Fugue States

by Pasha Malla

  ‘Sorry, there, Mister Joyce. I didn’t realize this was for modern masters only.’

  ‘Meh, I figured I’d just use my dad’s book.’

  ‘You didn’t write that!’

  ‘No, but I typed it.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Her judgment was palpable; it weakened him. ‘What else am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Sweetie, sorry. I’m being unfair. I think if you really are serious about trying to do something with that manuscript, it’s fantasy.’

  ‘Fantasy?’

  ‘Fantastic, I said. Anyway, okay, I’m one click away from joining you tomorrow.’

  ‘Wait. You’re not going to sell me out again, are you?’

  ‘Sell you out how? And what do you mean, again?’

  ‘I don’t want anyone knowing who I am.’

  ‘Is there a fatwa on your head I haven’t heard about? You need me to put in a good word with the Ayatollah?’

  ‘No, you know what I mean. I’m…a public figure.’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  ‘Sherene, fuck off.’ The words stuck and thrummed like an arrow in a target. Too much. He doubled back hastily: ‘I mean, I did write a book. And now here I am—’

  ‘Among the hoi polloi. The unwashed masses. Your adoring public. If only they knew what a towering figure of the intelligentsia had deigned to stoop within their midst. They’d bow down at your feet and hail your genius.’

  ‘Is this supposed to be convincing me to let you come?’

  ‘Let? Not let, my friend. I’ll take the class whether you let me or not.’ Her voice softened. ‘But, hey, jokes aside, if you think it would be…good, I’ll be there. It’d be nice to see you. To hang out.’

  ‘After you abandoned me, you mean.’

  ‘Abandoned?’ Her voice quivered. ‘Really?’

  Ash waited.

  ‘Sweetie, come on. I’m sorry about how things went—’

  ‘It’s fine. I was…out of line. I understand that you did what you had to.’

  ‘Ah. You heard the show.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘This is why I kept trying to get in touch, I wanted to let you know.’ She sounded choked. ‘They made me put something together so quickly. I didn’t think you’d actually listen.’

  ‘Whatever. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Ash, listen. I promise I’m doing everything I can to make sure you’re back with us as soon as possible.’

  Us. So divisive. Was he now a member of some generic, discarded them? Ash sighed. ‘You aren’t coming to this class just to embarrass me, are you?’

  ‘No. Promise. Nothing like that. I won’t even act like I know you, if you want.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that.’

  ‘We could pretend to be lovers, then.’

  ‘Ew. Weird.’

  ‘Agreed, inshallah.’ Sherene laughed. ‘Do you miss me?’

  ‘As a dog misses its fleas.’

  ‘Is that a yes, then? I’m about to click.’

  Ash palmed his face. ‘Fine.’

  ‘So eager.’

  ‘Fine, yes, sure. It’d be…good to see you. Yes.’

  ‘Yay!’ Some clicking followed, some typing. ‘There we go. All signed up. Seriously, this is going to be a hoot. Me and you! Go team!’

  ‘Our swan song.’

  ‘Oh, don’t get all maudlin.’ Yet her voice turned gentle, too: ‘Are we friends, Ash?’

  ‘If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart, Sherene. For better or worse. Though I was close to absenting my felicity when I heard a fucking poet in my spot, that’s for sure.’

  She laughed. ‘Goodnight, sweet prince. And Merry Christmas.’

  ‘Said the Muslim to the Hindu.’ And Ash laughed, too, like a volley passed back over the net.

  5

  THE POLICE STATION IN PANJIM had the look of a colonial manor, garnished with drooping palms and gabled eaves and a wraparound porch. Two monkeys up on the roof chirruped as Matt and Mieke approached. Or, rather, as Matt trailed Mieke up the steps—supportively, he hoped. More supportive than Ash had been on the phone, anyway, shouting and judging and then—the little twerp—hanging up.

  Mieke still hadn’t really opened up. She was just as silent now as she’d been during the ride from the beach to the resort, huddled in the far corner of the auto-rickshaw. ‘I’m fine,’ she’d kept telling Matt, whether he asked or not.

  Back in her room, the minute they closed the door Mieke collapsed on the bed and cried softly for a while, and Matt sat there patting her back, crying a little too. Yet when she sat up he wondered if they’d been crying for the same reasons. After showering she offered him half the bed, then crawled to the far side, turned away, knees to her chest, and slept like that until noon. Matt lay awake the whole night, turning things over in his brain: how could a Christmas romance have gone so catastrophically wrong?

  Despite its grand facade, the police station’s interior was in disrepair: dirty walls, chipped floors, and the dim lighting of a crypt. Not exactly a place to install much faith in justice. Matt joined Mieke at the unmanned front desk while khaki-clothed officers flitted past in all directions, responding to Matt’s ‘Excuse me?’ with curt nods and a perfunctory, ‘Sir.’ Finally he caught a bony guy by the elbow. Nametag: Fernandez.

  ‘Officer,’ said Matt. ‘We’d like to report an assault.’

  The man shook free, regarded Matt with suspicion. ‘You are injured?’

  ‘Not me.’ Matt nodded at Mieke. ‘Her.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘On the beach.’

  ‘Which beach?’

  ‘I…don’t know. There’s a cove and—’

  ‘Up north,’ said Mieke.

  ‘Eh? Then not this jurisdiction.’ He headed down the hallway.

  Matt followed. ‘We want to file a report.’

  Fernandez glanced at Matt as he might an intrusive salesperson. ‘You are making the complaint, or your friend?’

  ‘Well, her.’ But Mieke hung back, gazing at her feet. ‘I’m a witness.’

  Leaning into one of the offices, Fernandez hollered, ‘Fernandez!’ And took his leave of Matt with a martial bow.

  A young woman in the same beige uniform appeared. (Same nametag too: another Fernandez.)

  Matt took her to Mieke.

  This woman—Anita, she told Mieke—sat them on the station’s front steps and produced a ledger, the carbon paper crinkling. ‘Write please your crime.’

  There was no pen. Mieke was given a stick. ‘Scrape it,’ she was told, and Anita Fernandez demonstrated with her fingernail how this might produce a facsimile.

  Mieke passed it to Matt. ‘You do it. Your English is better.’

  So Matt scraped. He scraped about the bus, though neither of them knew the number, describing its route with as much detail as possible. He scraped about the toilets, the walk along the beach, the cove. He scraped about swimming, about the boy—that frigging rat. He scraped about returning to the beach and Mieke taking her turn in the water. But then came the thing he hadn’t seen. He looked at Mieke. She looked at him.

  Anita Fernandez checked her watch. From somewhere in the police station came the rasp of phlegm horked from lungs to lips. A distant splat.

  ‘Why don’t I just write it,’ said Mieke. Matt handed her the stick.

  ‘Does this kind of thing happen a lot around here?’ he asked Anita Fernandez.

  ‘With tourists?’ she said. ‘Some theft, yes,’

  ‘No. I mean…You know.’

  Anita Fernandez looked uncomfortable. ‘There is crime in Goa as there is anywhere,’ she sloganed, and looked away—as if from, or toward, a camera. What wronger wrongs had this woman witnessed? Maybe she’d been wronged herself. Maybe she’d been through something similar. Or some horror many times worse.

  ‘Can’t I just tell you what happened?’ said Mieke.

  Matt eyed the ledger. She’d written nothing. ‘I could probably identify the guy,’ he said. ‘About yay-big.
Skinny. Dark-skinned…’

  A pair of yay-big, skinny, dark-skinned officers came out of the station. Matt had to swing his legs out of the way to let them pass.

  ‘You must write,’ Anita Fernandez told Mieke. ‘We require a full report.’

  But Mieke had dropped her twig. At her feet lay dozens of the things, fallen from a nearby tree or abandoned by prospective plaintiffs. For a moment Matt worried theirs might be lost forever. But this thought was interrupted with panic: he had drugs on his person. They’d never had a chance to smoke Yaniv’s joint so he’d stashed it back in his pocket—where it remained, now, on the literal doorstep of the law.

  ‘You must write,’ Anita Fernandez told Mieke, and retrieved a stick from the ground. ‘Once a complaint is made, a report must be filed.’

  The two women locked eyes.

  Matt wavered. What was he doing here, dancing among the wolves with a steak stapled to his crotch? Suicide! He stood.

  Anita Fernandez squinted up at him. ‘You are leaving?’

  ‘He didn’t see anything,’ Mieke said flatly.

  ‘Not a dang thing,’ said Matt, in retreat down the steps. Might the joint’s outline be seen incriminatingly through his shorts? He jammed his hands in his pockets. ‘So it’s cool then if I head?’

  Mieke stared. Anita stared. Matt clutched the joint in his fist—if only he’d hooped it! Surely in India all he’d need was a glass of unfiltered water to crap it free.

  From inside the station came a cracking sound. Not gunfire, Matt told himself, after a quick visual check for bullet holes in his chest. Simply a door slamming closed. Still it was enough to send him tumbling out the gate.

  ‘Text me when you’re done,’ he cried, with a final glimpse over his shoulder: Mieke and Anita were heading arm in arm inside the station.

  —

  MATT FOLLOWED SIGNS (many in Russian) to the ocean, as good a place as any to get rid of drugs. Crowds clotted the seaside promenade; the air had turned humid and close. Matt felt so big, plodding along heavily against the foot traffic. People dodged past, eyed him with annoyance. No matter where he moved he seemed to be in the way—an obstacle, an encumbrance. Useless, without cause or effect. Matt had never felt like such a burden, so dispatched and weak.

  And what was the plan? Head to the water, wade out and fling the joint in the waves? No, it’d just wash up, stained with Matt’s fingerprints. Better: annihilation by fire. Though if he was going to burn the thing anyway, what a waste not to smoke it. Two birds, one stoned and happy Canuck: this way he’d destroy the evidence and provide himself a little kick in the metaphysical pants.

  But where to light up? Any of these Goans could be a shifty narc. Smoking the joint seemed yet another prologue to humiliation—flipped to the ground, the roach put out with a fleshy sizzle on his cheek. Maybe the Israeli had given it to him knowing full well what trouble it’d bring.

  And what sort of friend was Mieke, anyway? Friends didn’t act like they could care less if you existed or not. Sumit had warned him about cahoots. The Dutchwoman could be an agent in some elaborate, cahooted ploy. The joint in his pocket—might it even be laced? Possibly. Mieke’s aloof seduction, the gift exchange, the remarkable coincidence that he would get drugs as a present; it was all a little too perfect. And what had actually happened the night before in the cove? She’d barely told him anything.

  Matt paused at an archway that fronted one of the big hotels. Yes, it all made sense: back in Delhi Mieke had suggested the restaurant knowing her Russian associates would be there, that he’d muck it up and have to flee to Goa. But what was the scheme? Organ harvest? Identity theft? Or maybe she and her cronies were running the long-game: the whole affair would end with Mieke dirty-bombing the SkyDome with Ebola.

  Ah, but Matt wasn’t the easy mark they’d thought! He’d reckoned their play. The ball was in his court. Time for some action. Time to make a memory of his frigging own.

  First, though, he needed to smoke this joint. And before that, to steady the ship, a drink.

  Beyond the gates a turbaned guy stood watch, rifle at his hip. Eyeing the gun warily Matt asked if there were a public bar in the hotel. Yes indeed there was, sir, he was told. Though it wasn’t open until 6 p.m.

  Matt ignored this, circumnavigated the hotel, ended up in the workout room, asked directions from the towel boy, somehow found his way into the sub-basement, escaped via service elevator, located the ‘Lounge’—empty—snuck behind the bar and poured himself a couple fingers of whiskey, neat. And retreated to a booth with his drink.

  Who were his allies, who could he trust? Not the police. Anita Fernandez was clearly also in the mob’s pocket. Sumit? No, the guy could barely get it together to take Matt sightseeing. There was Sumit’s boss, Ash’s cousin, but Matt couldn’t very well intro himself as the target of an international crime syndicate. Ash had other relatives, but they were up in Kashmir, or near it, and that was far. And Ash—never mind Ash. He’d sold Matt out for the last time. This was Matt’s moment, alone.

  Matt took a sip of whiskey. Lowering the drink he noticed a bus-boy setting tables in the adjoining room. A kid, really, swimming in a starchy grey uniform. Matt sipped his beer and watched: the kid worked methodically, but with fluency and comfort, moving almost musically to the ruffle of linens and clink of glassware. There was a whiff of familiarity about him, too. Not his face, the light was too dim to make that out. More his movements, which had a certain whimsy.

  Matt nearly choked on his beer. Was it? Yes. Holy frigging crud—definitely. That lean, angular body and jangly limbs were unmistakeable. That flop of black hair was easy to imagine soaking wet and tamped to the scalp. Or that little walnut of a rear end inverting and plummeting beneath the surface of the sea. Or those hands, reaching for his. Or reaching for Mieke.

  Head down and singing softly to himself, the kid went into the kitchen. He had that loose, oblivious way of someone who believed himself alone. So. Advantage: Matt.

  He put down his drink. Looked around. Slid out of the booth and crept to the kitchen. Peeked through the swinging doors. No sign of anyone. In he went, as stealthily as a man his size could.

  The kitchen smelled of steel, and egg, and spice. A single bulb cast a splash of light by the prep stations, but mostly the room was in darkness. A rustling noise sent Matt ducking behind the sink. The kid appeared with garbage bags, one over each shoulder. From a crouch, breath held, Matt watched him head out the exit. When it closed, he scuttled after him.

  The door opened into an alleyway beside the hotel. The kid was down one end slinging trash into a dumpster. No one else in sight.

  On the wall beside the exit was a fire extinguisher. Matt took it down off the wall. Just to spray the kid, bewilder him. Moving outside, Matt tripped and sent a tower of plastic buckets scattering—and the jig was up.

  ‘This is the service area, Sir,’ said the kid. ‘Not for guests.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ said Matt, pleased with the menacing nonchalance in his voice.

  The kid didn’t move. ‘Supper will be served at 6 p.m.’

  Matt approached, carrying the fire extinguisher in one hand.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Remember me?’

  ‘Sir, my apologies, there are many guests at this hotel—’

  ‘Come, swim with me. Hold my hand.’

  The kid stared.

  ‘What, you forgot? I thought we had something, bro.’ He stopped a pace or two away. Cracked his neck. Moved the fire extinguisher to his shoulder—like a bazooka.

  ‘Sir, you shouldn’t have that. Please…’

  Matt tried to think of some witty catchphrase, something poetic and appropriately vengeful, but none came to mind. So he aimed the nozzle. But when he went to spray the kid in the face, the trigger jammed. He tried again. Nothing.

  Sensing an opening, the kid bolted. Matt reacted: the fire extinguisher swung. A sickly crunch, metal on skull. A sense of bone buckling. And the kid crumpled as if shot.

>   Matt straddled the fallen body.

  ‘Nothing to say for yourself? When we were such good friends? Of course, that was before I knew who you were working for.’

  The kid was face down, limbs splayed.

  The lights extinguished and the alley descended into shadow. Matt looked up, expecting snipers on the rooftop. But no one was there. He set down the extinguisher and waved his arms. The motion sensor ticked and the lights came back on.

  ‘Look at me,’ he said.

  Whimpering from below. The face remained hidden.

  ‘Frig,’ Matt muttered. ‘Enough with the waterworks already.’

  But the kid wasn’t crying. He was gasping. A wet, gurgling sound.

  ‘Jesus.’

  A cough, a wheeze. Silence. Still, Matt was wary. He knew this ploy, the coward feigning defeat only to jump up and stab him with a syringe full of tranqs—or AIDS.

  ‘Okay,’ said Matt, stepping back. ‘Get up.’

  No response. He nudged the kid’s leg: the body heaved. And was still.

  ‘Bro?’

  Nothing.

  Matt squatted, gave the boy a shake. And recoiled. Panic jagged through his guts. Up close, this kid was far stockier and older than the one he’d swum with.

  The lights extinguished. In the sudden darkness, the world seemed to reel.

  This feeling was familiar: an instantaneous mistake followed by the careening reality of time. All it took was a fraction of a second—the window smashed, the condom forgone, the pill popped, the biker mocked, the cop mooned—and whatever misstep receded unalterably into the past. With this body heaped at his feet, Matt again sensed his life diverging closer to the cliff-top—to the void, to the end.

  SHERENE GOT STUCK in highway traffic so Ash arrived alone, making his way through the downtown shopping centre that housed London’s central library. He’d forgotten that it was Boxing Day; the place was a riot of deal-seekers thronging in and out of the stores, eyes glazed and arms loaded with the spoils of their savings.

  By the library’s front desk a FICTION WORKSHOP sign and arrow directed him to one of the seminar/study rooms. Through the wire-hatched window in the door, four people sat equally spaced around a conference table, as if enduring a double-date or pre-trial disclosure. Ash let himself in.