Last India Overland (58 page)

“What was it?” she said, but she probably knew what it was.

“A falling star,” said Charole.

“Right above the Taj,” said Dana. And there was something in her tone of voice. Almost a chuckle. Women can sure be cruel to each other, like I maybe said before. I notice that more and more, the older I get. Even Soon, I heard her get into a real jangle with the night nurse the other day because she wants to get switched to night duty. But she got what she wanted. Her first night shift’s tonight and I’m looking forward to it.

Soon says she’s going to bring me some Ko Samui mushrooms. I’ve been bugging her some, told her I wanted to try some before I died, that’s why I came here.

Kelly didn’t say anything for a while. She just stared at the Taj while everyone raved about seeing the falling star. Patrick just let the roach drop from his fingers where it sizzled and died, kind of like that falling star.

It really would’ve been nice to see that live.

But at least I saw it. Which is more than I can say for Kelly.

She finally said that’s it, no more drugs, ever again, got up and started walking back to the gate.

“Where you going, Kelly?” said Charole.

“Back to the hotel,” said Kelly. There was a little tear at the edge of her voice.

Charole waited a minute or two and then she followed after her. And then Patrick went, which left Dave and Dana by themselves, and they were necking, which meant that the screen was black because Dave necks with his eyes closed, and so I switched back to
A Star is Born
just in time to catch the credits.

Sitting there watching those credits, I couldn’t pretend this was a dream. Not that I thought it was. Kelly walking away like that, I felt sorry for her. So I picked up the Trans Am and dialled D-A-V-E. He let it ring for a long time and when he answered he said what, and it didn’t really sound like the Dave I’d gotten used to. I asked him how the gum felt. He said it felt fine. I said in that case maybe I should take over. He said it didn’t feel that fine.

Now I don’t really blame Dave. He had to watch me go through all the joy and pain of childhood, puberty and good old adolescence. Makes me feel in need of a sponge bath, to think of all the things he maybe watched. And now he had his chance behind the wheel.

I said to him, well, do you want to go talk to Kelly when you get back, where are you anyway, the screen was still black. Told him to tell her the falling star was no big deal. Then I thought better of that, said no, say, and I couldn’t think what to say, so I said just say you’re sorry she missed it.

He didn’t answer me right away. Finally he said he might and hung up.

I think Dave was pissed off at me for suggesting it. Suddenly there was nothing on the TV. Except for an old eight-by-ten photograph of my parents at their wedding. Black and white. Just there all of a sudden. Looking young and smiling.

I asked Dave about that, what was he trying to get at, and he said, nothing much, just the way things start, and the way things end.

But that was later. I started getting a bit antsy. So I went to the door. It was locked before. But now it opened and what I got in the face was a blast of sand and wind.

I closed it quick.

But this is why I won’t let Dave take over again. I can finish this book. There ain’t much left to tell. I don’t need his help. Soon just brought the mushrooms. They’re all nice little capsules. Fifty of them, tonight’s supper. She made a deal with the doctor. You see, Soon needs another hospital room, there’s people waiting for this one. So she says. They really don’t want to kick me out. But I have no money. No baht. So they’re giving me these. You can understand where they’re coming from. We’re both happy. Since my first suicide attempt, I knew I wanted to be really high when I went to meet my maker. So we’re both getting what we want, in a way, and I’m no fool, I can hear that fat lady gargling, I can hear her letting the snaps on that corset rip.

Dec. 13

The trip is improving, and in the mick [sic] of time. Last night we saw the Taj Mahal by moonlight. Who was it that said, “Neither words nor pencil could convey .the slightest idea of it,” or words to that effect. Well, I do hate to disagree. Patrick said it’s beyond poetry and Chinese math. I think that pretty well captures it. And most of us got to see a star fall above it. That has to be the single best moment of the trip, which maybe isn’t saying much but just the same. Our buggy driver also clued us in on where to find silk at bargain-basement prices, which was nice of him. And Pete was nice enough to even stop at the place this morning, after another view of the Taj.

It’s a nice rosy pink in sunlight. It probably would have looked a lot nicer if my stomach wasn’t busy trying to digest the waterbuffalo milk they served us at breakfast, which would have been nicer if Pete could’ve told us that before we had it with our cereal. Speaking of water buffalo, it was quite a sight to see women milking the hairy beast on our way out of town. Other women carrying huge bales of hay on their shoulders.

No one can say that India hasn’t been liberated. The big news of the day is that after our morning visit to the Taj, and after that to yet another Red Fort, and yet another tomb, this one belonging to someone named Akbar, Patrick is all out of film. Those women milking the buffaloes did it. All afternoon his shutter finger’s had jerking spasms. It’s called going cold Kodak. And what’s next on our agenda? Pete says it’s the erotic temples of Kharjaho. Don’t worry, Patrick. Pete says I there’s a 50-50 chance the motel there will have film. It would be a 100% chance, he said, but it is the end of the tourist season.

Mick

I didn’t think too much was going to happen the rest of that night, so I switched channels. Ended up watching Woody Allen’s
What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

I watched movies all night, and when I finally found

something on three besides shadows and darkness it was Dana’s face. Nicely made up, not too much mascara. She was writing in the daybook. Mick Jagger singing “Shattered.”

After she was done with her daybook entry, she let Dave read it, and I didn’t like the bit where she said almost everybody saw the falling star over the Taj. That was a little dig at Kelly. I asked Dave how he could love a woman like that, a few minutes later, and he said we all have our foibles and that Dana had suffered some herself from Kelly, though he wouldn’t say exactly what.

I was hoping Dave would look at Kelly but he wouldn’t. And I just got mad waiting for him to do it. Tried to phone him up but the phone was off the hook. Just like I’ve done to him sometimes.

He asked me to put that down and I did.

Dave and Dana didn’t do much besides hold hands and stare out the window at farmers pushing cows and ploughs through fields and so I mosdy channel-hopped and played the Fender that whole afternoon on the way to Kharjaho. After an episode of “The Untouchables” was over, I switched back to channel three. Looking at something that looked like a sex orgy. Well, it was a sex orgy. Four guys and a woman, the woman with her legs spread-eagled and the guys all had woodies and the woodies were all near some orifice. Woodies, literally. Because these were little carved wooden figures though Dave had been looking at these five up close and so it looked on the screen like they could’ve been anywhere from three to six feet tall. But they were maybe only eight inches at most I think.

“Look.” It’s Dana’s voice on the speaker. “Are they doing it with a horse?”

The eyes pan over to something different. “Looks like a cow to me,” says Dave.

“Can’t be a cow,” says Dana. “That would be sacrilegious, wouldn’t it?”

“Not necessarily,” says Dave. “Not if they saw sex as something spiritual and they were just sharing kundalini energy with the animal.” And I felt like calling up Dave and saying, uh, Dave, spiritual is one of those words that I leave to Jimmy Swaggart, and as for kundalini, well, just thought you’d like to know. But I was depressed and besides, I knew the phone

would be off the hook.

“Is that a donkey?” says Dana.

“Can’t tell,” says Dave. “Erosion’s done too much damage. Too much rain. And I guess they don’t have culture improvement grants to keep everything up to snuff. Let’s go see what the next temple’s got.” Dana’s face flashes onto the screen just for a second. It looks all flushed. As if these little statues are having an effect on her. But Dave says she was running a high fever from some infection she got in Istanbul.

Another temple shows up on the screen, this one from a distance, getting closer. Brown and onion-shaped. Covered with millions of those little figures and every one of them is fucking or sucking or getting eaten, sometimes in positions that I’d never even thought of, not even when I was sixteen and sex was all I ever thought about.

“Get this,” says Dana. “This temple’s called the Khandaria Mahadev temple and it was built by a guy named Dhanga. In 1050.” She’s looking at some brochure that looks like it’s full of close-up shots of some of the little sculptures.

This should be hot stuff, I think, because I have a vague idea of where it’s leading to, but all I’m thinking about is Kelly, where’s she’s at, what she’s doing, how she feels about these temples. I pour myself a Scotch and watch, they’re looking at a couple doing it doggie-style and Dana’s saying, “I don’t mind doing it that way,” and Dave says okay, let’s give it a try, and Dana says out here? and I can see Patrick and Charole, no Kelly or Suzie, walking towards one of the other temples. Just beyond them I can see the bus parked. Otherwise the place looks deserted.

“Think of all the kundalini energy that’s percolating in the Zeitgeist around here,” says Dave, and that’s too much. I try to make the phone call. No answer. He just didn’t care. He’d stopped caring. So I was thinking. I had another Scotch.

“Where’d you hear about kundalini energy?” says Dana.

I knew she was going to ask him that.

“I had an East Indian girl friend back in high school,” says Dave. “Well, she wasn’t a girl, exactly. She was twenty-three.”

I knew Dave was a bullshit artist but I didn’t know he was a blatant bullshit artist. He was worse than me. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Dave. He says you should always tell people the stories they want to hear. Life’s simpler that way. I’ll remember that, Dave, thanks.

Dana says, “She sure taught you a few things.”

“A few,” says Dave.

By this time they’re way on the other side of the temple and Dana’s shucking her thin East Indian cotton blouse that I hadn’t seen her in before. You could see her nipples right through it. Medium-sized, light brown and erect. Just the way Dave likes them. Right, Dave? Right, and I’m not going to go on with the rest of this, it’s not important to the story. What is important to the story is the next time they had sex, which was in Benares, because that’s where Dana got real pissed off at Dave. Though he calls it a simple misunderstanding.

INDIA
Kharjaho—Varanasi

Day 64

Departure: 8:00 a.m.

Route: Panna (toll 5 rupees after first bridge)—Nagod—Satna —Rewa—Mirxapur—Churar—Varanasi 411 km.

Hotel: Hotel de Paris; Manager—Dave Banachek; tel: 62218. Points: 1. Get ready for a long day of narrow highway, lots of bridges and tollbooths and traffic conditions that range from disastrous to bloody awful.

2.    At some point today some puny, zit-faced, knee-jerk passenger who you’ve grown to hate on sight will ask you why Benares is called Varanasi and vice versa. If you have enough restraint left not to deck the sonofabitch, you might want to calmly explain that the city used to be composed of two tehsils (administrative subdivisions) named Bhadohi and Chakia, that, in turn, made up the princely state of Benares. They merged together in 1949. The name Varanasi comes from the Varanasi raj period. The Varanasi district extends on both sides of the Ganges through an area of 1,965 square miles. City is one of the most crowded cities in India, with a population of well over a million, one-third of them Moslem, the rest Hindu and your basic grab bag of people who are getting old and think it would be cool to wash away their sins in muddy, croc-infested waters and die on the ghats (the steps leading down to the river) of the Ganges.

3.    City has a long and colourful history, but by this time on the trip, there’s likely some psychotic among your passengers who’s plotting your assassination the next time you let go with a history lesson, so maybe just let it slide. Main thing to do is catch dawn over the Ganges, and sample those milkshakes at Clark’s Hotel, and maybe let the troupe spend the last of their rupees on silks and brocades down on Mall Road.

Suzie’s daybook entry

Dec. 14

I’m glad my bleeding-heart mom ain’t here to see this. What?

388

she’d say. You spent how much hard-earned money just to see some skinny beggars and eat some food that’s too spicy and makes you crook?* I spent half the past week in the bloody loo and I’m all out of t.p. I asked Patrick if he’d sell me some of his but do you think the wanker would? He handed me this instead. The pages are too rough so I guess I’ll have to write in it. I know it’s been my turn for a while but I’ve had a lot on my mind and besides I’ve been too busy sitting on loos. I’m kind of sorry I missed seeing the porno temples. Charole said a couple of the temples even had moving statues. I don’t believe it. Did they run on batteries or what? Hey, I can’t tell that story here, somebody’s mom might read this. The raffle’s coming up and it’s only four more towns and we’re in Kathmandu. I can’t wait. Which is what I’ve been telling Pete every day on the highway, but do you think the nerdball listens? He always takes his own sweet time slowing down even after what happened back in Pakistan. He’s the one we should’ve left behind. We should have a Christmas party before everybody takes off too, with lots of Lomotil. Even though there ain’t very many of us left. I know I won’t be staying in Nepal long. I’ve had enough of this bloody travelling. I just want to get home for Christmas. I’m not leaving my mom’s house for a month. Maybe for a whole year.