Irfan turned to me, said loudly this time, “If Wes says it’s safe.”

I was about ready to take the boat — by myself.

While Irfan and Farhana glowered at each other, the child hung back, behind Farhana. To be honest, I’d only been vaguely aware of her standing there till just this moment. Now I saw that she was eyeing the tents along the lake’s shore. And then, as suddenly as I spotted her, she skipped away, her bracelets jingling.

“Where are you going?” Farhana called after her.

“She’s going home,” said Irfan.

Farhana was walking away, toward the tents.

“Where are you going?” I called after her.

“To tell her family I’m taking her with us.”

Irfan turned to me. “Teach her something. She’ll be putting them in a very awkward position. They won’t want their child going off with a group of strangers and they won’t want to say no to Farhana, who’s a guest. She should accept their hospitality,” he pointed to the empty plates, “instead of pressing for more.”

“She thinks she’s doing the girl a favor.” My defense ended up sounding like criticism.

“That’s exactly the problem,” Irfan agreed.

“It’s a ride in a boat.” Wes shrugged. “You guys talk as if poor Farrah were trying to abduct her.”

Poor Farrah?

“Give her a break,” he added, maddeningly.

I followed Farhana.

Farhana followed the girl.

Irfan followed me.

Wes literally inhaled poor Farrah’s sandwiches.


It was as Irfan said it would be. The girl, whose name was Kiran, appeared fairly neutral to the outing. Her family was against it. Farhana pleaded with them and eventually, Kiran’s father agreed. At least that is how I understood his quiet responses to her fragmented Urdu, and later, while walking us to the lake, how Irfan translated their more rapid conversation. “It’s even harder to say no to a female guest,” Irfan added, Farhana ignoring him. “It’s considered bad manners.”

Kiran’s father and brother — the same boy who’d brought the food — were standing outside the tent, watching us walk away. I could hear a woman’s voice from inside the tent. Later, as I held the boat so Farhana could climb inside, I turned back to see two women watching us as well. One held a young child in her arms, and she was arguing furiously with Kiran’s father. I saw her black shirt billow in the breeze; the cuffs of her sleeves were rimmed in fluorescent pink thread and I could hear bangles chime as the arms gesticulated in protest. It might have been the same woman I’d seen by the fire. Kiran’s bangles as she arranged herself in the boat — folding her hands in her lap before unfolding them again — were like an echo of the woman’s bangles. There was such perfect synchronicity between them that it had to have been a private conversation. I knew, as we pulled away, that the woman was her mother.

I rowed backward at first, looking behind me as the bow pierced the lake’s skin, cutting a wide triangle the shape of a fin. Somewhere over my left shoulder must have loomed the actual summit of Naked Mountain, radiant in the evening light, I was sure. I could imagine the clouds circling him like a promise; he was above their promise now. Below us, in the glacial water, Queen of the Mountains’ valleys and crests plunged all the way down to a depth that was surely our own nadir.

The boat was shaped like a tub and it was heavy. It wobbled. Apart from the ungainly shape, the rocking made no sense; there was almost no breeze. I rowed out about twenty feet before swiveling the boat around to face in the general direction of Naked Mountain. The tide did not recede. It was the same tide that had confounded us when we first got here; it was the tide of his ardor for the Queen, hers for him, and we were intruders, duly rebuked by being splashed from all sides. The further out I rowed, the larger grew the swells. Kiran and Farhana shared the plank in the stern of the boat, and every time the whitecaps hit her, Kiran shifted in her seat, rocking the boat more. She was light but her disquiet was heavy. She’d been talkative with Farhana when they walked into the hills together, but not now. I asked Farhana if it was me.

“Maybe.” She frowned. Switching to Urdu, she asked, “Are you enjoying yourself?”

The girl shook her head.

“At least she’s honest,” I said.

Farhana wrapped an arm around her. “Is it because you’re cold?”

She hesitated, then nodded. Her bangles still chimed; there was still the compulsive folding and unfolding of hands in her lap. But there was no longer a reply.

A pool of water was collecting inside the tub. It was impossible to say how much was coming in from the sides and how much was the leak. The heaviness grew. It was much harder to row that day than it had been the last time I was on the lake. Farhana offered to take over but though her legs were strong, she had no strength in her arms. When I told her this she reminded me that I had none either.

“Still,” she conceded, “you do have shoulders.” In English, so the girl wouldn’t understand, she said that if we were alone we could both take a break.

I played along. “I could show you that vein in my shoulders that makes you wonder if I go running at night, or weightlifting.”

She smiled. “This air suits you. You look—” She glanced at the girl. “She doesn’t seem happy. Maybe I made a mistake.”

“I look what?”

She rubbed Kiran’s back. “Should we have brought your goat with us?”

Kiran grinned, showing two gaps in the front row of her teeth.

“I look what?” I repeated.

She met my reflection in the lake. “Like something I’d like to …”

There were no other boats nearby. If we’d been alone.

Beside Farhana rolled the Queen’s deepest hollows. She was there, beneath my oar, tempting me to dive, face first. “In Karachi you said a quick fuck is a dead end.”

“We’ve done it quickly since. Never on the water.”

I was unutterably aroused. And grateful that I’d worn loose jeans. And mortified. Kiran wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. Couples who have children must have to deal with this all the time. Forced to navigate a third wheel, how do they keep their balance? But she wasn’t even our child. And I wanted this moment with Farhana. We’d made love twice already in under twenty-four hours. Hat trick? This was just the thrill, just the newness, our long weeks before leaving San Francisco had lacked.

I spoke quickly. “Let’s turn back, drop her, then come out again.”

“We can’t do that. We brought her with us.”

We.

Kiran was looking down at the lake now, and her gaze was one of resignation. She was the child of gypsies, her bare feet caked with the soil of mountains. She sat hunkered in the boat as if in a cage. Water was a solid barrier, a mountain pass she could not traverse. There were no pine trees to lead the way, no goat bells to chase. The only markers were down below, in the lake bed, and these would slip through her fingers before she could tap them. Between the big toe and second toe of her right foot protruded a single pine needle, the thickness of her hair, darker than her hair. It had caught in a toe ring. She lifted this foot out of the pool of water rising past her ankles and rested it on Farhana’s leg. She wiggled her toes. Bells on her toes.

“Tell Nadir your goat’s name,” said Farhana.

Kiran looked at me, and I realized she’d been avoiding looking at me till then. She knew I did not want her there. Her large green eyes were the color of sun-quenched grapes. “Kola,” she said, daring me to take an interest.

“Like Kala Kola hair tonic or Coca-Cola drink?” I made a poor attempt at raising my voice in a friendly, child-accessible way.

She turned to Farhana as if to register her dismay at the degree to which I was capable of stupid questions.

“And the others, the ones you didn’t have to chase?” pressed Farhana.

“Bhuri! Makheri!” She stared ahead, at the shore.

“And what is your favorite color?”

“Billoo.” She stared at the sky.

Farhana laughed. I tried to smile. There was an awkward pause.

Well, my moment with Farhana on the water was over.

Or so I thought.

“Last night—” she began, switching to English again.

I waited. When she continued to hesitate, I urged, “Your timing was perfect.”

“I know I’m not patient enough for you sometimes.”

“You’re just right for me.”

“Last night, have I ever told you how good you …”

“What?”

“Well, better than salted caramel.”

“Jesus, Farhana! You never talk to me like this when we’re alone!”

Farhana hugged Kiran, tightly. “I’m sorry! It’s not fair we brought her, even though she wanted to come! We should take her back!”

“And then return.”

She nodded.

I spun the boat around, too quickly, straight into a wave. It crashed over Kiran’s face, dousing her in ice water. She screamed. Then she stood up and the boat pitched and she screamed again. I did not see whether her right foot ever came down or if it was still pressed into Farhana’s leg. But I did see her left foot skid in the puddle as she lost her balance, falling backward into the side of the teetering boat. “Sit down!” I heard Farhana shout, clinging to the opposite end of the boat with both hands. It occurred to me only later that Farhana had been thinking more clearly than I. She’d tried to balance the boat. If she’d reached for the girl instead, the boat would surely have capsized. I have no recollection of what I did. None. Not until I heard Kiran hit something — perhaps her hips. And then she was in the lake.