“Travel. One of my first overseas assignments, actually. Sunday Times. A puff piece on nature tourism. ‘Gorillas in Our Midst,’ I think they called it. When I went up the mountain, the country was at peace. When I came back down, it was at war. Wrong place at the wrong time.”
They had similar stories of escape, embellished and burnished over time, of civil wars narrowly avoided and bomb blasts averted. It was a common enough ritual for travel writers to swap what they, somewhat grandiosely, called their “war stories.” But Rwanda? Rwanda was of a different order.
“You’ve heard of the luck of the Irish?” said Andy. “Well, Rafferty here has whatever the opposite of that is.”
Rafferty waved for another scotch. “Not that I’m Irish,” he said. “Not that I’m anything.”
“With a name like Rafferty, there’s an Irishman somewhere in the woodpile.”
“You’re with Lonely Planet,” said the Aussie, proud by proxy. A homegrown imprint, that.
“Was. Past tense.” They owed him his last two royalty checks; he owed them a manuscript. In the world of publishing, this was considered a draw.
“And New Zealand?” asked a skinny kid with an overactive Adam’s apple, tittering in anticipation of his own incoming jape. “How would you… hee… describe New Zealand, Mr. Rafferty? Would you… heh-heh… would you say it was”—he let it drop with all the subtlety of a wet bag of cement—“a Land of Contrasts?”
Everyone laughed. A few applauded.
In the world of travel writing, Thomas Rafferty held the current unofficial world record for describing travel destinations as “lands of contrast,” an unbroken streak going back 147 articles and counting, and not a single editor had cottoned on to what he was doing. Sweden: Land of Contrasts! The Mexican Riviera: A Land of Contrasts! The Vatican: City of Contrasts! If his editors changed the headline, he would sneak it in somewhere else, in a sidebar or a photo caption if need be. In one particularly inspired move, he had written it out in seashells on a beach for a full-color spread in Zoomer magazine, or was it Island Views? Okinawa: A Land of Contrasts! His ongoing campaign was legendary among other writers, every bit as celebrated as having survived an African genocide.
“A toast!” cried Andy the Englishman. “A toast to these never-ending lands of contrast that keep us employed—”
“Quasi-employed,” someone corrected.
“And to Tom for elucidating us!”
“Hear! Hear!”
Rafferty raised his glass again, could see it in their eyes, the young ’uns rehearsing their version of events for later. Had a drink with Thomas Rafferty. Looked like he got dressed by crawling through a clothes hamper. They seemed disappointed he wasn’t drinking more. Undaunted, they told tales, tall and otherwise, about him, rumors and apocrypha mainly, as though they were speaking about someone else, someone far distant, and maybe they were. It was like eavesdropping on your own eulogy. “President of Panama tried to have him deported!” “He’s still persona non grata in Iceland.” The stories were always much bigger than he was.
Rafferty slipped away soon after, moved over to the bar, switched to gin. He wanted to drink his misery down to the dregs. She wasn’t here. Not in Christchurch, not on the South Island—maybe not in New Zealand at all. He’d already been to the art gallery, but she was gone. Long gone. It was like she knew he was coming, but how? “She has something of mine,” he’d explained, but they wouldn’t give any details on where she went. “Perhaps you could leave a message?” they’d said. But there was no message to leave except one, and she’d already heard it many times by now.
Some things are lost, some are mislaid, some are stolen. Rafferty asked for a wedge of lemon, got a slice instead, twisted it into his drink, thought about leaving. The bar, this assignment, the world. His ruined-cake face stared back at him in the mirror behind the bar.
“So,” said the bartender with a nod to the loose affiliation of riffraff at the table behind them, who were now whooping and lauging like prisoners on a day pass. “You’re travel writers? The lot of you?”
“Allegedly.”
“And you?”
“Me? I’m barely a traveler. Hardly a writer.”
A women’s voice elbowed in: “Modesty is not your forte, Mr. Rafferty.” To the bartender: “Mr. Rafferty is very accomplished, both as an author and a traveler.” It wasn’t true, but he’d take it. She sidled up next to him, threw another glance at the bartender. “Give us a minute, will you?”
Their barkeep relinquished the floor with a shrug, moved down the line to the next customer, a tie-loosened businessman who had been waiting patiently, as Rafferty studied his new companion in the mirror. She was younger than he was, but who wasn’t at this point? He remembered her from the airport, the flight down, the shuttle to the hotel. Thick red lips, kissable in the way that wax fruit is edible—only in error. He nodded to her reflection; her reflection nodded back. An interesting collage, her outfit. Looked like something the sea had washed up: layers of ragged-hemmed cloth resembling pastel burlap, lots of bracelets and dangling bits, all quite fashionable, to go by the compliments she’d been receiving. She was very young and very sure of herself, steeped in certainties and brimming with unearned grievances. Had he been that insufferable when he was her age? Probably.
“Mr. Rafferty,” she said. “I’m what you’d call a fan.” But the tone of her voice suggested anything but.
Couldn’t have been more than twenty-two, twenty-three. The age he was when he was about to embark for Rwanda, and he wondered, Had we met back then, would she have given me the time of day? Probably not. Success, such as it is, breeds interest.
“A fan, you say?” This called for more gin. “Flattery will get you everywhere,” and he waved the barkeep over. Maybe the night wouldn’t be so empty after all. She was clearly a mistake waiting to happen, a poorly packed forklift poised to topple, but Rafferty didn’t care; he’d always been drawn to incipient disaster. It was a carefully nurtured flaw of his. “Let me buy you a drink,” he said.
She brushed the offer aside. “I’m on a cleanse.” To the bartender: “Do you have any carrot juice?” But of course they didn’t have any fucking carrot juice.
“I can do a nice cranberry cocktail?”
She waved that away as well, impatient. It was carrot juice or nothing.
“A fan… with reservations,” she said, pivoting on her stool, forcing him to turn and face her directly rather than via the mirror. Here was the big reveal. “I’m Erin from TravelWrite Now.” She said this as though it should mean something. It didn’t, so she elaborated. “I provide multimedia travel content. Erin and Ewan’s travel tips?” Still nothing. She leaned closer, touched his leg lightly, a slyly ambiguous gesture. “We have more than one million unique visitors a month. If there is anything close to an influencer in this industry, it’s us.”
“Well… good for you.” He raised a toast with his empty glass. He’d downed his gin in the time it took her to not order. He didn’t know much, but he knew that a million of anything was impressive.
“We did a feature on you, Mr. Rafferty. On the outdated modes of male privilege you embody.”
“Good on you,” he said. “I’m sure I deserved whatever it was you lobbed my way.” He’d been called worse things by better people.
Rafferty had met Erin—had met her many, many times. He knew exactly how this conversation would unfold, could chart it with a predictable precision: Her increasingly polemic comments would ratchet up, outrage by rote; pull the string and out came the same slogans: capitalist colonial patriarchal privilege, shriller and shriller until only dogs and other thin-lipped sloganeers could hear her. Who needs nuance when you have ready-cut slogans?
Rafferty sighed. “Erin, is it? Look, I know you think I’m part of some sort’a evil cabal, a secret Masonic illuminati power structure, but the sad truth is, I’m just trying to get through the day like everyone else, pay the bills, make it to the finish line without blowing a kn
ee. So, if I agree—right now, right at the start—that I’m a dinosaur and an oppressor and that you are a better person and more virtuous and morally superior to me in every conceivable way, can we end this rhetorical foreplay and just go upstairs and fuck?”
She looked for a drink to throw in his face, but of course had none.
“You’re a pig,” she said.
“But an honest one.” He didn’t know much, but he knew that “patriarchal oppressor” was the modern equivalent of “Oooh, you’re a bad boy aren’t you?”—something to be cooed into the ear under cover of darkness.
She straightened her shoulders, all business now. “If you’d like to respond to our piece, you are welcome to.”
“Nah, it’s true, all of it, whatever you wrote. Hardly a scoop, though. Would’a been more of a scandal if you’d written, ‘Thomas Rafferty, not as big an asshole as we thought.’ Now that would’a been controversial!” He was starting to slur his words, if not his sentiments.
She stared into his pale eyes as though examining a strange bit of flora long thought extinct. “You really don’t get it, do you? Times have changed. Your world is over.”
“And?”
She didn’t know what to say. It was the power of Not Caring.
“You aren’t on social media, are you, Mr. Rafferty?”
“Nope.” He sucked on the slice of lemon, wondered how her lipstick tasted. Waxy and red, no doubt, a hint of cinnamon? Devil’s heart, isn’t that what they called those spiced candies of his youth? She probably tasted of devil’s heart. It was the gin working its way through his body, untying knots, loosening what was left of his libido.
“At TravelWrite Now, we believe in cultural inclusivity, we believe that travel can be an agent of social change. We do things differently.”
“And yet, here you are on a press junket like the rest of us.”
“The difference, Mr. Rafferty, is that I try to engage with the world.”
He shrugged. “Go ahead, engage away. No one’s stopping you.” He was calling for another drink when a lumberjack loomed large in the mirror behind them. This would presumably be the other half of Erin and Ewan.
“Is, ah, something going on?” asked the lumberjack, trying, and mostly failing, to be intimidating.
“Pull up a seat,” said Rafferty. “Your better half was extolling my merits.”
She shot a glance at Ewan in the mirror, a flash of anger that told Ewan everything.
“Upset about our piece, I see.” The boyfriend sat down on the other side, bookending Rafferty between the two of them, surely some level of Dante’s hell, caught between Virtue and the Virtuous.
“What’re you drinking?” asked Rafferty.
“I don’t drink.”
Of course you don’t.
Not a lumberjack, Rafferty realized. Just someone hiding behind a beard. Buttoned-down short-sleeved shirt. Hair more sculpted than styled. Superfluous suspenders. And, of course, one of those thick full beards that were all the rage these days.
When the drink arrived, Rafferty asked the bartender, “Y’ever noticed how, as men’s testicles get smaller, their beards get bigger? Y’ever wondered why that is? I’ll tell you why. It’s because growing a full thick beard is just about the only thing left where a man can at least claim the trappings of masculinity. It’s why the young women who’ve declawed them love those beards so much, find them so compelling.” He turned to the lumberjack. “When y’look in the mirror it must reassure you daily, no matter how self-emasculating you’ve become, that you can still grow a manly beard. They can’t take that away from you, buddy boy! Congratulations.”
Ewan’s face grew splotchy and red. Rafferty waited, but nothing happened. Instead, Erin got up and left. Ewan followed. They would no doubt vent their anger online. At best, he would live on as an anecdote, the lowest form of immortality. Thomas Rafferty? We met him once. A real asshole.
The night spun on in a reverse Dance of the Seven Veils, each drink adding another layer of blurred reality, until Rafferty found himself trapped in a corner, he wasn’t sure how, with the Adam’s apple from earlier. He was saying something about Winterset.
“That’s where you’re from, right? Winterset?”
Rafferty nodded. “Pride of Iowa. Birthplace of John Wayne and George Washington Carver. Only pretty thing about it is its name.”
That wasn’t entirely true. Winterset had its charm—a drowsy charm, to be sure, but a charm nonetheless. What it didn’t have was a reason for him to go back, not anymore. He’d buried Carol and Jim years before. His last remaining tether.
“I should probably confess,” said the kid, Adam’s apple bobbling, voice dropping to conspiratorial levels, “you’re the reason I became a writer.”
“Oh, um… mea culpa, I guess. Not too late to change your mind. I mean, you’re still young.”
“No, no, it’s a good thing. I read your piece in Zen and the Art of Travel Writing.” It was an anthology that Rafferty vaguely remembered contributing to. “I still practice what you preached,” said the kid, slightly embarrassed; it was like admitting to a high school crush. “Whenever I arrive at a new destination, I always set aside a block of time to just sit and… watch. A café or a park bench or a bus stop. I sit, clear my mind, and just observe.”
“I said that? Oh. Well, that’s—that’s good advice then.”
“Best I ever had.” His eyes were shining. Everyone is looking for a savior. “I heard you speak at NATJA as well.”
“Nad’ja?”
“The North American Travel Journalists Association.”
“Oh right, in Dallas.”
“Denver.”
“Right.”
The boy knew his acronyms.
On it went. Rafferty was dimly aware that this stuff mattered, that he should be paying more attention to a landscape that was shifting beneath his feet, but when the kid started going on about “search engine optimization,” he was gone. People talk about their eyes glazing over; for Rafferty it was always his ears that went first. The young man’s voice got fainter and fainter until all Rafferty could hear was a distant murmur, like Charlie Brown’s teacher, like the sea in a conch.
The other writers were now dissecting the finer points of the Kiwi accent and the speed thereof. “For people who don’t have a lot to say, they’re certainly in a hurry to say it.”
“Except with vowels, did you notice that? They slow way down for those. They don’t just stretch their vowels, they torture ’em.”
“Dude, you’re from Oklahoma.”
“We soften our vowels, we don’t torture them. Here. Say ‘yeast.’ ”
“Yeast.”
“Now drop the t.”
“Yees.”
“There you go, Lesson One. How to say ‘yes’ like a Kiwi. It’s a weird accent. There’s something sneaky about it, right? They’re not a sneaky people, but there’s something sneaky about their accent.”
When Ewan of the Mighty Beard strode past, ignoring Rafferty loudly, Rafferty used this as an excuse to extradite himself. “Just a sec,” he told the others. “I’ll be right back.”
He followed the lumberjack into the men’s room.
“Wanted to apologize,” Rafferty said, taking up the urinal beside him. “I was out’a line. Y’should’a punched me. Should’a punched me in the face. I had it coming.”
The young man behind the beard, eyes tersely forward, replied, “I don’t believe in violence.”
“Well,” said Rafferty, giving it a shake. “You may not believe in violence, but the world sure as hell does.”
When Rafferty got back to the table, studiously sidestepping the suction-like gravity well of Adam’s apple and his acronyms, Freebie Frank was in the middle of a heated debate with Andy the Englishman, this one about whether company catalogs, brochures, and hotel chain lobby fodder counted as “true” travel writing.
“Don’t knock travel brochures!” Freebie roared. “Word for word, with the amount you w
rite and what you get paid, they are the second-most-lucrative type of writing there is.” The most lucrative? “Ransom notes.”
“Libations!” cried Andy, moving on. He flipped the drinks menu open, recited the liturgy of cocktails within. “Manhattan. Grasshopper. Screwdriver. Wall banger. What else? A B-52, to get properly bombed. Sex on the Beach, what say you? A wholly unsatisfying proposition, that last one, what with the scouring effect of sand in regions best left lubricated and grit-free.”
On he went, with all the grace of a Bavarian oompah-pah band. Andy was a man who spoke solely in superlatives, a P. T. Barnum in search of a circus. Everything was the best! or worst. Biggest! or smallest. Fastest! or slowest. There was no fair to middling in the world that Andy the Englishman inhabited, only winners! and losers. Anecdotes presented as adventure, and adventures presented as allegories; it seemed at times that Andy’s only goal in life was to present an impressive obituary. Rafferty couldn’t have known—couldn’t possibly have known—that when the darkness came calling, it was Andy the Englishman who would invite the Devil in for a drink.
Hubris and hyperbole. Elliptical arguments only ever tangentially related to the topic at hand. Loud voices, overtalking, and slowly the room began to tilt like a ship settling on a sandbar. Rafferty left the bar, veering down a hallway and then up the back stairs of the hotel, thirty-nine steps, he’d counted them, thirty-nine steps to his room on the third floor, had to swipe the keycard three times before it would let him in.
As always, his hotel room was criminally underlit with coyly arranged lamps that needed to be felt up before you could locate the chain, and even then, he went through the entire dimmer cycle twice before he got it to what was ironically called “maximum.” Fuckin’ hotels.
Rafferty rolled the swivel chair over, sat at the desk with its improbably large blotter—hotel decorators presumably felt that most of their guests still penned correspondence with ink and quill—powered up his laptop, began to peck at the keyboard: “New Zealand is where bungee jumping began, and even today it remains a hotbed of adventure travel! You may want to try a bungee jump yourself, but there are many more extreme adventures you can undertake along the way.” He ran the word count up to 750, thought a moment, said, “What the hell,” and added a title: “New Zealand: Land of Contrasts!” hit SEND. He was in the bathroom chewing on his toothbrush when the laptop dinged.
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