, two steak bones, an empty pitcher of sangria for her, an empty beer pitcher for him, and the casings of at least a hundred shrimp.
"We have met the enemy," Jack said, "and he is in us. Just as well you don't like steak, though. They were on the tough side."
"Oh, I like steak. It's just that beef is supposed to be bad for your karma."
As she spoke her hand crept across the table and found his. Her touch was electrifying—a shock literally ran up his arm. Jack swallowed and tried to keep the conversation going. No point in letting her see how she was getting to him.
"Karma. There's a word you hear an awful lot. What's it mean, really? It's like fate, isn't it?"
Kolabati's eyebrows drew together. "Not exactly. It's not easy to explain. It starts with the idea of the transmigration of the soul—what we call the atman—and how it undergoes many successive incarnations or lives."
"Reincarnation." Jack had heard of that—Bridey Murphy and all.
Kolabati turned his hand over and began lightly running her fingernails over his palm. Gooseflesh sprang up all over his body.
"Right," she said. "Karma is the burden of good or evil your atman carries with it from one life to the next. It's not fate, because you are free to determine how much good or evil you do in each of your lives, but then again, the weight of good or evil in your karma determines the kind of life you will be born into—high born or low born."
"And that goes on forever?" He wished what she was doing to his hand would go on forever.
"No. Your atman can be liberated from the karmic wheel by achieving a state of perfection in life. This is moksha. It frees the atman from further incarnations. It is the ultimate goal of every atman. "
"And eating beef would hold you back from moksha?" It sounded silly.
Kolabati seemed to read his mind again. "Not so odd, really. Jews and Moslems have a similar sanction against pork. For us, beef pollutes the karma."