Last India Overland (40 page)

Dave says Patrick was right on, as far as that goes. Dave says there’s going to be a war between those two that’s going to send 500,000 people, a lot of them kids, straight into trench warfare worse than World War I.

“Ah, the world,” mused Patrick. “The world and its shambolic ways. Reminds me, Mr. McPherson,” he said, smiling, “somewhat of you.”

“Shambolic?” I said.

“Shambolic,” he said.

Just about the time we were driving into Mashhad where the Shah had an even bigger welcoming party waiting for us.

And I was a little confused when we pulled up in front of the Tehran Hotel because I knew we weren’t supposed to be going through Tehran, but that was what the hotel was called. The city was Mashhad, though. Iranians like to call their hotels after the names of other cities. You figure it out.

It was one of the ritziest hotels on the trip. It had a cigarette machine and an empty swimming pool littered with garbage off to the side and carpets on the lobby floor and bellboys and

elevators and a fat guy behind the desk. The only fat Iranian I saw in the country, most of them were skinny as Twiggy.

And Pete threw Rockstar into a room with Suzie, so they could iron out their problems, he said. He probably still hadn’t gotten over that limerick. And he threw me into a big room with Kelly and Dana and Patrick, which was nice, while him and Charole shacked up in the honeymoon suite.

Our room even had a hot shower, and we drew lots to see who took what turn. It had a Westem-style toilet too. No magic fingers on the beds, though. No TV.

And I guess it was the fact that my tooth was hurting so much that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night. And so it happened that I was sitting on the end of my bed, next to the window, smoking a Marley, this was near midnight, when I saw this small shadow scoot into the street and fiddle with the diesel cap on the bus. I said to myself, oh, oh. But the kid found it locked and so he tossed what he had in his hand under the front of the bus. And I wasn’t thinking too swift. I’m sitting there wondering what the hell’s going on. Then there’s a whoosh and the kid is knocked to the street and flames start licking out from underneath the bus.

I swear, I said to myself. Something the old man used to say. When he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

I may have said it out loud.

There’s an orange Hallowe’en glow on one wall and all of a sudden Kelly is sitting up in bed, pulling down her T-shirt.

“What happened?” she says. It was getting to be one of the favourite questions on the bus.

“Nothing much,” I say, blowing out three perfect smoke rings. The old man had a favourite expression. Something just went to hell in a hand basket. I heard him say it to my mom once, about their marriage. But I knew the occasion demanded something more original than that. “This little holiday trip of ours,”I say, “just went to hell on a Molotov cocktail, that’s all.”

from Kelly’s diary

Nov. 17

It was only a matter of time. I was dreaming of making love to Prometheus while vultures tore at my kneecaps when something woke me up. M. was sitting on the side of his bed in his beige shorts, smoking a cigarette & looking very Mephistophelean against a backdrop of crimson dancing shadows. He calmly informed me that the bus was on fire. He wasn’t lying. A midget terrorist did it, he said. Pete put the fire out but there is some damage, he said, & so we’re stranded in Mashhad. Strangely, no hysteria, everyone’s taking this fairly calmly, except for S., who says she’d like to sleep on a cot in our room, if it’s alright. M. & P. voted no, but we overruled them. Tanks roll by in the streets below & we can hear rifle fire in the distance. P. wants to go out & shop for carpets. C. took 3 pills & she’s down for the count.

S. is calmly pigging out on pastry she bought at the chai shop downstairs. D. is calmly reading
The Honourable Schoolboy.
Mick is calmly sitting at the window, smoking, watching Pete work on the bus.

Mick

I picked up the phone and asked the hotel operator for Pete’s room. It took him nine rings to answer.

“Hi, Pete, how ya doin’?” I said.

“What do you want, mate?” he said.

I think I interrupted something.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Just thought you’d like to know that a horde of Iranian terrorists just dynamited the bus.”

Pete and Charole’s room was two doors down. All he had

to do was look out his window to see I wasn’t pulling his

wanker. He didn’t bother saying thanks, mate, see ya later. He didn’t even hang up the phone.

About two minutes later me and Kelly see Pete running out of the hotel, barefoot, just his jeans on, with a fire extinguisher in his hands.

It didn’t take him very long to put the fire out. When he was finished, he bent down on one knee and punched the pavement.

“Pete’s having a bad trip,” I said to Kelly.

“We’re all having a bad trip,” said Kelly.

Patrick and Dana slept through all this and we decided not to wake them up. They’d find out soon enough in the morning.

Kelly whispered, “Well, we’re not going to get much sleep tonight. You might as well join me in bed. If you’d like to, that is.”

The last time I’d pissed, my ugly was still a little gummed up. As I’d fully expected it to be. And so I was having a quick little debate with myself about just how unscrupulous I was when Charole came knocking on the door and the debate became moot.

Of course everyone was freaked out.

It was Charole’s idea to go down and give Pete some moral support. Though I think the idea behind this was for him to give us moral support.

And he did, to a certain extent. While Patrick took three dozen pictures of the bus, Pete told us it wasn’t as bad as it looked.

“You mean it’s worse?” I said.

He didn’t ignore me. Because, of course, it would’ve been worse if it hadn’t been for me and my toothache, and Pete realized that.

He said, “Looks like the carburettor got the worst of it. Might need to replace a few gaskets, and the oil pan, just to be on the safe side. Maybe the fan belt. That’s about it.” He looked at me. “Thanks for the phone call, Mick.”

Mick. First time he ever called me by name.

“No problem,” I said.

Then he said we all might as well get some sleep and he told Charole he was going to spend the rest of the night on the bus, just to be on the safe side, which brought a pout to her face, and she asked Kelly if she’d mind coming over to her room.

Kelly glanced at me, as if to say, well, aren’t we one ill-starred romance, and told her sure.

In the lobby the guy behind the cashier’s desk was acting like nothing had happened. Like he saw this kind of thing every night.

I don’t think anyone got a lot of sleep that night. The next morning around eight, Pete came knocking. Told us we could all do as we liked but if we were smart we’d stay in the hotel. He said we were probably going to be stuck here for a few days while he found repairs. And that was it, he was gone.

Then Suzie came knocking. She looked like a rabbit who’d just seen a big hungry wolf

“When’s the bus leave?” she said.

“No one knows,” said Charole. “Your guess is as good as anyone’s.”

“What do you mean?” said Suzie.

There was a big ugly hickey on her neck and she hadn’t combed her hair, which was a first, I think, for Suzie.

So Charole told her the news.

“I don’t believe it,” said Suzie, even while she was looking down at the bus, with Pete’s feet sticking out from underneath it. She looked at Kelly. “This is a malaria nightmare, right?”

“That’s what we’ve all decided,” Kelly said. “It’s some sort of hideous group malaria nightmare. We’re going to write about it and submit an article to
Psychology Today.

Kelly looked at me. I gave her the chuckle she was looking for.

“Har, har,” said Dana. She was sitting on her bed, painting her toenails mauve.

Charole got out a little pink pillbox, knocked back eight or nine pills, crawled beneath her sheets. “Wake me up,” she said, “when the nightmare’s over.”

Patrick looked at me. “I think what might be in order, Mr. McPherson, is breakfast. Don’t you agree?”

Well, I was feeling a tad famished. Charole had given me a donut the day before and that was about all I’d had to eat in about forty-eight hours.

“I think that’s a pregnant idea, Dr. Livingstone,” I said.

He asked the girls if they’d care to join us, but Suzie said to Kelly, “I need to talk to you.”

Dana was up for breakfast, though, and so the three of us went down to the dining room, which was one of these dining rooms with white tablecloths, place settings, candle in the middle of the table.

It took fifteen minutes before we got any water. There were flies buzzing around so we killed time by killing them with two of Patrick’s
International Herald Tribunes.

When a busboy in red finally came with the water, he spilled most of it on the table and in Patrick’s lap. We decided to let it pass. Ordered omelets. Took an hour for those to come. Dana found a dead fly in hers.

“Our stay here,” said Patrick, “will not, I predict, be a pleasant experience.” “No kidding,” said Dana.

“Still,” he said. “One must always try to turn a negative experience into a positive. Mashhad is famous for its fine carpets, as I recall.”

“You’re going to go shopping for carpets?” said Dana.

Patrick wiped his mouth daintily with a white cloth napkin. “I may,” he said.

“Then you’re crazy,” said Dana.

Patrick smiled at her. “Aren’t we all?”

Patrick did go shopping for his carpet. He came back with a real pretty one. A deep brown and green with your usual Persian design. Mosdy geometric triangles, kind of a pyramid at one end. Patrick said it cost him two hundred pounds. He said it almost cost him his life, he was almost run over by five different taxis he was trying to flag down.

Halfway through the afternoon some soldiers showed up to guard the bus while Pete took off to look for repairs.

We didn’t see him for the rest of the day or that night either. We didn’t see Rockstar either. I was going to go knock on his door and tell him what happened, but then I figured what the hell, Suzie probably told him already.

Me and Patrick played sixteen games of backgammon that day. The bar downstairs sold him a bottle of Johnny Walker and we polished that off by suppertime.

For supper we decided to try room service. Called them up and ordered a bunch of chelo kebabs.

It took an hour and a half for them to come, and when they did come, they were cold.

I think this depressed Patrick more than the bus getting blown up.

“There’s nothing less appetizing,” he said, “than tepid spiced beef.”

I think it was about this time, or it could’ve been earlier, that some bellboy brought in a cot.

“What’s that for?” said Patrick.

Kelly said, “It’s for Suzie.”

Patrick looked at Suzie. “A lovers’ quarrel?”

By this time her eye was pink and purple and a welt the size of a tennis ball was bulging out of her left eyebrow.

“None of your bloody business,” she said.

That night no one had a whole lot to say to anyone. Every

once in a while someone would go to the window to look out at the lights of the city or at the soldiers walking back and forth below.

Every once in a while we could hear gunshots.

At one point, Suzie said, “We’re all going to bloody die, you all know that, don’t you?”

“No,” said Dana, “we didn’t know that, thanks for the info.”

“Yep,” I said to Patrick. We were still playing backgammon. Me on the bed, him on his carpet. “Looks like cabin fever’s starting to set in.”

Patrick looked at me and gave me a sour smile. “I’m very impressed with your tenacious grasp on the obvious, Mr. McPherson.”

I felt like kicking him in the teeth. But I thought about it and decided to let it slide. Moved a checker instead.

from Kelly’s diary

Nov. 18

The Iranian muezzin is like a hawk’s scream. Opened my eyes & there was my world, this lime green hotel room, strangers sleeping, Patrick snoring away. Everyone has their own belief system, everyone their own journey. But have I wandered off track? Have I ever been on track? It doesn’t quite make sense that I should die in Mashhad. But that’s probably the way a nine-year-old feels when the plane he’s in loses an engine. Saw a beautiful blue in my meditation, & F. looking sad.

Mick

I think the next day was the day Kelly finished painting that picture of Jenkins. She had her paint brushes and little jars of paint with her and everything, and she did the picture in no time flat. I was impressed. Not a big picture, maybe eight by twelve, and nothing too fancy, just a picture of Jenkins sitting on that bed in Sivas with that hangdog look of his on his face, his little Kodak hanging around his neck.