Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  I said to Dana, “See you out at the bus, sweetheart,” and I kissed her on the cheek, and for a minute there, a happy little laugh danced in her eyes like Fred Astaire and I suddenly wanted to grab her and get on that gurney and go for a ride.

  It took Dana about half an hour to get her rabbit test. When she got on the bus, Pete looked at her, as if to say, well, what’s the verdict, is the rabbit dead or what? But Dana didn’t say anything. She just sat in her usual seat and stared out the window, and nobody said a word on the trip downtown. Pete had Linda in the tape player. Ooh, baby, baby, she was singing. I picked up Lucille and finger-picked along, and while I did that, I phoned up Dave, and he said, well, Dana wouldn’t find out the results until the next day but if I wanted to lay any bets, he said, don’t bet on the rabbit making it.

  Then I asked him if Suzie and I made it that first night in Bruges and if she gave me the dose.

  He laughed. And Dave doesn’t have a pleasant laugh. It sounds like Vincent Price on bennies.

  What’s life without a little suspense? he said, and then he hung up.

  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. That Dave can be a real bastard sometimes.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Oct. 25

  M. bought a guitar yesterday & hasn’t stopped playing it since. Not that I mind, he’s got a not-bad voice, almost Dylanesque. Right now he’s perched on the edge of a cantina table, cigarette dangling from his mouth, ouzo on the rocks at his side, as he sings “Fire and Rain.” I look up every once in a while & gaze adoringly, he catches my gaze, throws it back. We’re all slowly j reverting to high school. I expect my wallflower personality to come waltzing in from the gym any second. There’s even the requisite knocked-up girl friend slouching in the wings.

  D. got the news an hr. ago. Just finished drawing a T-shirt design & logo for some T-shirts Pete might buy if everyone’s interested. It’s been a washday, thanks to the sun. Loaded clotheslines everywhere, & Pete’s hosing down the bus, inside & out, with help from F & Pat. Pat.’s the hot item on S’s rumour mill. Apparently he’s got the dose. He must be quite I the Romeo, said C, goes to show what the externals tell you. I What isn’t on S’s hotline: C. said Pete made a move on her yesterday after the heralded hospital visit. She was vague about her response.

  Mick

  The major thing that happened the next day was the T-shirt controversy.

  Pete told us at breakfast that he’d buy us some customized T-shirts if we were all interested, and if we could come up with a design that we all liked. He made it sound like he was going to pay for them himself, at least that’s what I thought he meant. He asked us if there were any artists among us and Charole piped up and said Kelly could draw.

  “That was in another lifetime,” said Kelly.

  “Are you sure?” said Charole. “I really thought it was this one.”

  “Maybe I’m confused,” said Kelly.

  All of which meant, I think, that Kelly wasn’t crazy about the idea of drawing something for a T-shirt, but she did come up with something. It was a picture of an elephant on a magic carpet that was actually a roll of toilet paper coming unfurled. Underneath the picture it said, The T.P. Express. At lunch Pete asked us what we all thought of it and Teach as much as said that she’d wouldn’t be caught dead wearing one of them, so Kelly said no problem, she’d draw another picture, and this picture had a skinny Hindu guy sitting on a camel, smoking a hookah. Below the picture it said, “Kathmandu or Busted.” Teach wasn’t crazy about that one, either. Then Kelly drew one that looked like the corner of a Persian carpet, with a bus as part of the design. Then we had a vote and the elephant picture won and Pete said I hope you don’t mind if there’s a little company logo on the sleeve and that’ll be eight bucks each, please.

  I said, “Oh, I thought you were buying these, Pete.”

  “I ain’t Santa Claus, mate,” he said.

  I said, “Well, I don’t want one.”

  Pete said there had to be at least eight T-shirts or it wouldn’t be worthwhile. Since Teach didn’t want one either, Patrick had to order two for himself.

  Pete took the design downtown and had it silk-screened or whatever and he brought back a batch of T-shirts before supper, and on the shoulder of each was the Taurus Tour logo, a bull in a circle. Company advertising. And I guess my feeling about that was just that I was a little embarrassed even to be travelling on a tour bus. Like, it’s a wimpy way to travel. My feeling was that I should’ve hitched, either that or tried a little harder to find Magic Bus headquarters back in London. I basically didn’t want to wear any T-shirt that as much as said I wimped out.

  My feelings about all that changed when we got to Iran. I didn’t mind being on a tour bus at all when we got to Iran, because at the border I got a good close look at three people who’d gone the Sissy Hankshaw route. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  Crumpet Eater of Clapham Common,” it said. He had another one that said, “History Majors Make It Memorable.”

  Now I’m kind of sorry, actually, that I hadn’t gone for a T-shirt. They did look kind of nice. And it was Kelly’s art that was on them.

  Rockstar must’ve felt the same way. He asked Patrick if he could buy his extra one off him. He had a blue one and a red one.

  Patrick said, “Sorry, but I really would like to keep them both.”

  Rockstar said, real polite, “I can understand that, Dr. Livingstone, they’re both real nice T-shirts.”

  Patrick gave him a strange look. Rockstar just grinned at him.

  For supper that night, Pete drove us all downtown for what he called “a national meal.”

  On the way there, I sang a slowed-down version of “Forever Young.”

  When we got to Zonar’s Taverna, Kelly sat next to me and said that was one of her favourite Dylan tunes, and how she really liked my voice.

  “You could become rich and famous with a voice like that,” she said.

  Which was real nice of her to say.

  “Who knows?” I said. “Maybe some day.”

  The taverna was a cheerful little place packed full of empty tables. End of the season. The waitress, a sultry looker with a twenty-inch waist, was happy to see us, and so was the band playing bouzouki music up on the stage.

  Pete negotiated a group price with the manager, over near the kitchen, and a few minutes later we all had huge Greek salads sitting in front of us. Lots of black olives and feta cheese. After that the plates kept coming, moussaka, souvlaki, some of the best food I’ve ever tasted. There was something called barbounia which Dave says is red mullet and it tasted okay, and there was something else called taramasalata which Dave says was cod roe pate and which I wanted to spit out after one bite but didn’t.

  Naturally me and Patrick and Rockstar kept the ouzo and the retsina coming, and even Kelly had some, and after we had the baklava and the Greek coffees, everybody got into a pretty good mood. The waitress goaded us into forming a daisy chain behind her and we danced between the tables while the band went nuts and Rockstar started taking pictures right and left.

  The only one who didn’t join in on the fun was Tim deLuca. He just sat at his table watching us with a bemused holier-than-thou expression on his face, even though Teach tried once or twice to get him to dance.

  When the music slowed down, Charole and Kelly and Dana did a weird Greek goddess number, lots of swaying and bowing and slow-motion movements. When the music speeded up again, the waitress grabbed Pete for a dance and when the dance was over she snapped open the buttons on his shirt and tried to rip it off his back. He tried to fight back, but not for long, and they slow-danced across the dance floor with that waitress hugging him as tight as she could, while Dana and the rest of us looked on.

  I could tell from the expression on Dana’s face she wasn’t too pleased, and she kept her distance from him for the rest of the night.

  I was sitting down and taking a rest, knocking back ouzo, when Suzie, who was more than a little drunk on r
etsina, started raking Rockstar over the coals for not taking his turn with the daybook. Patrick was sitting right across from me and he heard this too.

  “Don’t you know how to write?” said Suzie.

  “I know how to write,” said Rockstar, who’d just knocked back three straight ouzos.

  Which was a lie, according to Dave, kind of. He knew how to write, but only a little. His mother was a religious fanatic who didn’t think schools spent enough time teaching kids the Word of God, so she taught him herself. Whenever she wasn’t busy torturing him.

  “Then write something,” said Suzie. “You’re holding everything up.”

  Rockstar put his Polaroid up to his eye and said, “Smile, Sheila.” That’s what he called Suzie every once in a while. Sheila. Suzie didn’t seem to mind.

  Suzie had a quick two-second debate with herself, and then smiled. Rockstar took the picture. When the picture slid out, he took a pen out of his pocket, a pen that used to belong to

  Patrick, and wrote, according to Dave, exactly this: “For the Sexiest Sheela East of Greese” in the border at the bottom and then handed it to Suzie.

  Suzie looked at it. A little smile cat-walked across her lipsticked lips for a second or two.

  “Can I keep it?” she said.

  Rockstar said sure.

  Suzie said, “You still have to write something in the daybook,” and then she stuck the picture in her back pocket, knocked back a slug of ouzo, and grabbed Rockstar’s hand.

  “Come on,” she said, “let’s dance.”

  We’d all seen Rockstar and Suzie punk-dancing to beer-barrel-polka music. Now we got to watch them punk-dance to Greek bouzouki music.

  They flung themselves around so much that everyone had to leave the floor and just stand around and watch.

  It was like watching the Snake Man dance with the Fat Lady at the circus freak show. It was just a little surreal.

  “It’s all too, too apocalyptic,” said Patrick.

  Suzie ended up sleeping in our tent that night. So me and Jenkins didn’t get a lot of sleep.

  I’m not sure if Suzie faked her orgasms or not, Dave says she didn’t, but she made damn sure me and Jenkins knew every time she had one.

  I was really tempted to say, about halfway through one of her little squeals, gee, I wonder where Patrick picked up his dose. But I didn’t.

  Anyway I slept in the next morning. So did Rockstar.

  It was Kelly who woke us up. And the first thing I needed to do was take a leak.

  The upshot is that I didn’t get my sleeping bag to the bus in time for Patrick to pack it. Neither did Rockstar.

  I dumped my sleeping bag by the bus first and headed for the can. But I headed in the wrong direction, I guess, I got lost, and by the time I finally got back to camp, the bus was coming towards me.

  For a minute there I wasn’t even sure Pete was going to stop for me.

  But he did.

  And the last thing on my mind was whether or not Patrick had packed my sleeping bag.

  I was just concerned about Lucille.

  As soon as I got on the bus, I went and sat next to Jenkins and asked him where Lucille was.

  He said she was on the back seat, and that was all that mattered.

  I went back and picked her up and sang “Forever Young” again, just for Kelly.

  an anonymous daybook entry11

  oktoeber 26 Deer mum,

  Yoo wuz rite. I shood have staid hoam with yoo. Its safer in the kloset then heer on the rode. Peeple dont understan me and there mostly all Limeys and Poofters and fuckin Canucks. There’s wun nice Ozzie gril tho mum she keeps givin me geers about riting in this daybook so im riting in it now. She thinks shes gonna win it at the end of the trip. She even bize Italyan lotery tikkets. But Im gonna win it and if I dont I will steel it so I can giv it to yoo and yoo can finly reed my letter. Wate till you see the T-shirt I almost bot you but didnt becuz of a stupid sticker on the sholder. Oops. Maybe youll have to wate a long time to see that. Ill bring you hoam worry beeds insted. Becuz you alwuz worry about me, dont yoo, mum?

  Yur luvin’ sun

  from Kelly’s diary

  Oct. 26

  We’re on our way back to Platamonas. Sundogs are standing guard in the sky, & R. & S. are not-so-discreetly making out on the back seat. Pete’s oblivious, or seems to be, in his shades. Finally had an amicable conversation with Mary, after breakfast. She spent high school in a convent, & she claims she was once beautiful, before a drunken driver hit the car she was in, the day she graduated. She had to be rescued by the jaws of life, & over the next year she got to know a plastic surgeon quite well. Tim is the surgeon’s brother. The surgeon is a Baha’i, Tim is a Buddhist. After the accident she said she just didn’t feel like being a Catholic any more, in the strictest sense of the word, so she became a Baha’i, who believe, basically, that all messengers come from the same source. She has since been ostracized by her 2 brothers. Why they’re on the trip is to see some family who live in Tehran. The Baha’i faith was bom, she said, in Persia. I told her I sometimes think there’s too much pain in the world to believe in any divinity. She said, “It’s very difficult to make sense of the larger plan, but I have felt it shaping my life.” Fair enough, I said, whatever gets you through the night. She smiled. “What messenger said that?” she said. So she does have a sense of humour. We’ve just had a picture stop at Delphi. No oracles around to spin out our futures, only ruins.

  Mick

  Patrick probably didn’t mean to leave my sleeping bag behind. It was probably an honest mistake. But I don’t need Dave to tell me that the odds aren’t good that the same can be said concerning Rockstar’s sleeping bag. Which showed real poor judgement on Patrick’s part. He should’ve left well enough alone. He should’ve let sleeping dogs lie.

  When we got to Platamonas and Rockstar found out Patrick hadn’t packed his sleeping bag, Rockstar went up to Patrick and grabbed him by his lower lip and yanked him up close.

  “Where in bloody hell’s my sleeping bag, you fat little poofter?” hissed Rockstar.

  Patrick of course had a hard time answering, and I’m sure he would’ve lost a lip if Pete hadn’t come along and straightened things out. He handled it real cool. He knew that Rockstar was a borderline psycho and needed to be handled with kid gloves.

  He said, “I warned you guys about getting your cases and your sleeping bags and your tent to the bus on time. Didn’t I?”

  Rockstar ignored him. He just kept glaring at Patrick.

  Which kind of made me wonder why Rockstar was so upset. Like it was just a sleeping bag after all. But according to Dave it was in that sleeping bag that he boffed some groupie once and it was the only time he’d ever had a good time so he was sentimental about it. He hadn’t washed the thing since.

  Pete told Patrick to go help Jenkins set up the cook tent and things finally cooled down.

  Rockstar didn’t say anything while we set up our tent and he didn’t bother to have any supper with us. After supper I saw him sitting on the beach, watching the sunset, which was a nice salmon pink, all wrapped up in cherry red newspapers. And speaking of newspapers, I read my first newspaper in a couple weeks that night. Kind of wanted to give my fingers a rest. Patrick had picked up an International Tribune in Athens and so I finally found out that the Yankees had snuck up on the BoSox and made it into the World Series and that the Lions were losing as usual. I was surprised to see that they actually had CFL scores in the Trib, as we called it. There were a couple articles about the Polish pope and there was this one article about riots in Tehran, but I just skimmed those.

  After I was through with the Trib, I decided that maybe it was time to start thinking about what my sleeping arrangements were going to be for the night. I asked Pete if it’d be okay if I slept on the bus but he said nope.

  “Any particular reason why not?” I said.

  “I don’t need to give you any particular reason, mate,” he said. Then he walked away.
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  Rockstar had a solution, though. Around about ten I saw him walking down to the beach with Suzie walking just ahead of him. Like as though he might’ve had a knife in her back. He was carrying her sleeping bag.

  I guess it should’ve been no surprise that it was Jenkins who came through for me. He said I could have his sleeping bag until we got to Istanbul where I could buy another one. And so he spent the night in Charole and Kelly’s tent and I had the tent all to myself, which was great. It’d been a week since I’d had a chance to take advantage of myself. I had Dave hunt up some nice schmaltzy jazz in his record collection, but before I had a chance to light the candles and let the wine breathe, there’s the pitter patter of rain on the tent canvas and a few minutes later the tent flap’s unzipped and it’s Rockstar and Suzie. I just pretend I’m asleep while Rockstar pumps up his Li-lo. And so I got a chance to listen to some pretty interesting Li-lo talk. Suzie really didn’t seem to mind too much getting shtupped by Rockstar. She basically told him that if he wanted to keep on doing this, he had to make sure she got her own orgasm too, because, she said, if a girl doesn’t get her orgasms on a regular basis then she’ll get varicose veins when she’s old. Suzie was kind of proud of her legs, I think. Well, she had reason to be, I have to admit. We hadn’t gotten to bikini country on Turkey’s southern beaches yet, but that was where I found out that Suzie’s legs were the sexiest things about her. Anyway she was telling Rockstar how fast to move his fingers and how she liked it when the guy rubbed his cock against her clitoris and how she liked it when her nipples were twiddled, and I would’ve laughed out loud or at least said something if I hadn’t thought that there was some chance Rockstar would slit my throat if I had’ve.

  The best line from the whole night, though, had to be when they were going at it hot and heavy and Suzie whispered to Rockstar don’t you dare stop. Rockstar said why not? Suzie said because if you do you won’t have any bloody balls left at all, nerdball.