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.
The time came, however, to shut up. He’d 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 seemed she could look into his mind and read all his secrets. Yes—an incident 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 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 discomfited him. He wanted to change the subject.
"Hungry?"
"Famished!"
"Any place in particular you'd like to go? Know 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. I want shrimp."
"I know a great seafood place up on West 86th. 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?"
"I do," Jack said, rising and presenting his arm. “Then let's go.”
She slipped into her shoes and was up and close beside him in a single liquid motion. Jack threw some bills 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 Finn’a 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’d 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’d 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 Linguistic and now and again consulting for the School of Foreign Service.
At Finn’s Jack watched her eat the cold shrimp piled before her. She didn’t peel them. Instead she dipped them shell and all into either cocktail sauce or the little plate of Russian dressing she’d ordered, then bit them down to the tail with a solid crunch. She ate with a gusto he found exciting. So rare these days to find a woman who 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 with a woman, he wanted to see her enjoy the food as much as he did. A big meal 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 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 empty pot of Jack’s bouillabaisse, an empty pitcher of beer, and the tails of dozens of shrimp.
"We have met the enemy," Jack said, "and he is in us. That was as good as a big steak."
"I don’t eat beef. It’s 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 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."
Kolabati turned his hand over and began lightly running her fingernails over his palm. Gooseflesh sprang up all over his body.
"Correct" 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 on 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."
" 'Pollutes.' "
"That's the word."
"Do you worry that much about your karma?"
"Not as much as I should. Certainly not as much as Kusum does." Her eyes clouded. "He's become obsessed with his karma...his karma and Kali."
That struck a dissonant chord in Jack. "Kali? Wasn't she worshipped by a bunch of stranglers?" His unimpeachable source was Gunga Din.
Kolabati's eyes cleared and flashed as she dug her fingernails into his palm, turning pleasure to pain.
"That wasn't Kali but a diminished avatar of her called Bhavani who was worshipped by Thugges—low-caste criminals! Kali is the Supreme Goddess!"
"Whoops! Sorry."
She smiled. "Where do you live?"
"Not far."
"Take me there."
Jack hesitated, knowing it was his firm personal rule never to let people know where he lived unless he’d known them for a good long while. But she was stroking his palm again.
"Now?"
"Yes."
"Okay."