Last India Overland (21 page)

I was just concerned about Lucille.

As soon as I got on the bus, I went and sat next to Jenkins and asked him where Lucille was.

He said she was on the back seat, and that was all that mattered.

I went back and picked her up and sang “Forever Young” again, just for Kelly.

an
anonymous daybook entry
¹¹

oktoeber 26 Deer mum,

Yoo wuz rite. I shood have staid hoam with yoo. Its safer in the kloset then heer on the rode. Peeple dont understan me and there mostly all Limeys and Poofters and fuckin Canucks. There’s wun nice Ozzie gril tho mum she keeps givin me geers about riting in this daybook so im riting in it now. She thinks shes gonna win it at the end of the trip. She even bize Italyan lotery tikkets. But Im gonna win it and if I dont I will steel it so I can giv it to yoo and yoo can finly reed my letter. Wate till you see the T-shirt I almost bot you but didnt becuz of a stupid sticker on the sholder. Oops. Maybe youll have to wate a long time to see that. Ill bring you hoam worry beeds insted. Becuz you alwuz worry about me, dont yoo, mum?

Yur luvin’ sun

from Kelly’s diary

Oct. 26

We’re on our way back to Platamonas. Sundogs are standing guard in the sky, & R. & S. are not-so-discreetly making out on the back seat. Pete’s oblivious, or seems to be, in his shades. Finally had an amicable conversation with Mary, after breakfast. She spent high school in a convent, & she claims she was once beautiful, before a drunken driver hit the car she was in, the day she graduated. She had to be rescued by the jaws of life, & over the next year she got to know a plastic surgeon quite well. Tim is the surgeon’s brother. The surgeon is a Baha’i, Tim is a Buddhist. After the accident she said she just didn’t feel like being a Catholic any more, in the strictest sense of the word, so she became a Baha’i, who believe, basically, that all messengers come from the same source. She has since been ostracized by her 2 brothers. Why they’re on the trip is to see some family who live in Tehran. The Baha’i faith was bom, she said, in Persia. I told her I sometimes think there’s too much pain in the world to believe in any divinity. She said, “It’s very difficult to make sense of the larger plan, but I have felt it shaping my life.” Fair enough, I said, whatever gets you through the night. She smiled. “What messenger said that?” she said. So she does have a sense of humour. We’ve just had a picture stop at Delphi. No oracles around to spin out our futures, only ruins.

Mick

Patrick probably didn’t mean to leave my sleeping bag behind. It was probably an honest mistake. But I don’t need Dave to tell me that the odds aren’t good that the same can be said concerning Rockstar’s sleeping bag. Which showed real poor judgement on Patrick’s part. He should’ve left well enough alone. He should’ve let sleeping dogs lie.

When we got to Platamonas and Rockstar found out Patrick hadn’t packed his sleeping bag, Rockstar went up to Patrick and grabbed him by his lower lip and yanked him up close.

“Where in bloody hell’s my sleeping bag, you fat little poofter?” hissed Rockstar.

Patrick of course had a hard time answering, and I’m sure he would’ve lost a lip if Pete hadn’t come along and straightened things out. He handled it real cool. He knew that Rockstar was a borderline psycho and needed to be handled with kid gloves.

He said, “I warned you guys about getting your cases and your sleeping bags and your tent to the bus on time. Didn’t
I?”

Rockstar ignored him. He just kept glaring at Patrick.

Which kind of made me wonder why Rockstar was so upset. Like it was just a sleeping bag after all. But according to Dave it was in that sleeping bag that he boffed some groupie once and it was the only time he’d ever had a good time so he was sentimental about it. He hadn’t washed the thing since.

Pete told Patrick to go help Jenkins set up the cook tent and things finally cooled down.

Rockstar didn’t say anything while we set up our tent and he didn’t bother to have any supper with us. After supper I saw him sitting on the beach, watching the sunset, which was a nice salmon pink, all wrapped up in cherry red newspapers. And speaking of newspapers, I read my first newspaper in a couple weeks that night. Kind of wanted to give my fingers a rest. Patrick had picked up an
International Tribune
in Athens and so I finally found out that the Yankees had snuck up on the BoSox and made it into the World Series and that the Lions were losing as usual. I was surprised to see that they actually had CFL scores in the
Trib,
as we called it. There were a couple articles about the Polish pope and there was this one article about riots in Tehran, but I just skimmed those.

After I was through with the
Trib,
I decided that maybe it was time to start thinking about what my sleeping arrangements were going to be for the night. I asked Pete if it’d be okay if I slept on the bus but he said nope.

“Any particular reason why not?” I said.

“I don’t need to give you any particular reason, mate,” he said. Then he walked away.

Rockstar had a solution, though. Around about ten I saw him walking down to the beach with Suzie walking just ahead of him. Like as though he might’ve had a knife in her back. He was carrying her sleeping bag.

I guess it should’ve been no surprise that it was Jenkins who came through for me. He said I could have his sleeping bag until we got to Istanbul where I could buy another one. And so he spent the night in Charole and Kelly’s tent and I had the tent all to myself, which was great. It’d been a week since I’d had a chance to take advantage of myself. I had Dave hunt up some nice schmaltzy jazz in his record collection, but before I had a chance to light the candles and let the wine breathe, there’s the pitter patter of rain on the tent canvas and a few minutes later the tent flap’s unzipped and it’s Rockstar and Suzie. I just pretend I’m asleep while Rockstar pumps up his Li-lo. And so I got a chance to listen to some pretty interesting Li-lo talk. Suzie really didn’t seem to mind too much getting shtupped by Rockstar. She basically told him that if he wanted to keep on doing this, he had to make sure she got her own orgasm too, because, she said, if a girl doesn’t get her orgasms on a regular basis then she’ll get varicose veins when she’s old. Suzie was kind of proud of her legs, I think. Well, she had reason to be, I have to admit. We hadn’t gotten to bikini country on Turkey’s southern beaches yet, but that was where I found out that Suzie’s legs were the sexiest things about her. Anyway she was telling Rockstar how fast to move his fingers and how she liked it when the guy rubbed his cock against her clitoris and how she liked it when her nipples were twiddled, and I would’ve laughed out loud or at least said something if I hadn’t thought that there was some chance Rockstar would slit my throat if I had’ve.

The best line from the whole night, though, had to be when they were going at it hot and heavy and Suzie whispered to Rockstar don’t you dare stop. Rockstar said why not? Suzie said because if you do you won’t have any bloody balls left at all, nerdball.

“Bloody bitch,” said Rockstar.

But he kept on pumping away. I could hear the Li-lo squeaking. And when Suzie finally came, after about ten minutes of this, she let out a little whimper and said there just ain’t nothing like it.

“There sure ain’t,” said Rockstar in a real tender voice.

And I had to say to myself, gee, ain’t romance sweet?

And Dave just said to me, you forgot to mention the mysterious daybook entry. Oh, yeah. The mysterious daybook entry. It looked as if Rockstar maybe wrote it. Hardly anybody said anything about it. Particularly Rockstar. But he hardly ever read the daybook. Dave says it was Patrick who wrote it. I don’t doubt it.

I could write the daybook entry down if Dave would recite it to me, but he said to forget about it, it’s not that important. If it’s meant to be part of the book, he said, it’ll get to be part of the book.

Oct. 27

Mick still hasn’t taken his turn yet, and neither has Kelly. If we wait for them to take their turns, this is all there’s going to be of the daybook and yes, I plan on winning this thing when we get to Kathmandu so I thought about this and I’ve decided that unless these people take their turns I’m going to write in here for them and I know lots of little things about them I could tell while I’m doing it. Don’t worry, Rob. I won’t tell everything. As for you, Mick, I can’t promise you the same thing.

from Kelly’s diary

Oct. 27

below Mt. Olympos
¹²

she was stretched out on her blanket on the beach catching a few late day rays

her nipples dippled ripples against the Mediterranean haze

what are you doing? he asked

tempting Zeus she said

Mick sang “Isis” from the
Desire
album last night. I asked him if he ever got the feeling he was Osiris looking for Isis. He said every day. But I’m not sure he knew what I meant. C’s wrist still hurts & her back hurts. She tried lifting something she shouldn’t have. So I gave her a back massage near midnight. Then there was a knock on the tent pole. F. He said R.’s always either masturbating like crazy or screwing S. & would we mind if he changed tents. C hemmed & hawed until there was another knock on the tent pole. D, sputtering something about what an insensitive asshole Pete is & could she spend the night with us? C said sure. Probably wishing she could simply change places. We spent the next hr. listening to D. harangue about Pete & how all he cares about is getting his own rocks off, until C. gave her a Valium & she drifted off. I should’ve taken one too. A sleepless horny night in a crowded tent, F between D. & me. Clothes on the bottom, sleeping bag on top. This morning the 2 of cups and the Chariot card in the layout. All this energy being reined in. Played chess with Pat. Life is like a chess game. Defence mitigates offence. Gambling destroys prudence. Everything is a tenuous balance, a high wire act. But what’s life without a little risk? I’ve either got to take my id down off the high shelf & dust it off, or leave it there & just forget about it. Kind of hard to forget about it, though, given a high school atmosphere & Mick’s song choices. Nickel says take it down. So do the cards. Next new moon is Hallowe’en, as good a time as any. We’re on our way to Kavalla. Looks like storm clouds ahead. Later. As above, so below. The storm erupted within the bus, between R. & T. T made a good accounting of himself. Everything’s tombstone quiet & those clouds are getting closer.

Mick

On the way to Kavalla, Kelly sat down beside me and asked me exactly when I was born. I told her. January 6, ’55. She had this book called an ephemeris. She looked up something in it and told me that my Mars was right on her Venus.

“Is that good?” I said.

“Depends,” she said.

Then she started telling me about how she was born on a new moon in Taurus, May 3, ’54, and they’ve always had a powerful effect on her and how the ancient Romans used to get married only on new moons because that was the best time to start anything, crops, marriages, you name it, and so I said, what are you getting at here, Kelly?

She said, “There’s a new moon on Hallowe’en. It’d be kind of nice if something special happened on it, that’s all.”

She was looking at me with those spooky eyes of hers, and I was almost mesmerized. Mesmerized enough that I couldn’t think of anything to say.

She shrugged her shoulders as if to say that what she’d just said wasn’t all that important.

“It’s something to think about, that’s all,” she said, and then she took her little diary out of her knapsack and stood up and walked up to the tables and sat across from Suzie, which is when I noticed that Suzie had two big hickies on her throat, and she was real quiet and smoking up a storm. Teach was sitting in the seat just in front of the tables.

I was wondering if maybe Rockstar was some kind of modern-day vampire that I’d read about once, one of these freaks who goes out with blood bank nurses, when Teach suddenly got mad and screamed at Suzie to either get herself to the back of the bus or at least be decent enough to open up a window. Suzie stood up and screamed right back at her, calling her a fucking iron pants, a bloody nitwitted bitch, and a few other things. Tim deLuca stood up and told Suzie to sit down, which was when Rockstar, who’d been sacked out on the back seat, under a blanket, likely jacking off, walked down the aisle and grabbed Tim deLuca by the neck of his shirt and lifted him about a foot off the floor.

“Don’t yell at my girl,” he snarled at him. And he spit in Tim’s face.

Tim deLuca kicked Rockstar in the belly and then stuck a finger under his ear and pressed it hard. Rockstar let out a scream.

Pete by this time is yelling, “Hey, what’s going on back there?” and he’s braking the bus hard, which sends Rockstar and Tim deLuca sprawling backwards on the floor where they start kicking and gouging at each other. By the time Pete finally gets the bus stopped, Tim deLuca has Rockstar in some kind of judo hold and he’s saying, in this real quiet voice, “Say uncle or I’m going to break your neck.”

Rockstar said, “Uncle, bloody hell.”

He seemed just a little surprised.

Everyone seemed just a little surprised.

Dave just told me I have a wonderful gift for

understatement.