4

‘WHAT YOU NEED,’ said Matt, ‘is a massage.’

It had the implication of a threat. Ash, sitting in bed with an icepack pressed to his lower back, crossed his arms. ‘I don’t know, I’m still pretty sore.’

‘So let me fix you up. I told you, I’m pretty much licensed, don’t worry. Down you get.’

‘On the floor?’

‘Need the leverage. Bed’s too soft.’ Matt was coming at him now. ‘Shirt off, pants off.’

‘Pants off?’

‘Everything off.’

Obediently Ash stripped down to his boxers. Pulling off his shirt, he cringed: pain shot through him, seeming to originate everywhere at once.

‘What are you, bashful? I’ve seen your junk a hundred times. Look, I’ll gear down too if it makes you more comfortable.’ Matt’s shirt came over his head. His chest, as broad and pale as a whitewashed wall, was speckled with stubble and razor burn.

‘Is that necessary?’

‘What are you, afraid of a little man-on-man action?’ Matt laughed. ‘Fine, I’ll leave my trackpants on if you’re going to be so homophobic about it.’

And then he was lowering Ash to the carpet and straddling him.

‘Not too hard.’

‘Don’t fret. I’m a pro. Just gotta be careful with my pinkie, it’s nearly totally healed.’

As Matt began working his shoulders Ash crossed his arms and laid his cheek on his wrists. His view was straight under the bed to his open duffel bag on the other side. That strange grey container poked out from amid the clothes.

Matt’s hands worked rigorous circles over Ash’s deltoids, down across his shoulder blades, along his spine. Pinching, kneading, furrowing. ‘How’s that feel?’

‘Okay. A bit…intense, maybe.’

‘That means it’s working. Relax.’

Ash tried to obey, but every time Matt moved to a new region of his back he felt his entire body contracting, resisting.

‘Where’s it hurt the most?’

‘Right where you’re sitting, actually.’

‘Gotcha.’ Matt moved lower to bludgeon Ash’s calves. ‘Swedish,’ he explained.

Matt’s hands ventured northward, up past his knees, knuckling into the meat of Ash’s thighs. Ash thought he felt a stray finger snake up the inside of his boxers, but it retreated. Up it crept again, a little more adventurously, and he tried to wriggle away. But Matt pinned him in place.

‘There we go,’ Matt murmured. ‘Some really tight knots right here.’

He worked Ash’s upper legs briskly, almost aggressively, thumbs probing inward. Ash tried to bring his knees together to close the gap. But Matt pried them open again.

‘Just gotta get at your glutes.’

And his hands were now cupping his buttocks, working them like balls of dough. Ash could feel the outline of each splayed digit, the thumbs delving down into the space between his legs and then pulling up and outward, stretching him—

‘Okay,’ said Ash. ‘That’s probably good.’

But Matt kept going. He pressed his prickly chest to Ash’s back. His breath came in gusts. And then he went still. For a moment Matt just lay there: a quarter-ton of man spooning Ash from above. And was that? No, Ash thought; impossible. But, wait, yes: Matt seemed, almost imperceptibly, to be grinding his hips. Ash held his breath. It stopped. Nothing for a moment. And then the humping—was there another word for it?—resumed, a little more propulsively than before.

With all his strength Ash rolled onto his side, tipping Matt onto his knees.

Matt looked baffled. ‘Everything okay, bro?’

Immediately Ash felt ashamed. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just felt a little claustrophobic.’

‘Pretty standard osteopathic technique,’ said Matt. ‘Using my full weight on you. Working out those kinks from your fall. But if it wasn’t working, that’s cool.’ With a shrug Matt picked up Ash’s shirt and pants and handed them over.

Ash felt stupid; he’d made it weird. He dressed while Matt stayed kneeling, eyes focused on some point a few inches from his face. ‘Did it help?’ he asked, looking up.

Bending and twisting at the waist, Ash told him yes, it had. ‘Thanks,’ he added.

‘No prob.’

Down the hall a door slammed. A scuffing noise of footsteps raced past their room.

‘Might go try to check my email,’ said Ash.

‘Smart,’ said Matt. ‘Good way to get some info. About yourself, I mean.’

‘Exactly.’

For a moment, neither of them moved or said anything.

Ash broke the stiffening silence: ‘Should probably clean up a bit first.’ He moved his duffel onto the bed and began stuffing it with errant clothes. But zipping it closed was a struggle; the two sides bulged around that grey box. Ash pulled it free and set it on the dresser: a gift awaiting its recipient.

‘You’re going to need your password,’ Matt said, standing at last. He came over, pushed aside the grey box and scrawled a line of digits onto the hotel notepad. ‘Same one you’ve used since you were fifteen,’ he said, tearing off the page but not handing it over. ‘PIN to your bank account, alarm to your condo. Everything.’

‘Thanks.’

‘No problem.’ Matt folded the paper in half, concealing the number, and slipped it into Ash’s hand. ‘I keep telling you, bro: whatever you need, just ask.’

—

THE SCREECH AND STATIC of the dial-up modem played like an old, familiar song. Ash smiled at this—a blast from the past, albeit a past he could recall only peripherally.

The concierge supervised over Ash’s shoulder, hands clasped behind his back in a posture of official surveillance. ‘Online?’

‘Yeah,’ said Ash.

‘Proceed.’

Matt’s password worked. And here were Ash’s emails in a great cascade.

‘Begin here,’ instructed the concierge, leaning in and tapping the most recent unread message, from someone named Sherene. The subject was ‘Book Club.’ Ash clicked and read, the concierge following intently over his shoulder.

Ash—

So I’m 100 pages into DQ and yeah sure it’s hilarious and sort of cool too I guess, and surprisingly modern, and thanks again for the gift, you’re sweet—but JESUS, Ash. Talk about bro-lit. Been imagining it as you and your meathead buddy gallivanting across India instead of Spain. I mean I hope you aren’t getting in fights all over the place and defending maidens’ honour and whatever else, tilting at rickshaws, but seriously it’s got me thinking how many men are still like this, how many men end up chasing some ridiculous ideal that has nothing to do with who they—and you too, sweetie, don’t think I’m letting you off!—actually are.

The email continued but Ash stopped reading for a moment. The message stabbed at the core of something. He felt needled. She’d called him ‘sweetie’—was Sherene a lover? The absence of a girlfriend or wife in Matt’s rundown had not seemed notable until now. No picture accompanied Sherene’s email address. And when he tried to find an image online a warning popped up on the screen.

‘No web searches,’ warned the concierge. ‘Blocked.’

Ash returned to the message:

But the thing for me mainly about this book, the big disappointment, is Sancho Panza. I had this idea that this was like THE BOOK about friendship. But he’s more of a lackey. I mean DQ is delusional right? Possibly insane? And Sancho just trucks along with him because of this vague promise of some island fiefdom or whatever. Not to honour his friend. And this willing obliviousness is what gets me, Ash. Like he’s willing to just play the idle witness while his pal suffers one humiliation after the next, and even encourages him sometimes too when really he should be acting with real kindness and just be like, no, this isn’t real, let’s go home. Anyway, speaking of, it’ll be nice to get back to Canada again. London’s fun for a few days but I’ve got another FORTNIGHT here, as my cousins keep telling me and inshallah, Ash, I already can’t wait to get back to work, isn’t that weird?

The rest of the email eased into some book recommendations and well-wishing for his trip and a gentle sign-off: XO. And here the possibilities of romance deflated; those weren’t passionate kisses. Sherene’s message pulsed with the exasperated affection that blooms in the gaps between love and sex. She and Ash were close, to a point, but there it stopped. Even so, she seemed like a friend he might actually trust.

Encouraged, Ash returned to his inbox and, to the concierge’s dismay, skipped the next three unread emails to click another from Sherene. It had no subject and consisted of a single sentence:

Oh, sorry to bring up work though I did talk to management and it looks like we’ll be able to get you back in the chair for the spring season, so good news there and no one seems to despise you anymore than they did already! XO

A colleague too, then. But why might Ash be despised at work? Matt had claimed that he was ‘a famous radio host’ and loved by ‘literally dozens;’ no part of that biography touched on anything particularly contemptible. Though if Matt were as good a friend as he claimed, might his casually brutish way implicate Ash? Ash pictured himself in the studio mewling at a twenty-something intern as she leaned down to adjust his microphone, smacking her rear-end as she fled the room. Maybe he and Matt were more similar than he thought, or hoped. How close were they, really?

A flash of that massage invaded his thoughts. Ash shuddered, shook it away.

Better to align himself with Sherene. Ash preferred the version of himself she mirrored. And he sensed tenderness beneath her vitriol. He liked, too, how she repeated his name; there was something warmly imploring about it that spoke of shared history: they’d been having conversations like this ‘for years’—and here they were, still.

‘Ten minutes left,’ announced the concierge.

Ash clicked back to his inbox, scanned the list. Chose an email titled ‘I am so pregnant!’ from someone named Mona—his sister, he remembered, according to Matt. The message contained no text, only a photo. The dial-up struggled; the hard-drive chirped and whirred. Line by line excruciating the picture unfurled on the screen: dark hair, peaked eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes. From the framing and blurred focus Ash guessed that it was self-taken. Halfway down the nose it paused. The concierge leaned in. The cursor became an hourglass tipping back and forth. Mona’s expression was unreadable—coy or sombre? He could hardly admire her pregnancy from her forehead!

Ash cancelled the download and hit refresh.

An error message appeared.

He clicked back.

Nothing; the connection was down. The photo had vanished, his inbox had vanished—all that data, lost to the ether.

‘Offline,’ said the concierge.

‘How long before it comes back up?’

‘Minutes, hours.’ A shrug. ‘Days.’

‘Days?’

‘Possibly.’ The concierge’s hands appeared from behind his back in, possibly, the opening gambit of a chokehold. ‘So, finish?’

Ash stared at the screen: Unable to connect. He laughed a lone, sharp syllable somewhere between ‘ha’ and ‘huh.’ And then the concierge stooped and pulled the plug.

Dreading a return to his room, Ash headed outside and stood on the steps of the hotel shivering in the winter dusklight. From the carrel across the road a pony-wallah approached with an emaciated animal. He wore only a woollen gown, hands and head naked to the chilly air.

‘Take ride. Very good price.’

‘Where would we go?’

‘Apharwat Peak,’ he said. The solicitation had the fatigue of habit, as if in obligation to some lapsed belief. His eyes were sad. ‘You know what? Sure,’ said Ash. ‘Let’s do it.’

He was helped up onto the saddle and wrapped, with surprising tenderness, in blankets. Beneath his weight the horse’s spine sagged. Yet she staggered forward, snow squeaking under her hooves, with the pony-wallah clutching her bridle and clucking softly. ‘You are from?’ he asked.

‘Canada,’ said Ash meekly, as if offering an apology.

‘No. Not Canada. You are…Indian?’

Ash enjoyed a little surge of possibility. ‘My dad’s from here. From Kashmir.’

‘I knew it!’ His smile revealed a jumble of yellow teeth. ‘You have the nose. Name?’

‘Dhar.’

‘Hindu?’

‘My dad is,’ said Ash, following Matt’s script.

‘I am Mumtaz,’ the man said, bowing. ‘Welcome home, Pandit Dhar.’

They walked for a while in silence. Ash considered his nose as a marker of identity. And Mona’s, chopped off at the bridge: did they share this nose? And what kind of brother was he? A protector, a confidant? Or merely a blood relation to send compulsory updates—a single picture, snapped haphazardly, but no words.

Mumtaz clucked. The horse stopped. ‘You will come to my village for tea?’

‘Your village?’

‘Not too far.’ He indicated a path up through the woods. ‘No charge.’

Ash eyed the mountain.

‘Apharwat, later. It is early only. Come. Please. A Hindu. At last!’

‘Oh, I don’t know how Hindu I am.’

‘How Hindu?’ Mumtaz laughed. ‘You are enough Hindu. Come. We will go.’

—

MUMTAZ LIVED JUST OUTSIDE TOWN in a cluster of stone and timber cottages amid the trees. His house was small and modest, the interior painted in an array of pastel shades. Ash was led to a drafty, cement-floored room blanketed with worn carpets. An electric heater glared in the corner. Mumtaz heaped some cushions together and encouraged Ash to sit.

‘Now I will fetch the tea,’ he said, and withdrew.

The room had no decorations, no furniture, not even an end table. Ash wondered how accustomed to any of this he might be. Maybe he had relatives who lived in similar homes? Maybe he’d spent countless afternoons in parlours just like this; maybe the situation echoed some previous experience to which, now, he was oblivious.

A boy came in with a plate of—were they?—bagels.

‘Hello,’ said Ash.

‘Sir,’ said the boy. He knelt and deposited the tray at Ash’s feet.

‘What’s your name?’

The boy looked nervous. He took a step back, eyeing the doorway behind him. ‘Pastries, sir,’ he said. And vanished.

Ash tried a bagel. Dry as a crouton. Stale? Or meant to be this way?

A man appeared in the doorway, broader in the chest than Mumtaz, though with the same sad eyes and wonky teeth. He touched his forehead and sat. ‘Welcome.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ash, through a mouthful of dough.

‘You speak Kashmiri?’

Ash scanned his thoughts: not a word. ‘No. Sorry.’

The man nodded; his melancholy seemed to deepen. ‘You are coming from? Canada?’

‘Canada, yeah.’ Ash felt himself being watched intently, almost imploringly. In an effort to please his interlocutor, he finished the dusty bagel.

The man was joined by another, elderly, long and lean, in thick glasses and a stark white goatee. On his head perched a peaked woolly hat.

‘Hello,’ said Ash, offering him a pastry: declined.

The old man knelt, joints crackling, and wretched violently into a handkerchief, which he pocketed.

More and more men piled into the room, alone or in pairs, lining the walls. Some acknowledged Ash directly, others simply squatted and stared. Soon a dozen strangers watched him with the reticent curiosity of UFO researchers sizing up their live specimen. What was expected of him? Just to eat?

Finally a woman entered in a loose silk pantsuit and matching headscarf. (Salwar kameez, thought Ash, with taxonomical satisfaction.) The position she assumed, facing him directly, seemed to have been reserved for her. She was acknowledged by the older guy with a nod. Then all eyes turned back to Ash, as though viewing him anew, via the gaze of the room’s sole female presence. He again felt himself on display. Or trial?

With a coy smile the woman made a comment in Kashmiri that inspired subdued laughter from the group. The elder offered his two cents in a reedy little voice, which caused the men to inhale briskly, close their eyes or shake their heads.

‘Please,’ the woman told Ash, indicating the plate of pastries. ‘Eat.’

A function: he took another bagel.

Mumtaz reappeared with a tea set. ‘Ah, everyone has come,’ he said, and knelt before Ash to fill a porcelain cup from a matching pot.

‘Thank you,’ said Ash.

The tea was hot, salty, milky. And pink.

Not everyone got tea, only Ash and the woman, whom Mumtaz introduced as a poet; her name was not provided. ‘And he’—the old man in the hat and goatee—‘is Doctor Sayeed.’

A doctor! Perhaps the one scheduled to visit Ash later that evening. But Sayeed eyed Ash with suspicion, his thin hands fondling each other in his lap.

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Ash.

The doctor tilted his chin so that sharp little beard targeted Ash like a dagger.

‘So,’ mediated Mumtaz. ‘First time to Kashmir?’

‘I’m not sure.’ Ash laughed uneasily and sipped his tea. ‘I’ve been having some memory issues. Actually maybe the doctor—’

‘Surely your father brought you as a boy, before the Troubles?’ interrupted the poet. Her accent had a crisp, British officiousness to it. ‘Although it is much different now.’

‘Decimated,’ said Doctor Sayeed. ‘The whole valley.’

‘But we have a Pandit returned!’ Mumtaz clapped. ‘And he has seen how beautiful it remains. So he will return—every year. With his father.’

‘That’d be nice,’ said Ash. ‘It’s pretty here. The…mountains.’

‘The mountains,’ said Mumtaz with satisfaction.

‘You know,’ said the poet, ‘your own Pandit Nehru called this paradise on earth.’

‘It is here, it is here, it is here,’ provided Mumtaz, voice swelling.

She interceded in Kashmiri, delivering a possible couplet with the sonorous cadence of verse. At its conclusion a chorus of impressed tsking rippled around the room.

‘Do you know Lal Ded?’ said Sayeed.

‘I’ve heard of him,’ Ash lied.

‘She was in fact a woman,’ said the poet. ‘I was passionate, filled with longing; I searched far and wide. But the day that the Truthful One found me, I was home.’ ”

‘Very nice,’ said Ash.

The poet bowed—not to the compliment, but in reverence to the work. ‘Lal Ded also wrote: Some leave their home, some the hermitage, but the restless mind knows no rest. So watch your breath, day and night, and stay where you are. A lesson, perhaps.’

Ash sipped his tea and wondered what the lesson might be.

‘You see it is the women poets who have long been the voice of this place. And Habba Khatoon is the best of the lot,’ she continued. ‘Sixteenth century. She wrote of scorned lovers, of longing, of loss. Even then, the story of Kashmir.’

More tsking. Ash, in an act of daring, attempted a tsk of his own.

‘I left my home for play,’ recited the poet, wincing as if the lines assailed her from within. ‘Nor yet again returned, although the day sank into the West. The name I made is hailed on lips of men—Habba Khatoon!—though veiled, I found no rest. Through crowds I found my way, from forests, then, the sages came…when day sank into the West.’

Ash joined the tsking and, not to be outdone, improvised an awestruck headshake.

Doctor Sayeed came to life: ‘One of the great Muslim poets.’

‘But Muslim, Hindu,’ said Mumtaz in protest. ‘Kashmiriyat, all same people.’

The doctor spat something dismissive and turned upon Ash. ‘You have come as a tourist. To stay in hotel, to ski. Highest gondola in the world, they say. You like it?’

‘Um,’ said Ash. ‘Yeah, really nice.’

‘Very nice,’ said Doctor Sayeed, hands twisting in his lap. ‘Very nice to visit, then leave, and fancy yourself in exile. Do you know what we who live here have been through?’

Mumtaz said something cautionary, pacifying.

‘No! He must know. These Hindus think they are the only ones to suffer. Mister Dhar, I am a? Doctor. My father also. And his father before him. All doctors, all down the line. As my son too would have been a doctor.’

The air in the room had turned brittle. Ash put down his tea.

‘Our house is just there, down the lane.’ Doctor Sayeed indicated this with a kind of karate chop toward the window. ‘One evening my son was playing in our garden. Two men came over the wall with guns and chased him inside, very frightened. This was a time, mind, when people were disappearing all over the Valley. In middle of night they would come and—whup, like that, snatch you from your home. Understand?’

Ash nodded.

‘So I went to? Confront them. It was dark, I could see only shapes. I had no weapon, no torch even. My son was just a boy, and my wife was inside. I could hope only that they wanted drugs from my dispensary. I called. They appeared from shadows. I recognized both, young men from next village. I had treated one as a boy for colic. And now they carried guns—big guns!’ He sucked in his breath sharply between pursed lips. ‘But they claimed to be for my protection. “People are after you,” they said. “We will stand watch.” ’

‘Bastards,’ said Mumtaz.

Yet Doctor Sayeed spoke inexpressively, eyes fixed on Ash; all that moved were his lips and his hands. The room felt heavy, as if bearing the weight of this story. ‘No one at this time could be trusted. Each side was terrorizing us equally—state police, BSF, Indian army, militants. But what could I do? So then I had goons here all day, harassing my patients. Very disruptive. If I or my wife went out, they would? Follow. These two boys, so strong and important. Whole time I thought something was…untoward. My wife also. We had never been threatened. We were respected. I would, without question, treat militants and soldiers both. To do away with me made no sense.’

‘Yet,’ said Mumtaz.

‘Yet.’ Doctor Sayeed’s fidgeting hands made a papery sound. ‘After some days my wife grew fed up. She slipped from rear of house and off to market to buy fruit, something like that. This was midday, October. I saw patients all afternoon. When my son returned from school my wife had not returned from market. We waited, my son and I. This is a tiny village, one road only. Very difficult to become lost. Unless she had gone all the way to Gulmarg. Which would have been foolish, very dangerous.’

‘On horse is fine,’ Mumtaz assured Ash.

Ash tsked.

‘I call the police, but they are? Unhelpful,’ said Doctor Sayeed. ‘And what is interesting, when they come so-called bodyguards do not hide. They remain in open. Even they are talking to the police officers. One would think that militants would not be so friendly.’

‘Indeed not militants,’ said Mumtaz.

‘No,’ said Doctor Sayeed. ‘They were? Spies for military police. Hoping that actual militants would visit my practice so they could snatch them up. Next day I received a message: as they had seen these guards and knew them to be police, one militant group believed I was? Colluding with army. This is why they had kidnapped my wife. They would kill her if I did not pay ten rupees crore. So with all of my savings I arranged to meet them. This is how these idiots behave. They wage war like it’s a? Film. I was told to come alone, then my wife would be returned, and when paid for her release only they would leave us in peace. However, I could not think of leaving my son alone. They had already taken my wife. Why would they stop at ten crore when they could double the price? So I brought him with me.’

Ash sensed that this was the turning point—not just of the story, but his own edification. He nodded: yes, the son, of course. A fatal mistake.

Mumtaz gestured at Ash’s cup. ‘Please, drink. Your tea will grow cold.’

The liquid had turned tepid and a creamy film slicked its surface. Ash sipped. All he could taste was salt.

Doctor Sayeed continued: ‘My son and I entered the woods with this money in a lending box. And? Figures came from trees. A bag over my head, just like that. My hands bound. I was hit in the stomach, all the breath went—poof!—from me. We were dragged to a lorry and thrown in back. I could not say which direction we drove. My son was weeping. I told him he was safe, that I would let nothing happen. We arrived somewhere, a house. I was taken up the stairs, away from my son, to the top floor. Still I have this bag over my head. I begged them to spare my boy. They could have any sum they wanted. I was told only that I would be dealt with in the morning. And this, “dealt with,” I knew to mean? Executed. And perhaps same fate awaited my wife and child.’

The story had its own energy now; Doctor Sayeed was only its medium. But here he required a pause to gather himself. Even his hands fell still.

‘So what could I do?’ he said after a moment. ‘I waited until night. House was very quiet. Still with sack over my head I found a window. We had climbed three-four flights of stairs—typical Kashmiri house—and if I jumped? I could die. Regardless I leapt. Upon landing I heard—snap. Such pain! I had fractured my tibia. Fortunately bone did not pierce skin. I crawled to the road. I could only guess which direction was Gulmarg. For hours, I crawled on roadside. A Jeep approached. I signalled—but the driver failed to see me. So I continued, another hour. Through the sack I could see the sun rising, but my hands were still bound behind my back so I could not take it off, and…’

Doctor Sayeed went silent. He tucked his chin to his chest.

‘But you made it to town?’ said Ash.

‘Yes.’

‘And then, were you able to get back to the hideout? With the police or whoever?’

‘Yes. They knew the place.’

‘And your wife and son? Were they okay?’

‘My wife and son?’ He looked up; his eyes were fierce. ‘No, Mister Dhar, they were not okay. Upon discovering that I had fled, the militants murdered them. Shot once each’—he pointed to his temple—‘right through the head as they slept.’

—

‘I’M GOING TO GET frigging annihilated tonight,’ called Matt from the bathroom.

He was in there trying on shirts while Ash lay on his bed leafing through a volume of Kashmiri poetry. The poet had given it to him as he’d been leaving Mumtaz’s house. ‘My English translations,’ she’d explained. According to the book she did have a name, or a nom-de-plume: Zoon. Ash had hoped that the poetry might kindle the embers of some memory, something elemental and ancient. But the entries tended toward godly worship and their effect was soporific. His eyelids drooped; the book fell from his hands.

Matt emerged in a paisley-print button-down. ‘What do you think of this one?’

‘Yeah, good,’ said Ash, glancing up.

‘Honestly? Don’t I look like Jimi Hendrix?’

Ash smiled.

‘Bro? Hello?’

‘Sorry. Still a little out of it, I guess.’

Matt traded the shirt for a white kurta with green embroidery around the neckline. ‘Dave-o leant me this one.’ Matt bowed. ‘Namaste.’

‘Looks good,’ said Ash.

‘You’re not going to make fun of me?’

‘Should I?’

‘Ugh, this is the worst. I can’t wait for the old you to come back. It’s weird.’ Matt shook his head sadly. ‘You’re acting so frigging nice.’

A long, slow breath drained from Ash’s nostrils with the sound of a deflating tire. He put down the book. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

‘The least you can do tonight is tie one on. Right? I mean, if it’s so wrong to drink to forget, what’s the problem if you already forget everything?’

Ash laughed.

‘That’s the spirit. I’ll make sure you have the goshdang night of your life! I mean, we’re on vacation, am I right?’

‘And we go home when?’

‘To Canada?’ Matt moved back into the bathroom to check himself out in the mirror. ‘I don’t know about this top. I mean, if you were a chick and went home with me, would you assume I could put my legs behind my head and go for like eleven hours?

Don’t want to set too high a bar. Probably should just go with my regular GOS—going-out shirt, sorry. A little joke we used to make.’ He chuckled gloomily. ‘You doing okay?’

There was something beseeching in his voice. Ash nodded. ‘Yeah, fine.’

Matt pulled the kurta over his head and flung it into the room. ‘Anyhoo, gonna prond-ma-doosh. Can’t ring in the New Year with my junk smelling like a ski boot.’

The door closed. Ash stared at it. Doors were always closing on him, it seemed. He felt on the periphery of everything, especially himself—gazing from the edge down into the chasm where his life ought to be.

He returned to Zoon’s book. But again it failed to capture him, lacking some essential quality from her recitations. And it wasn’t just the cadence of her oratory that was missing. She’d watched Ash so steadily, her voice trembling with melancholy and import—more of an incantation, a summoning. And then, after, pressing the book into his hands: ‘Take this home with you.’ Ash felt now that she’d meant something more intrinsic and ineffable than the words within its pages—maybe that irreconcilable space between document and memory, and what therein was lost.

The doctor’s kidnapping story had been intended as a different type of edification, to humble and chastise him. After Mumtaz had dropped him back at the hotel, Ash had repeated the story to Matt. Yet telling it turned the events cinematic, its lessons and emotion burdened by characters and action. Never mind that Matt’s response had mostly been terror: ‘Bro, you went to their house?’ he spluttered. ‘Anybody here could be al-Qaeda! I know you’re a little out of your mind, but there’s no need for a suicide mission.’

Ash stood, scanning the room for the printouts Dave-o had left him. Among the clothes bursting from his suitcase he spied the edge of some papers, but these proved to be something else entirely—a story. He read a few pages: a hero climbing into the mountains (of Kashmir, he assumed). Something he was writing? It seemed possible, tucked as the pages were among his things. Almost secretively, at that. And Matt had told him he’d once written a book. Perhaps this was the sequel.

He settled back on the bed, flipping to the last page, which cut off mid-sentence:

And when he reappeared

A work in progress, then. Ash tried to follow that fragment somewhere: and then what?

He’d still not come up with anything when the bathroom door opened and Matt appeared amid billowing steam.

‘Ash, hey, smell me.’ He came over, a towel clutched loosely around his lower half. ‘I did that dumb thing of crapping first and not flushing while I showered, so I ended up steaming my poo. Have I got a poopy bouquet about me? Be honest.’

Ash tilted toward him. Inhaled. Recoiled. ‘You smell like soap.’

‘You sure?’ Matt looked nervous. ‘There any way this amnesia messed up your sense of smell? Aren’t your nose and memory supposed to be connected?’

Ash hadn’t considered this. He sniffed again. Matt’s zesty odour triggered nothing.

‘Listen, while I’ve got you—do me a solid and shave my back? There’s a patch right between my shoulder blades I can never get.’

‘Shave your back?’

‘Honestly, we do this all the time. Normally.’

‘Normally.’

‘For sure. You shave my back, I shave yours. It’s basically our catchphrase.’ Matt dropped his towel in the bathroom doorway. Ash was amazed by how much that pale massive ass resembled an actual moon. ‘I can manage my nuts and taint myself,’ said Matt, ‘but I’ll holler when I need you.’

This time he left the door open, revealing glimpses of his body, like a zeppelin cresting the horizon. The moment loomed when Ash would be called to duty. Could he say no? He’d already panicked once at something that, from Matt’s bewilderment, had likely been a perfectly normal exchange between friends—a little helpful rubdown, nothing weird at all. Ash wanted to act like himself. So he waited there on the bed, face pointed at that unfinished story, mind blank, for Matt to announce he was ready to be groomed.

—

‘THE CANUCKS!’ cried Dave-o, leaping to his feet.

The enthusiasm seemed for Matt’s benefit. While the two giants thumped each other’s backs, Ash watched a disco ball scatter shards of light around the hotel bar.

‘Mate,’ said Dave-o to Ash, and offered him a hand to shake.

Beers appeared. Ash accepted one, slurped it greedily.

‘Good old Ash, always up for a drink,’ said Matt. ‘Even if he doesn’t remember it.’

Dave-o laughed. ‘How many New Yearses do you remember?’

They exchanged war stories: passing out in a waterfall (Dave-o), passing out in a snowbank (Matt). Dispersed around the room were a few other guests, mostly couples, all Indian. Someone had strung up leftover Diwali tinsel and a banner proclaiming HAPPY NEWYEAR EVE sagged unconvincingly over the door. The staff wore party hats, which made their anaesthetized expressions look even more forlorn.

The music, Ash somehow knew, was Madonna: Celebrate, she commanded. So he drank his beer. Mid-swallow a sneeze exploded from his face like a tripped landmine, spraying its misty shrapnel down his shirt.

‘Easy there, mate,’ said Dave-o, passing him a serviette. ‘You catch something on your pony ride?’

Ash cupped his face and sneezed again. ‘Sorry.’ He blew his nose. ‘God, that sounded just like my dad.’

Matt shot him a suspicious look. ‘You remember how he sneezes?’

A memory. Ash tried to rewind his thoughts. But whatever had emerged was gone.

‘Good news, anyway,’ said Matt. ‘Must mean your nut’s getting back on track.’

Dave-o tilted his beer in salutation. ‘What did I say? Just a matter of time. Anything else coming back?’

The music changed to Michael Jackson. Ash could remember all the words: Lovely…is the feeling now; fever…temperature’s rising now. Yet he recalled nothing of his father: not his sneeze, not his voice, not his face. He blew a little cloud of bubbles from the top of his bottle, took a drink and shrugged. ‘Nope.’

‘Was gonna say,’ said Dave-o, ‘I sound just like my old man when I sneeze too. This big harrumph. Can’t control it. Weird, right?’

Matt snorted.

‘What?’ said Dave-o. ‘You don’t sneeze like your dad?’

‘You guys are out of your minds,’ said Matt, and turned away. The disco lights refracted off his scalp in blues and greens.

To retrieve his friend, Ash changed the subject to the unfinished story he’d found. ‘Something about a guy climbing a mountain. Any idea what the deal is?’

Matt took a second, then nodded exuberantly. ‘It’s a book you were writing. Part of the reason you came here was to finish it. Research and that. There’s a hike in it, right? Up to a cave? We’re supposed to do that at some point.’ He looked at Dave-o for corroboration. But the Australian was shaking his head in awe.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘I always wanted to write a book. How d’you do it?’

‘I wish I knew,’ said Ash. ‘I don’t even have writer’s block. More like person’s block.’

‘Exactly why we’re going up to the cave,’ said Matt. ‘Unplug the toilet of your brain.’

‘And then?’

‘And then you write your book and find your way back to yourself.’

Ash tried to parse Matt’s logic. Failed, shook his head. Drank.

Michael Jackson faded into a bhangra number and a husband and wife (green shirt, green dress) moved onto the dance floor. Dave-o nudged Matt. ‘Shall we make a move?’

The room’s two lone white men sidled out under the disco ball, successfully separating the woman from her partner. Looking concerned but still dancing gamely, the cuckold watched Matt take his wife by the waist and dip her, hips grinding. Meanwhile Dave-o performed a faintly menacing judo of rhythmic air-punches and kicks. When she was vertical again the woman swatted Matt away. Playfully or not, Ash couldn’t tell.

The two men high-fived and returned to their table like a pair of linebackers to the huddle. Matt fell into his chair, shirt grey with sweat at the armpits. ‘Groundwork laid.’

Ash drank.

Turning to Dave-o, Matt lowered his voice. ‘What’s the deal with swinging and open marriages and that over here?’ He made a surreptitious gesture toward the green-clad couple. ‘Or even, you know, third-party interventions.’

‘Oh mate, have I got stories for you.’

Matt slung his arm around the back of Dave-o’s chair. They proceeded to one-up each other with tales of sexual deviancy and conquest. Then the talk turned to skiing: who had scaled the highest peaks, seen the fattest snow, broken the most bones. While Matt and Dave-o compared battle scars, Ash watched the woman in the green dress and her husband sit at their table staring blankly into the room. They still hadn’t spoken to each other by the time Ash finished his second beer.

‘Well, mate,’ said Dave-o, clapping Matt on the shoulder. ‘Sorry again if today was a bit of a botch with the Norwegians. Going to be a real treat seeing you out there tomorrow. Sounds like if it weren’t for your knee you could have gone pro. Might have met you a lot earlier out on the circuit.’

‘Yeah, definitely. Too bad my amnesiac buddy here can’t tell you.’

Ash offered a weak smile of apology.

‘State he’s in,’ said Dave-o, ‘we could tell him anything we want. Not just about you—about himself. Because what does he know?’

The suggestion inspired laughter, huge and cruel and boomingly full of itself. When it faded Ash felt himself examined with a new kind of scrutiny.

‘Only taking the piss, mate. Bet you wake up tomorrow morning with your brain good as new. So! Happy New Year, gents. Bottoms up.’

Another round arrived, prefaced with shots of rum. Someone cranked the sound system and the dance floor filled, husbands on one side and wives on the other; their moves seemed choreographed. Huddled knee to knee, Matt and Dave-o evaluated which women might be stolen from their husbands, while Ash drank as if beer were the elixir to restore his memory—or the poison to do him in for good.

Halfway through his third quart the night started to feel dangerous. Ash swayed in his chair and everything eddied around him, vaporous and indistinct. The two figures across the table, the music grinding away, the shadowy undulations from the dance floor, the hotel staff collecting empties—all of this melted into a slush of sights and sounds. Ash squinted, tried to focus. And a clear thought arrived: he’d no idea what year they were entering. He motioned to Matt, leaned over and asked. But the music drowned him out.

‘What?’ screamed Matt.

Ash repeated himself, tapping his wrist—the wrong move.

‘Still nearly an hour to go!’

Ash tried again with a full charade of actions: the banner over the door, hands lifting and exploding like fireworks. He even tried miming a calendar, the flap of pages.

Through it all Matt nodded and frowned.

Ash paused, waiting for recognition. He was drunk and adrift; knowing the year would anchor him to something. But Matt just stared blankly, shook his head, then leaned over to Dave-o and whispered in his ear. The Australian cracked up, slapping Matt’s knee. Everything about Ash’s tablemates consumed so much space—their bodies, their gestures, their gazes trawling the room. As they drank they seemed to expand. Ash, meanwhile, cowered in his drunkenness like something caged.

Matt patted Ash on the shoulder and with Dave-o returned to the dance floor. Ash tried to watch but his vision reeled. The music slurred and thumped. He had no thoughts. His presence in the room felt marginal and vague. Though he did have beer left. So he drank, the bottle upended and his eyes on the ceiling.

And when he set it down, empty, he realized the music had stopped.

He sensed the night turning itself inside out. Something was happening. Something was wrong.

Things clicked into focus: at the edge of the dance floor Dave-o held Matt back from someone screaming in a shrill, nasal voice—the green-shirted husband.

‘Easy now,’ Dave-o said. ‘We’re all friends here.’

But Matt was livid too. He bounced on his heels, jutted his chin, widened his eyes, roared. Something had loosened within him and threatened to unspool catastrophically into the room. For now only Dave-o kept it at bay. Some of the other men hid behind their wives; others fled to corners. The woman in the green dress pushed her shrieking husband aside and levelled a finger at Matt.

‘You’ve no business behaving that way here,’ she told him in a steady voice.

‘Who the frig do you think you are?’ Matt thundered. Bulging veins corded his neck. ‘Disrespecting me? I don’t care if this is your country—’

But the woman was undeterred. ‘Take him away,’ she ordered Dave-o.

‘Mate,’ said the Australian. ‘Forget it. Come on, let’s go.’

In a bear hug Dave-o maneuvered Matt to the door, murmuring into his shoulder. The room was hushed; nothing moved save the disco ball, still whirling its chaos of light around the room.

‘Go,’ ordered the woman.

Dave-o kneed the door open, nudged Matt outside. As he left Matt told the entire party he’d see them in hell. And then he was gone—into the lobby, maybe beyond.

With Matt’s beer unaccounted for, Ash took it and drank. Behind the bottle Dave-o loomed into view. ‘Guy could probably use a friend right now.’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah. You’re his best mate, aren’t you?’

Ash, feeling at once assessed and challenged, struggled to his feet, steadying himself on the back of his chair.

‘Whoa there! Gonna be okay?’

‘Going to be okay,’ said Ash. And then, to himself: ‘Okay.’

He staggered across the bar and out into the lobby. The concierge eyed him warily. ‘Looking for your friend?’

Ash nodded.

‘Outside.’

The night was another universe. The frigid air and open space smacked him sober. Enough, maybe, to shock the past back into him? Ash stood shivering on the steps of the hotel, breath steaming from his nostrils. But nothing returned. All that existed was the gaping, hollow present.

And there was no sign of Matt anywhere.

Beyond the empty pasture the black humps of the mountains blotted the horizon. A low-slung cloud cover obscured the stars. Under it, the snow looked mauve. The only signs of life came from inside the hotel: the party had resumed—though tentatively. And that swamp of sound, drizzling feebly from the hotel only to be stifled by the icy night, accentuated the massive silence.

In the middle of the pasture was a little island of trees. Ash stared at it and felt a tug. It eased, then surged again: the view twanged some chord of recognition. Maybe even a memory. He stilled his thoughts to allow whatever it was to settle. But the sensation fled and that old desolation returned. His mind was like a half-frozen pond over which life had skimmed and sunk. Ash spat—a snaking wad that carved a divot into the snow. Turned around, stumbled inside.

At the door to the bar he paused. From within came hoots and hollers, the steady thump of bass. Though the night had been wounded, the partiers were doing their best to revive it. Maybe Matt had even returned to do a pass around the room, offering sheepish handshakes and drinks. Ash sensed he would be forgiven, had likely enjoyed a life of forgiveness, of second and third chances. Of fucking up and making do.

A new year was close. A new beginning—of what? Ash had no idea what he was leaving behind. He pictured Matt and Dave-o falling into each other’s arms at the stroke of midnight. The confetti, the streamers, the kisses, the cheers. All these people bidding farewell to the last twelve months and hailing the potential of what was to come; all of them with someone else. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, they’d sing, and never brought to mind…Too much, too much.

Ash went to his room.

He paused at the door and listened, heard nothing inside, and opened it cautiously. Empty.

On the bed was his half-written story. Ash lay down with it and tried to read a few lines, but the text went skipping around the page. He tossed the papers aside, closed his eyes. Music pulsed from the hotel’s first floor and the room careened, swirling Ash away with it. But halfway to sleep a clear thought interrupted: the music had paused again—replaced with human voices. ‘Ten!’ they cried. ‘Nine, eight…’ But the countdown was like a song overheard from a passing train, flashing past and fading, and Ash passed out before the finale.

—

AT SOME POINT IN THE NIGHT Ash was shaken awake. Something disruptive was happening to his body. Strong hands turned him face down and tugged his legs straight. Ash resisted and was held there. A voice whispered, ‘Shh, shh,’ until he stopped struggling. Next his jeans wriggled free from his legs, and then he was being lifted at the hips, his backside hitched. The pillow stifled him. Raising his chin to breathe, he looked over his shoulder just as the pale dome of a head, silver in the moonlight, ducked down out of view. A sugary scent of alcohol—carrots and pine—lingered in its wake. Ash faced the headboard. Felt himself clutched at the hips and parted and—was it? Yes, blown upon. Nudged. And lapped. This continued for a while, a wet tickling that darted back and forth, round and round, stabbing sometimes inward. Deliberate and medical, something to tolerate. And then it stopped and he was released and a sort of quaking began. The bed shook; the headboard rattled the wall. Ash, no longer held in place, lowered his pelvis to the mattress, pressed his face into the pillow, clutched the sheets in order not to topple to the floor. Things accelerated; that big figure behind him juddered and seized. And then there was a gasp, a grunt, and warm jelly splashed on Ash’s feet. The bed shifted. The weight was gone. ‘We do that sometimes, don’t worry,’ said a voice from the darkness. Ash’s feet were patted dry. Footsteps moved away, and then there was a swish of bedding, the creak of bedsprings. ‘Goodnight, bro. Happy New Year.’