Last India Overland (28 page)

The question gave me a weird feeling. A little too much synchronicity for my taste, if you know what I mean.

The hooker gave Teach a weird look. “You’re one weird chick, ain’t you?”

“I believe in being as normal as possible,” said Teach. “I’ve never met people before who do drugs and I would never dare try them. But I’m afraid I’m travelling with people who do drugs and it may be important for me to understand their effects. One of these people is emotionally disturbed and mentally unbalanced, which is worrisome.”

“Well, you should try them,” said the hooker, grabbing her bag. “It’d save you asking a lot of questions.”

Then she said she had to go and she said goodbye.

Teach turned around and looked at me. I said, “The lady has a point, Teach. Don’t knock something till you’ve tried it.”

Teach stood up and came over, sat across from me. Looked at me with those eyes of hers that have to be every shade of blue there is.

I butted out my Marley.

“I hear that drugs had quite an impact on you last night,” she said.

“Yeah?” I said. “How much did you hear?”

She smiled. “Everything, I would imagine.”

“Well,” I said, “sometimes things call for extreme measures.”

“Very effective measures, from what I hear,” said Teach. She took out a handkerchief and blew her nose. It was

around about Istanbul when everybody started coming down with colds.

I decided to change the subject so I asked her where Tim was.

“Out looking at mosques,” she said.

Then Patrick and Jenkins came barging into the chai shop, both of them chock-full of energy and having a good laugh.

Patrick’s chuckle, though, got cut off short when he saw me talking to Teach. I suppose it was kind of a strange sight.

“So what’s up, guys?” I said.

Patrick said, “Satan’s own disciple—” (Teach had written this daybook entry after that little scuffle Tim deLuca and Rockstar had on the bus, and in it she called Rockstar the spawn of Satan or something like that) “—is still back at the baths, waiting for a masseur!” Patrick let out a huge chortle. “We peeked in before we left. He looked so sad. It’s quite the most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen.”

Jenkins said, “Well, actually, I felt a little sorry for the guy.”

“Thankfully,” said Patrick, “we are not all possessed of such a humanitarian spirit.” He had one last chuckle and then he did his best to put on a sober face, maybe for Teach’s benefit.

Teach excused herself and disappeared. Patrick raised his eyebrow. “A married woman? Really, Mr. McPherson. I thought you had some scruples.”

I shrugged. “I used to have one or two but I lost them somewhere.”

I picked the half-smoked Marley up out of the ashtray, lit it, and asked Patrick about those limericks he’d mentioned. He’d even written a whole daybook entry about them, though I didn’t find that out until I caught myself up on the daybook on the way to Canakkale.

“Yes, I noticed that,” said Patrick. “Mr. Cohen must’ve washed the windows while Dana was murdering that fledgling foetus inside her womb. It’s a pity. Ms. Byrnes did show a sprinkling of wit here and there. Particularly in the one she wrote about you, Mr. McPherson.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said. “How did that one go?”

He wrinkled his face up into a Dopey grin. “Tut, tut, Mr. McPherson. Tit for tat. There are all kinds of rumours flying around about what happened in room 203 last night, after the lights went out. Since you were a participant, and since your original story concerning an orgy is highly suspect, I would implore you, for your own peace of mind, to set the record straight. ’ ’

I laughed. Patrick raised his eyebrows again. Jenkins went to get himself a Trovas from the bar. As though someone had already told him what happened.

“Out of mild curiosity, huh, Dr. Livingstone?” I said. “Yes, indeed,” said Patrick.

“Well, sorry, Dr. Livingstone, the girls swore me to secrecy.”

Patrick looked real disappointed. He was one of these busybody types who had to know everything that was going down. He was worse than Suzie, actually. I was just amazed that Suzie hadn’t told him all about it. But they weren’t on speaking terms, I guess, because of the way Patrick snored.

Patrick said, “You aren’t the least bit curious about what that limerick said?”

I said, “Listen, Patrick, I saved your ass back in Dubrovnik. The least you can do is tell me what the limerick said.”

Patrick winced at the memory. “True enough,” he said. Jenkins came and sat back down, had a swallow of his beer. By this time it was almost sunset. It’d been a short day. The chai shop was beginning to fill up with people that looked like the neighbours in
Rosemary’s Baby.

Patrick said, “Well, I’ll be happy to tell you, Mr. McPherson, if you’ll tell me what exactly transpired in room 203 in the wee hours of this morning.”

I said no deal. I said, “I’m psychic. I already know what the limericks say.”

Patrick raised an eyebrow. “Oh, really. Would you care to prove that.”

First I phoned up Dave. Then I said to Patrick, “Sure, which one you wanna hear?”

“Well,” said Patrick. “How about that truly scatological ode concerning Mr. Cohen?”

I said sure. “There once was a driver from Kiwi / Who slept all alone in his tee-pee / The girls on the bus / Say hey, what’s the fuss / His pee-pee is only a wee-wee.”

Patrick looked impressed. He said, “I’m very impressed, Mr. McPherson.”

And so we talked about the rest of the limericks, and none of them were very good. Suzie had this obsession with the penis, I think. All of them, well, two of them, mine and Patrick’s, “cast aspersions concerning the exact latitude and longitude of our penile erectitude,” as Patrick put it, and I’d write them down but Dave says that might mean the difference between this book getting into high school libraries and me scooping up lots of lire, and besides, limericks are always better in the reader’s imagination anyhow, or so says Dave.

But I pretty well have to write down the limerick about Rockstar, because that one ended up causing more than a ripple or two in that travelling pond of jetsam and flotsam of ours, which Dave says doesn’t really work as a metaphor but I’ll fix it later.

Here’s how the limerick went:

“There once was an Aussie named Rockstar / Whose jewels are really bizarre / Don’t let out a snort / But he’s one bollock short / And the rest of it’s small as a scar.”

We all agreed it wasn’t a classic. Jenkins said Rockstar is a tough rhyme, Suzie might’ve been better off going with Rob. Patrick just wanted to know if it was true. Jenkins said yeah. Patrick wanted to know how he knew.

Jenkins pointed the neck of his Trovas at me. “Mick the psychic here let me in on it. He must be right. If anybody would have first-hand knowledge about it, it’d be Suzie.”

“An astute observation, Mr. Jenkins,” said Patrick.

“Try to keep it under your hat, though, Dr. Livingstone,”

I said. “I also happen to know that Rockstar told Suzie he’d kill her if she told anybody about it. She was real drunk last night. She didn’t know what she was doing.”

“This was early this morning, Mr. McPherson,” Patrick said.

“Or she didn’t take him seriously enough,” said Jenkins.

“What a strange conversation,” said Patrick. I could see the gears inside his head churning.

It was right about then that I was going to tell them about Dana. But my beer was empty and my Marley was down to the butt.

“And then, of course,” I said, stubbing out my Marley, “there’s what happened in room 203 last night, which has a direct bearing on all this. Too bad I’m sworn to secrecy.”

I smiled at Patrick, excused myself, and went looking for Kelly.

(a large postcard with the Blue Mosque on the front of it, which continues onto an aerogramme)

Nov. 2 Istanbul

Dear Dex, Hi, got your letter on Hallowe’en. Made me miss going to movies. Made me miss bright winter weather. Here it’s raining & we keep ourselves entertained by buying things we don’t need (like worry beads—have you ever known me to worry?) & writing limericks on the bus window (1 of our troupe, named Patrick, didn’t take kindly to the limerick about him & thinks there should be “a concerted effort to ostracize the culprit from bus society”) & visiting Turkish baths, manned, so to speak, & so the rumour goes, by lesbian masseuses (and yes, I do believe a pass was made my way, but as you recall, I was never very good at catching things, besides a cold, in all those schoolyard games) & getting abortions. (That’s right, 1 of our troupe decided to miss the baths & get an abortion instead: it left her weak but didn’t seem to faze her much. She said she’s had one before. Only

2 people made anything out of it, a Baha’i woman named Mary, and Patrick again, an Anglo-Catholic. Both feel a woman should have no control over her body, including those women who don’t happen to believe in a higher power. We’ll still be fighting over this one long after the nuclear freeze is down to 1 or 2 ballistic ice cubes.) Tomorrow Topkapi Palace is on the agenda & after that some sunny Med. beaches, or so our driver has promised us. Take care, K.

from Kelly’s diary

Nov. 2

D. went to a dr. yesterday, to take care of her “problem.” She looks in real rough shape. Like life has been drained out of her. The buzz is still about how Mick sent Freddy Freak & Co. packing; he’s gained a sort of strange hero status, but he’s wearing it well. Outside of Topkapi Palace he apologized for his hasty exit & tonight we have a date to see a belly dancer. The late afternoon twilight through the dirty window is a deadly depressing grey.

Mick

I didn’t find her. Turned out Kelly, Charole and Suzie talked to Jenkins and Patrick on the way back from the baths and went looking for some baths themselves. So I was at a loose end for all of three minutes. Then Dave called me up. Asked me to go see Dana. I said what for? He said because I’m asking you to. I told him I wasn’t in the mood. He said please. I said why. He said I’ll owe you one in the long run. He said how many times have I asked you to do something? He said this would mean a lot to him. I asked him why. He said because from where he sits, he can see how he and Dana were lovers in nineteenth-century New Mexico. He rode with Billy the Kid and Dana was a whore with a heart of platinum in a town called Las Cruces. When he got bit by a snake, she sucked the poison out.

I figured that if Dave was going to go to the trouble of making up a romantic little story like that, I might as well humour him. I went up to Pete’s room, knocked on the door. He answered it, looking more haggard than usual, unshaven, bags under his eyes that looked loaded with oil.

“Thought I’d just drop by and see how Dana was doing,” I said.

“Did you tell anybody about this?” he said.

“Not a single soul, Pete,” I said.

He said, “Not even Charole and Kelly?”

I said, “Nope, scout’s honour.” Keeping to myself what the old man would sometimes add on: Rex is on her too, bitch must be in heat.

Pete thought about that and then he said, “Sure, come on in.”

It was your standard Santa Sophia room. Dirty carpet, chipped dresser drawers, holes in the wall, two sagging beds.

one of them sagging more than the other, thanks to Dana.

Pete told me she was still pretty drugged up but she was awake. Her face puffy and pale and looking like it belonged to a little china doll, under the remnants of make-up she’d put on the day before.

Her eyes kind of floated towards me when I sat down beside her. “Hi, Mick,” she said in a real weak voice, and tried to smile.

“Hi, yourself,” I said. “You don’t look too healthy.” “I’m okay,” she said. “How did you do that the other night?”

I knew what she talking about. “Little trick I picked up in high school.” I figured I’d keep the fact that I had the dose a secret as long as I could. Which wouldn’t be long, I figured, knowing the bus.

“That was funny,” she said. “So scared, then laughing.” She closed her eyes and seemed to drift away.

“What happened?” I said to Pete.

“Nothing,” said Pete. “It went alright. It ain’t like getting a tooth pulled, you know.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “If I was in her shoes I would’ve waited until I got back to Halifax.”

“She ain’t going back to Halifax for a while,” said Pete. “She’s going to spend six months in Russia after the trip.”

I said, “Oh.” I guess I’d known that.

There was a little silence for a while. Just to break it, I said, “Took her to an American doctor, did you?”

Pete laughed. “You kidding? Those guys would want an arm and a leg. ”

So that pretty much answered a question I had in my mind, and I said to myself, well, if I ever need a doctor on this trip, I’ll find him on my own. And of course I did end up needing a doctor.

I should’ve gone looking for a doctor right then, for the dose. But I didn’t. After all, it was late, they were all home eating kebab and souvlaki, is what I told myself.

When I got up to leave, Pete said, “Tell anyone you see that if they want to see Topkapi Palace to be down by the bus tomorrow morning at nine.”