Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  *This was not part of the package I received from Kathmandu. I found the entire Taurus Tours brochure in Kelly’s apartment beneath a stack of astrological charts. — D. W.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Oct. 1

  New York. A film noir hotel off Broadway. City’s a scream. A cabbie screams when we offer him a traveller’s cheque. A lunatic screams as he beats a car with a newspaper. Desolation screams from the eyes of the addicts & hookers in Times Square. Trains scream past below the sidewalk grates. Meanwhile I roll along merrily, a true 3rd wheel, while F & C. walk along hand in hand, wistfully hoping for a full moon when we get to the Taj Mahal. We’ve seen Greenwich Village, Little Italy, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building & about 3 doz. museums & art galleries. Last night saw Neil Young at Madison Square Gardens, & night before that A Chorus Line on Broadway. Neil sang a great song I’ve never heard before, think it’s called “Powder and the Finger.” Right now we’re at JFK, waiting for Freddy Laker, who’s late. It’s

  2 in the morning. F & C. doze in each other’s arms on the carpet, while around them a janitor sweeps up dust & fluorescence.

  Mick

  Nancy Pickles and me were right in the middle of a bad scene, basically, the night before I left, when there was suddenly this loud pounding knock on the door.

  “Open up in there!” hollered a voice. “Police!”

  I recognized the voice. Fat Man’s.

  The last time he’d played this trick he’d disguised his voice and I’d flushed away two lids of prime Colombian.

  But I went and flushed the toilet anyway, just to play along, and while I put on my clothes Nancy told me to get rid of him quick.

  I said I’d do my best.

  After all, what could be more fun than dealing with Nancy’s tears? Not that I’m a bastard, necessarily. It’s just that we’d already tracked across the same territory twice in the last twenty-four hours.

  I opened the door and there they were, Fat Man, Rice-

  Eater and the Ace of Spades, grinning at me like lovesick gargoyles.

  “Bye-bye, Mickers!” they sang in high falsetto.

  Now those are good buddies. It was my bye-bye, Mickers bash.

  Fat Man pushed past me with his case of Moosehead and asked me how much went.

  “A hundred grams of Lebanese,” I said.

  He did a double-take. “Really?” he said.

  “Just kidding,” I said.

  Rice-Eater was carrying something gift-wrapped in expensive paper.

  I said aw, shucks, you shouldn’t have.

  “A little something for your journey,” he said.

  I unwrapped it. Suitcase, yellow leather.

  “Nifty,” I said.

  Back in the bedroom I heard Nancy turn up her ghetto blaster. Pet Sounds. Her favourite make-out tape.

  By this time the Ace had heated up some hot knives and there was some hash waiting. I really didn’t want to smoke any because Nancy had this thing about drugs, but it was kind of expected of me and besides, I figured it might cool me out some.

  Fat Man, Rice-Eater and the Ace of Spades finally left around two.

  Around about three in the morning Nancy gave me a love bite on my ugly that left teeth marks. Just slight teeth marks. And she apologized for it right away. Then started to cry. A real bad scene, basically.

  Nancy had a lot to say after that but I’m afraid I really can’t remember too much of what it was, exactly.

  And I can’t exactly remember when it was she called a taxi and went home.

  I suffer from these blackouts sometimes.

  I do remember Hasheeba waking me up the next morning. She hauled me out to her little Toyota, me and my new, false-bottom suitcase, which she was nice enough to pack, and then she hauled me over to Mom’s. Who was maybe on her second martini, it being around nine in the morning. She was watching Phil Donahue on TV. He was interviewing a transsexual tennis player.

  “Where you going?” she asked when I told her I’d just stopped off to say goodbye.

  “I told you a couple days back,” I said. “India.”

  She put a puzzled look on her face. “Why are you going to India?” she said, slurring her words. “Sounds like something your crazy little sister would do.”

  “Well, I’ll go too,” said Hasheeba, “if you’ll lend me the money.”

  Mom just laughed. “You’ve got the last nickel you’ll ever get out of me, little girl,” she said.

  Mom hadn’t really been too happy about Hasheeba taking off to a Moonie commune for three years and never writing, never coming home for Christmas.

  I gave Mom kind of a half-hug. She’d had a double mastectomy a few years back, not too long after the old man got blown away, and really wasn’t into hugs much. And then I was leaving.

  I looked back, just before I shut the door. Mom was already refilling her martini glass.

  At the airport, Hasheeba gave me a 7 Eleven bag full of stuff. Bic pens, postcards of Stanley Park, tubes of hotel shampoo, shit like that.

  “You’ll be able to sell stuff like this for a lot of money over there,” she said, “if you happen to run short on cash, so I’ve heard anyhow.”

  I said thanks, sis.

  I really am in love with my sister. I’m nuts about her. I felt real sad saying goodbye to her. She’s such a cute wise-ass. Kind of girl I’ve always been looking for. I’ve always really kind of thought it was too bad she was my sister.

  She gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and told me she’d be moving into my apartment the first of the week and she’d make sure my cactus plants didn’t die and she told me to be real careful and keep an eye on my stuff and don’t do anything stupid. I said yeah, yeah, don’t worry.

  She said, “Drop me some postcards, Mickie, okay, I love postcards from faraway places.”

  I told her no problem, and I actually did drop her five or six. I just wish I’d given her a list of the campgrounds I’d be hitting because it got a little lonesome at mail stops when everyone else got mail but me. But it didn’t occur to me, even though I noticed the address list as part of the Taurus Tours package when I glanced through it one day.

  She said, “And bring me back something nice from India, like one of those India cotton blouses or ankle bracelets or something like that, okay?”

  I said sure.

  And then she got a little tear in her eye and she said take care and she gave me another hug and kiss and then she was walking away, through the pneumatic doors. I suddenly felt real lonesome. I was wondering if maybe this trip was really such a hotshot idea, because, after all, Vancouver is the perfect place to live. Those fucking taxmen, I said to myself.

  I checked in and grabbed a cup of coffee and then headed for the boarding area. When I went through the metal detector, the thing almost gave me a heart attack. My corkscrew, belt buckle and Colt .453 set it off.

  I knew as soon as I sat down that the trip was off to a bad start. The little old lady sitting next to me smelled of garlic and was playing with her rosary beads. Just before take off, she asked me if I’d found the Lord yet. I said gee whiz, no, I didn’t even know he was lost.

  And I’d forgotten to bring along The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test to read on the plane. So I had to make do with En Route magazine and the back of the barf bag.

  I ordered a couple Caesars as soon as we were in the air, because I have this thing about heights. I hate them. And I hate flying. All that space down below. The cramped leg room. The kid kicking the back of the seat. And because it’s not like a car, there’s no turning back after lift off.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Oct. 2

  London. 6 kinds of jet lag. C dragged us thru 2 doz. B & B’s last night near midnight, looking for what she called a decent deal. In my mind, I ranted & raved ulcers. Finally my poisonous mental arrows got to her & she settled on a B & B for 4 pounds a night. Smell of sock in the room so thick you could slice it. A bedspring made like the Marquis de Sad
e all night. This morning a Spanish hag straight out of Macbeth cooked us runny boiled eggs. When C. complained, the woman cracked a raw egg open above C.’s plate. So it was out to the street again, looking for another B & B. This one’s a little more expensive but a whole lot more comfortable. Spent the afternoon doing the tourist runs, Madame Tussaud’s, the Tower & the Planetarium. Think we saw too much. These sad, dour Brits took on the aspect of mindless machines & every dark and narrow st. held the prospect of Jack the Ripper. Fish & chip supper, argument for dessert. I want to leave the city, see Stonehenge & stay in rustic, rural B & B’s where friendly matron types will shower us with cookies & affection. C. wants to stay in 1 spot & conserve quid. F doesn’t care. We flipped a burnt French fry. C’s side came up, so London it is. I contemplate striking out on my own. But only for a moment. I’m a wimp at heart.

  Mick

  When we got to London, I spent an hour in a customs lineup and then I caught a train which was loaded to the gills, kind of like I was.

  We were stalled for an hour because some guy had jumped in front of the train and they had to scrape him off the tracks.

  By the time the train got to Victoria Station it was almost midnight. I got some money changed and an old man in a cage told me I’d probably find a decent B & B on Earl’s Court Road. Grabbed a cab. Took a room in the first B & B he stopped at, a place called Windsor House, where the jet lag wouldn’t let me sleep so I laid awake for most of the night listening to this French couple go at it next door, every hour or so.

  The next morning I caught the tube down to Charing Cross Road and scouted out the Taurus Tours office.

  It was a little hole in the wall on a side street called Rathbone Crescent. The girl behind the desk had a nameplate in front of her that said Inga. Inga looked like something that hopped out of one of those Ingmar Bergman movies Nancy

  Pickles dragged me to once or twice. She asked if she could help me, so I told her my name and she looked up my file and said I had to pay such and such balance, etc., but what threw me for a loop was when she said I’d have to send Rice-Eater’s going-away present home, false bottom and all, I’d have to use their case, company regulations, sorry. But I’m a real sentimental type, I told her, when it comes right down to it. I told her it was a present and gave her a hassle, and she finally said, well, since the bus wasn’t full and the carriage space would have room, she supposed she could let it go, and then she looked at my passport and my medical book and she took a while doing it. And finally she said, “You don’t have your smallpox vaccination for Afghanistan.”

  I said, “Oh, yeah?”

  She said yeah.

  I said, “I don’t know how that could be. I was pretty sure I got more shots than I needed.” And I rolled up my shirt sleeve and showed her how bruised my shoulder was.

  She wasn’t too impressed.

  “You can’t get to India unless you go through Afghanistan.” She smiled sweetly.

  “You’re probably right about that one,” I said.

  She wrote down the address and number of a doctor where I could go and get this shot.

  She kind of gave me an icy look when she handed it to me.

  At the time I kind of wondered why that was.

  I maybe did hassle her a bit much over that suitcase business. But I really didn’t have much choice in the matter.

  She read out some parts from this contract that said Taurus Tours was in no way responsible should I lose life or limb on the trip and she had me sign it. And the company had a no refund policy, she said this as she tucked my contract away. When it was too late to change my mind.

  I can look back at that now and look at this bandaged stump on the end of my right arm, and have a little chuckle over it any time I want to. I signed that contract with my left hand, which is the hand I usually write with. Not that I’m a southpaw. I bat and play pool right-handed. Used to, at least. I’m what they call ambidextrous. Which comes in handy, when you’re missing a hand and you decide you might as well write a book to kill a little time.

  from belly's diary

  Oct. 7

  Woke up from a dream of an acrobat dancing on a guy wire & smiling at me until I opened my eyes and he faded into the blue stucco ceiling. F & C. were at it again; I waited until they were through & then I got out of bed & put on my own spectacle for F., if he’d cared to watch, which I don’t think he did. Tho he did ask me where I was going. Out, I said. Caught the tube down to Piccadilly Circus. When it finally spewed me out, I saw, further down the platform, a man pressed against a woman, her skirt up, her mouth open & laughing at me. Then it’s past the shabby buskers & up the escalator, out into the street & into the 1st Wimpey’s for my caffeine & sugar fix, & while I mainline it, waiting for that adrenaline rush, I get this idea to leave F & C. to their sordid sex & forget about India. Take off to Stonehenge, take a train to Scotland. All around me, people nod their heads in agreement. Their flesh like cages, souls trapped. Pain in their laps & poems in their eyes. I took out this diary. I need to get more sleep. Kick the caffeine. But that first bitter taste does it every time. Reality sways up, slots itself in. But the day still stretches out in front of me like a corpse. Time, maybe, for a little tarot.

  Mick

  The address was 12 Coptic St. Little shop on a side street right across from the British Museum, between a rare book shop and an empty store front. It was up on the second floor above an East Indian shop that sold everything, from the look of its window, from ivory chess sets to elephant-shaped candles to silk saris.

  I had to climb up a dark stairway. On the first landing I almost tripped over a wino. He cursed me in what might’ve been Hindi and took a slug from his bottle. On the second landing there was a door. Dr. Provender, it said, on a sign that looked like it’d been painted over something else in a hurry. A few little chimes laughed at me when I swung open the door and a chilly breeze was sucked in from somewhere and raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  Inside was a shabby little waiting room, and I think I probably would’ve felt more comfortable if there’d been more people in it. There was just one pregnant East Indian girl who looked like she might’ve been fifteen. She was weeping a little and rubbing at the ring in her nose.

  The receptionist wasn’t much older than she was. She had a red dot in the middle of her forehead and big black eyes that looked like coals. She asked me in clip-clop English if she could help me.

  I said yeah, I needed a smallpox shot.

  She told me to have a seat.

  I sat down on a chair that was losing its stuffing and I thought to myself, hey, this is real sweet of Inga, giving me this taste of East Indian culture. She probably wanted to spare me some culture shock when I finally got to India.

  I read a whole issue of Time Out before it came my turn.

  The doctor was an old East Indian woman who looked a lot like a fox. A fox that looked like it’d been run long and hard by limeys on horses. I told her what I needed and she looked at my medical book and nodded her head, and as she was giving me the smallpox shot in my shoulder, she said, “You want some gamma globulin too?”

  The needle hurt like a bitch. I said, “What for?”

  She said I was going to India, wasn’t I?

  I said yeah.

  She said something about bad water and how I could catch hepatitis if I wasn’t careful. I thought about that and then I said, well, maybe, but only if she used some anesthetic. She said she was all out of anesthetic.

  “I will be gentle,” she said.

  So I said fine and she said please drop your trousers and stand against the bed. The bed was next to the door and the door was still open. By just bending a bit to the right I could see into the reception room. Another skinny East Indian woman was walking through the door. She didn’t look any happier than the young one. I got the feeling I’d walked into an abortion clinic or something.