Last India Overland (41 page)

It was when she was done the picture that Charole—I think the picture bothered her some, made her feel guilty—got this idea that they should paint a sign to put on the bus, something like, “Hail Allah, Allah is Great and There’s No Damn Yankees Here.” This from a Yankee. Patrick thought it was a great idea, and besides, it gave us something to do, so me and Patrick went down to the kitchen to try and get some boxes we could cut up and tape together, but the chef was this mean-looking hombre who would’ve looked right at home on “Friday Night Wrestling.” He just waved his butcher knife at us and told us to beat it. Patrick had to wave some British pounds in his face and beef up his limey accent before the guy finally caved in and gave us a Campbell’s soup carton and a Hennessy whiskey carton. Patrick got some tape and scissors from the front desk and we were in business.

Kelly drew a mullah-type figure bending down in prayer in front of a mosque while Charole did the calligraphy, which Dana filled in with a black felt marker.

It looked real neat, and it even got a laugh out of Pete when we showed it to him. He didn’t mind us putting it on the bus, either, he said it couldn’t hurt, and so we put it on the windows facing the street.

The day was blue and bright and somehow the sign put everyone in a good mood and so we hit the cocktail lounge, this was around about four, and spent the next few hours drinking Chateau Rezaiyeh and talking about mysticism and Castaneda and how Jenkins and the deLucas might be making out and whether or not Rockstar was still in his room.

Suzie said, “He’s got about fifty hits of acid. He’s probably right out of his gourd.”

“Hey, that’s what we need,” I said, “a little acid trip or two to make the time dribble faster on court.”

Patrick said, “I think not, Mr. McPherson, not in these dicey circumstances,” and he went on, of course, to tell us about the last time he dropped acid, how he was convinced that he was this animalistic thing, all it did was eat and shit and eat and watch the telly, and there was something big and shaggy just out of the range of his ken, as he called it, that was watching him, everything he did, and then there was something even further out, bigger and shaggier, that was watching the thing watching him, and it went on and on like that, out into infinity. And so what happened that night was like what’s happened to me lots of nights, when the drugs are on the table. We got into war stories. Because there ain’t no doubt about it, all you have to do is look around, drugs are everywhere and everyone’s tried them, and it was Kelly’s opinion that what all these drugs are doing are opening up the doors of perception, but that’s all they do, they just open up the door, if you want to go in the room of the actual psychic unconscious, which, she said, is likely a huge room that’s capable of either expanding or shrinking, depending upon the individual, then you have to use other tools. Like what tools, said Suzie, who was starting to look at Kelly with something like awe. Though it wasn’t awe. Respect, admiration, maybe love. I was starting to notice how Suzie’s mouth slowed down a gear whenever Kelly was around and she seemed to be making a conscious effort not to say anything too stupid.

Kelly said, “Well, meditation, prayer, EST, whatever turns your crank, whatever’s right for you. Music, dance, anything creative will create a connection with your right brain, which is where this big room is that’s seldom used,” and she went on to talk about how autistic people often have a damaged left brain which steals cells from the right brain and you have to turn things upside down, sometimes, either to draw them or to see how they work, what makes them tick, and life is like that too, you have to shake it up, listen to it rattle, and that’s what’s happening to us right now, she said, it’s a great opportunity for self-examination. It’s easy to say what’s really important in life when you have death staring you in the face and it’s doubtful, she said, if the really important thing turns out to be money.

One thing’s certain, Kelly was sure revved up that night, I’d never seen her quite like that, talking about psychotechnologies and mantras and Esalen and the transformative experience of paradigms, what else, Dave? Near-death experiences and psychological pendulum shifts and Colin Wilson and
Seth Speaks
and
The Crack in the Cosmic Egg
and Teilhard and Maslow and why the chicken crossed the road, until finally we all got hungry, and none of us wanted to, exactly, but we did it anyway, we wandered into that dining room, but we took a couple bottles of wine with us and Patrick laid his Chargex card out on the table and when the waiter finally came to our table, he asked him what was the biggest tip he ever got, percentage wise, and the guy said, bang, right away, fifty per cent, and Patrick said, well, if you provide even a modicum of service tonight, you’ll do much better than that, and that, at least, wiped the scowl off the guy’s face.

And so we had a pretty decent meal, thanks to Patrick. Maybe he was trying to make a point about money, I don’t know. Patrick had lobster Newburg and I had chicken piccata and Kelly had a Caesar salad and Dana had oysters Rockefeller and Suzie had escargots and a chelo kebab deluxe, no sense of occasion at all.

“Eat, drink and be merry,” as Patrick put it, but before he could finish, I said, “Because tomorrow we might all be tits up,” and everyone laughed, that’s how drunk we were, that’s the attitude we had, and even Kelly ended up getting drunk that night on the wine.

When the bill came, it was a shocker, something like five thousand rials, which is maybe seventy bucks American, but Patrick took it in stride and added on what he said was a sixty per cent tip, which impressed everyone except me, because, like I maybe said before, Patrick’s Chargex was way over limit and he had no intention of ever paying it off.

Charole had made a doggy bag of all the leftovers and we took that out to Pete. Pete was greasy as a greasy-spoon French fry and looked tired when he crawled out from underneath the bus, and when we asked him how things were going, did he find all the repairs he needed, he said, “Well, it seems like all the Mercedes Benz dealers have closed up shop and gone to the Caspian, thanks to the revolution, but I managed to find a few things and I have a contact or two looking for the rest of it, so we should be okay. The main problem’s likely going to be the carburettor.”

Charole asked him how late he was going to work, he said maybe another hour or two, and Patrick asked him if he could get the daybook off the bus, so Pete got that for him and then he slid back beneath the bus and we headed up to our rooms, past Rockstar’s room, and I got a look from Dana that said well, if we’re going to go tits up in the morning we might as well screw all night, and I got a look from Kelly that pretty much said the same thing, but it could’ve been my imagination. At any rate, it would’ve been awkward and nothing was said, which happens way too often in life, if you ask me, which is why I asked Soon this morning if she’d consider cheating on her Bangkok buddy just once, as a dying man’s last request, but she just laughed, maybe because of the way I said it, kind of kidding around, though kind of not, and she gave me my dose of Metronidazole and told me I’d have to settle for that.

But back to Mashhad. That night in bed I asked Dave what Rockstar was up to.

Dave said that search back at the Iran-Turkey border freaked him out because they almost found his acid and Pete told him the Afghani border was even worse so he was dropping all he had, three hits at a time, every four hours or so, he didn’t want to waste it, and so, basically, he was in a highly psychotic space and was best left alone. I said no problem.

Patrick’s daybook entry

And on the thirty-ninth day of the Great, albeit Possibly Truncated, Indian Trek, there came possibly truncated terrorists to visit upon that travelling conveyance which some call Coach a blight of fire, a hail of gunpowder, a plague of explosives. The one eyewitness to this calamity, Mr. Michael McPherson, claims that had the miniature terrorist commando been able to gain access to that small dark hole where all the diesel goes, when we’re able to steal it, then the outcome of this particular episode would have been far different, far more tragic. Be that as it may, this is definitely, as my dear mother was often wont to say, a turn up for the books. The gist of conversation gleaned from hovering near the front desk and imbibing lethal spirits in the lounge suggests that the revolution has moved into Mashhad from the south. Six students were killed yesterday in the downtown area in what is blithely being labelled a “small riot” outside the Bank of America. The carpet craftsmen have raised their prices dramatically, in anticipation of hard times ahead, and they refuse to barter price. The service in the eatery downstairs could be described as surly, at best, although extremely hostile would be more accurate. And Peter Cohen is having a hard time of it. The soldiers patrolling the street keep wanting to interrupt his work on the bus and tell him jokes aimed at the American ethos.

Still, there are bright spots, though minuscule ones, in all this. The sign the girls painted yesterday is eliciting many admiring glances and general approbation, from the soldiers at least. We will have stories to tell our grandchildren, provided we survive this debacle. A perfectly clean and comfortable toilet is always close at hand. The beds are comfortable, the showers are hot. We have the opportunity to sharpen our chess and backgammon skills. And we have a chance to catch up on correspondence back to the home fires. Correspondence, I’m sure, that is suitably discreet concerning the exact nature of our present predicament. So, all in all, it isn’t so bad. The fesejan in the dining room was delicious, and so, by all reports, was the ab-gusht and the shirin polo.* The chai is excellent. And so, I suspect, it is merely a matter of keeping our upper lips safe from the risk of rigor mortis and doing our best to seize the day. Such as it is.

Mick

Dave says talk about Dana. He says I’ve been avoiding the subject and that’s not good. He says it’s important to keep mentioning Dana, because this book might resolve its complications by having Dana walk through that door and kiss me on the lips and take me out of this hospital and back to civilization, where we’ll both live happily ever after on the spoils of Dana’s law practice earnings in London. A nice little flat in something Gardens. Because, he says, the buying public likes an upbeat ending. He says I hardly even mentioned her during my litde summary of the events that occurred on Nov. 18. He said she put her own two cents in every now and then, particularly when Kelly was talking about the light that people see when they have a near-death experience. Right at the end of a long, dark tunnel. I said it’s probably the light of a freight train coming at you. Dana said she saw a light like that once. Kelly said yeah? Dana said yeah, when she almost froze to death in a blizzard when she was six. She said she got lost one night when she went out to find her cat when her mom and dad were celebrating their anniversary in the bedroom, and just before she woke up in a hospital, she saw a big white light, like a spotlight on singers, and she felt herself being lifted, floating, and as she came closer, it was like a huge chandelier of candles, and it felt warm.

Well this huge depression just swept over me and I know it’s Dave’s doing, he has this way of always getting what he wants, and besides, I won’t have any problem—alright—so the sex was hanging in the air above that dining room table like charcoal smoke—this is Dave’s imagination—so her eyes were always on me, seldom anywhere else—and yeah, maybe Kelly was a bit spaced out on some acid that Rockstar gave her and was trying to make a point by being centre stage, I don’t know, this is just what Dave tells me, but he says they’re important points to get across. I can say this much. Dana was looking tired, that day when we drank too much and ate in the dining room. Dave says she was anaemic because she was still bleeding so much. She had huge wads of Tehran Hotel toilet paper in her panties.

She also kept up a pretty good clip when it came to the drinks. But we were all, as Dave puts it, under some stress.

The next morning when I woke up I was feeling a bit dehydrated myself, so I went down to the Coke machine on the second floor to get a Coke, but all that was left was a 7 Up, and when I got back to the room, Patrick was up and asked me if I might possibly be interested in a game of chess. Kelly and Dana were still sleeping in their bed, and Suzie was on the cot, snoring away worse than I’ve ever heard Patrick snore.

Patrick had this neat little chessboard, piece of wood, square of course, little pegs in the shapes of rooks and knights and bishops, etc. He had it at the bottom of the black plastic case that held his two decks of cards. I’d made a bad move and Patrick was taking my queen when Dana got out of bed in those long sea-blue flannelette pyjamas she wore. She borrowed some rials from me, not Patrick, and went down to the Coke machine. I told her all that was left was 7 Up.

Patrick was saying, “Le shah est mat,”—important detail, says Dave, for symbolic reasons—when Dana burst—yeah, that’s right, burst—through the door like a rhino in heat, like a Redskin running back through a Cowboy defensive line.

She was basically hysterical. Threw herself down on the bed, and Kelly was pretty slow to come to her senses and the first thing Suzie said when she cased the situation was, “You ran into Rob, huh?”

So it was up to either me or Patrick to do the right thing, and Patrick wasn’t making any moves, because Dave says Dana spurned one of his advances, as Dave puts it, back in Venice, and so it was up to me, and I probably wouldn’t have done it if Dave hadn’t put a bug in my ear. She was lying on the bed, crying into her hands, great racking convulsions that shook her whole body. I put my arms on her shoulders and said hey, hey, you’re okay, safe and sound, you just had a walking talking malaria nightmare, I had one too, two nights ago—this is what Dave told me to say.