by Cleo Odzer
"Where did you buy this animal?" asked the vet.
"Crawford Market in Bombay."
He wrinkled his nose.
I hated to leave Bach while I made the run. I asked Laura if she'd take care of him. She agreed. Laura and Trumpet Steve hadn't been together since Bali. They took turns with their son, Anjuna. After Steve had returned from San Francisco with the boy, Laura had taken charge of him. She and Anjuna lived in a house behind Joe Banana's. My heart was heavy as I dropped off Bach on the way to the airport.
I found Bombay crowded with people returning from the monsoon. Neal wasn't at the Ritz Hotel as he was supposed to be, and I had to call him twice in Poona before he showed up. He, Eve, and Ha took a room down the hall, and it soon resembled their room in Poona dark and overwhelmed by disorder. Room-service trays accumulated one on top of another by the door.
"Why don't you put the frays in the hall?" I asked. "A forest is growing on the roll at the bottom."
"I will." Neal giggled. "I always mean to."
One day I arrived at Neal's door at the same time as an Indian with a fat stomach and a sleazy air. We entered together, and the Indian moved the rubble from a chair and sat, one foot crossed over a knee.
Neal thanked him for coming and told him my name.
"Rachid Biryani," the Indian said, leaning forward to shake my hand.
"Nice to meet you, darling. Want a line of cocaine? I have quality pharmaceutical. The best."
"Um . . . sure."
Rachid handed Neal a packet before opening another to make me the line.
Neal told him, "Add this to my bill, okay?"
"It's getting quite big, my friend," Rachid answered, grinning with only half his face and then winking at me. "Pretty soon you will owe me a Mercedes." He chuckled aloud and slapped Neal on the thigh. Aha! So that's how Neal was getting coke. On credit from this cretin.
Rachid asked me, "How's the cocaine, darling? The best, didn't I tell you. Whenever you want cocaine or heroin, you come to me, Rachid Biryani, give you a good price."
I turned to avoid his leer and spotted a metal mound. "Oh, Neal!" I exclaimed. "You said you'd put those room-service trays in the hall. Instead, you have twice as many. The kitchen is going to run out soon."
By the end of the week, I concluded that Neal had lost his Barbies. He wasn't losing them; they were gone. One afternoon he stopped dead in the street and yelled at the top of his voice to whomever had the misfortune of being behind him at the time. He continued shouting as a crowd gathered.
"I pleaded with them to go away and leave us alone," he told me later that day, explaining the incident. CLATTER, SQUEAL, CLACK, CLATTER, SCREECH. "I held up my kid and begged them."
"Begged who?" I asked.
He paused before answering with a senile, "The C.I.A." Theo he added, "The D.E.A. The F.B.I. You know. All of those."
"The C.I.A.'s been following you around Bombay?" I asked in a mocking tone.
He became serious and told me, "For a long time now. Everywhere I go, they're there. Every time I walk down a street, they're behind me. Every time I sit in a restaurant, they're at the next table. I couldn't stand it anymore and decided to let them know how I felt. I wanted to tell them what they were doing to my kid. Want a toot?"
I did the line of coke, hoping to ease the bad feeling I had about our upcoming scam. But the bad feeling got worse anyway. The next day Neal caused a scene with the hotel management by complaining about people on his balcony.
"Neal," I reasoned with him later, "your room doesn't have a balcony."
"They were there. I saw them. I had the desk clerk come up and see for himself." SCREECH, SQUEAL, CLANK.
"Oh, no!" I shook my head and laughed. "Are the people gone now, or are they still clinging to your window?"
Neal laughed too and shook the bangs out of his eyes. "I don't know. Why don't you look."
As I opened the drapes, a piece of sunlight reflected on ice-cream-coated room-service spoons. His window faced the busy avenue in front of the hotel. "Neal, all you have out there is a window ledge." And then sometimes he'd stop in the middle of a sentence, bring a finger to his Tips, tiptoe to the door, and place his ear against it. "There's nobody out there, Neal. Come back here."
"Sssshhhh . . ." He'd kneel to peer through the eighth of an inch of space beneath the door.
"Oh, come ON."
After gesturing for me to be quiet, he'd turn into a statue, rump in the air as he squinted at dust balls and imagined the feet of the C.I.A.
Worst of all, though, was what he did to my scam. He took it over. First he insisted that I shouldn't carry the dope myself, and he found me a runner—Nikki, whom I'd met in Kathmandu.
"But Neal, I'd rather do it myself," I argued. "I know I can get through Customs easily. The Bangkok-Bombay run is nothing. They don't search you for drugs coming into Bombay. They search you for cassette players. The risk in Bangkok is BEING in Bangkok, and so the more people involved, the bigger the risk. And the expense. It's a waste of money, carry it."
"Absolutely I will carry it."
Then he insisted he was going to Bangkok with us.
"THAT'S RIDICULOUS," I protested. "There's no reason for you to go. It's increasing the risk and costs too much money. I can't pay for three of us!" Neal was adamant. I was enraged. "There's nothing for you to do in Bangkok," I said. "And look at you. You can't go to Thailand like this."
"I'm fine."
No matter what I said, he fought me.
I was furious. He'd taken charge of MY scam, which I'D organized with MY money and MY connection. His basket-case mind made mayhem of my plans, and he wouldn't listen to a word I said. I was enraged, not only at but also at my friends, some of whom took his side. Neal made no sense. He was a lunatic. But apparently I was the only one who thought so. Every person who heard us arguing took his side. I'd leave his room in tears every time.
Sometimes I continued the discussion later in my room with one of the bystanders who’d argued against me. "BUT NEAL'S OUT OF HIS MIND!" I yelled, my throat sore from hours of debate. "I CAN'T GO TO THAILAND WITH THAT MANIAC! WE WOULDN’T LAST A DAY THERE."
"He's alright, love," said Birmingham Phillip. "He’ll pull himself together, you'll see."
"HE IMAGINES GREMLINS ON THE WINDOW LEDGE!!"
"That’s just the coke. Be cool, love. Neal's okay—you're the one who's hysterical."
I'd storm out of the room, slam the door, airless stairwell fuming in frustration.
Neal and I fought for a whole week. He overruled every suggestion I made. Every one. About my wanting to go alone; about my not wanting to share a room with Nikki; about which hotel we'd stay in. He always thought he had a better way, and I couldn't win. Logic cannot defeat lunacy.
Whenever I'd rush out in tears of failure, Neal would follow. He'd bring me coke to cheer me up. He never yielded to my judgment on a single issue, though.
"How much money do you owe this Indian, Rachid, anyway?" I asked one day.
"No problem, our scam is going down soon, and then I'll be able to pay him."
Departure day arrived, and, having surrendered on every issue, I left Bombay with Nikki. I liked Nikki. She'd been living in Nepal for years, but she'd never done a run before, and I hated the thought of entrusting my money—and possibly my future—to her. She was also expensive. I had to pay for her round-trip ticket, plus food and half a hotel room—the expensive hotel room Neal insisted on.
In Bangkok Nikki and I checked in and waited for Neal to arrive. How had I enmeshed myself in this situation? Neal was such a fruitcake, how could he not get the three of us arrested? You couldn't get away with telling a Thai desk clerk there were C.I.A. agents on your window sill.
But then days passed without Neal showing up. Maybe he couldn't think clearly enough to come. That was what I hoped.
Since he wouldn't be involved in the purchase, I finally decided to leave for Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. I left Nikki in Bangkok. Having her stay
behind to wait for Neal was a good excuse to go alone.
The morning I arrived in Chiang Mai, I took a rickshaw to the hotel Jacques had told me about. Actually, the driver said there was no hotel the exact name he'd given me, but there was one that was dose. Good enough. I let the rickshaw go when I went to speak to the receptionist.
Who? No, the desk clerk had never heard of Jacques's friend. No, Chiang Mai had no other hotel with that name.
No contact? No contact location?
I died. Right there in the suburbs of some little village in Thailand.
Now what? My plans lay in ruin. There I was in Chiang Mai with no connection. I had Nikki in Bangkok in an expensive hotel, waiting for me to pay the bill. I had a madman on my hands who was who-knew-where. I had no idea what to do next.
My brain went on strike. It became an empty, quiet space. No thoughts passed through. Nothingness. As my feet left the hotel, my eyes lingered on the pinkness of the flowers in the garden. My feet moved me forward, but I had nowhere to go—I was outside of town without a rickshaw. I left the hotel grounds and faced an empty, unpaved road. But I wasn't healed anywhere. My feet just went, and I followed. When they came to a neighbouring garden, they directed themselves inside. A man in a Chinese rice hat squatted by a bush. My feet stopped. I wasn't looking at the man. I was just aimed in his direction.
Eventually he said hello, and I made a weak gesture in response. "Are you ok?" he asked.
I shrugged.
"What is the matter? Are you alright?"
It spilled out. The whole story. I told him about my mission to the hotel next door, my search for the employee, my woes of not having a connection. "I don't know what to do now," I said.
"That is a dangerous business," the man told me, looking left and right. "You must be careful who you speak to."
I immediately suspected I'd found a saviour. "Do you know where I could buy heroin?" I asked him. "Oh, please. Please?"
"Perhaps, perhaps I can help you. But you must be careful." Saved!
He brought me to a guest house and left me with the owner. The new man agreed he might be able to get me what I wanted, but he was cautious. I stressed that I needed dope right away or I'd be sick. When he took me to a storage room and sold me a gram, I could tell he was impressed by the quantity I inhaled right there.
And then he told me, yes, he could supply me with half a kilo. I moved into his guest house and bought the kind of paint kit I'd used to smuggle dope to America with John. I decided not to funnel the powder through the kit's hole, though. After all, I was only going to Bombay. I worked till dawn packing dope into condoms. Then I opened the flat-bottom ends of the paint tubes, removed some paint, and implanted the cargo, closing the tubes without a crinkle.
Before returning to Bangkok, I called Nikki. No, Neal hadn't shown up. Hallelujah!
And so Nikki didn't carry the paint kit into Bombay. She'd had a vacation at my expense, but I wasn't about to pay her as a carrier if I didn't have to. Without Neal, I didn't have to.
As soon as we landed, I went to investigate what had happened to Neal.
He giggled at me. "I couldn't get it together," he said. "First I couldn't find my passport, then I didn't have the right clothes, then I misplaced the passport again, then it was too Tate. I knew you could do it on your own. You're a big girl."
I didn't answer. What could I say? I was still furious that he'd taken command of my scam and ignored my proposals. He'd burdened me with Nikki and cost me a fortune. Now he was calling me a big girl.
I gave him half the stash as promised and left. I deposited four ounces in my safety deposit box, bought a couple of grams of coke from the unctuous Indian, Rachid, and flew to Goa.
I couldn't wait to see Bach. Within minutes of arriving at the house, I heard him bark at the door.
"Bach!"
Apparently he'd run away from Laura at the first opportunity and had been waiting by the house for my return. The maid and her family had kept him fed, and for entertainment he'd joined a gang of strays on the beach. Bach—oh, Bach! I hugged him as he slurped my face.
By now the new season was well under way, the paddy field crispy brown once again. The beach parties stamped and stamped every night. Goa Freaks crowded Joe Banana's porch all day. They packed into Gregory's restaurant at mealtimes. I timed dinner so the sun would be setting as I crossed the paddy field on the way back.
"Look, Bach. Look at the sky! That orange. This is my home yours too now. Our home."
After a few weeks of visiting, I resumed the routine of sitting locked in the house. I had my stash and my Bach and didn't have the desire to party or meet people. I could hear music blasting from the beach, and if there was a tune I really loved. I'd dance by myself. And sing a bit, like to Steve Miller's "Time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, slippin, slippin in to the FUture . . . dit, dit, ditte . . ."
When I went out, it was to buy coke.
I snorted mountains of coke. All my cash went for coke. I didn't have money to pay Lino's rent for the year. On the rare occasion when I sold a gram of smack, I bought coke with the profit. In no time I ran out of dope and had to return to Bombay to the stash in the safety deposit box. This time I brought Bach with me so I could take him to the animal hospital there. He still had trouble with diarrhoea and vomiting. Poor little thing.
He barked at people at the airport and ran up and down the aisle of the plane. Fortunately Air India didn't insist that dogs ride in boxes though I'm sure my fellow passengers weren't enthralled with Bach's antics.
In Bombay I snuck him into the President Hotel, where he had his diarrhoea and puked all over their carpet. At first I covered his messes by moving the furniture around. Alas, though, Bach never liked having his diarrhoea in exactly the same spot twice. Eventually I kept the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door so the maid wouldn't go into coronary arrest when she came to tidy up.
At Dipti's I ran into Rachid, who seemed to be popping up everywhere lately. When I bought coke from him, he suggested I sell for him in Goa.
"Darling, since you're already selling your heroin, why don't you sell my cocaine at the same time? This way you won't have to buy it, and you can make a barrel of money."
Sounded like a good idea. I did have to start selling my dope. I needed rent money for Lino and cash to see me through the season. Maybe could make enough to finance a scam next monsoon. I'd do it! As soon as I returned to Goa, I'd turn my house into a dope den. Hey—might be fun.
I visited Neal. Though still angry at him, I loved him. He was my best friend in the world. I was horrified by what I found.
Eve and Ha had returned to Poona, and Neal was living alone in a slummy room at Bentley's Hotel on Marine Drive. Emaciated, he could hardly lift himself from the bed. Ribs poked through his shirt, and the skin on his neck was baggy.
"Got any coke?" were his first words.
"Yeah, sure, but what's the matter with you?"
"I've been sick. I have to stop taking these drugs. Maybe next week. I'll stop next week. Can you leave me a stash for tomorrow?"
"Sure. Have you been to a doctor?"
"I checked into the Breach Candy hospital but left to score coke and . . . you know how it is. I never went back." He stood unsteadily and snorted. He wavered and seemed about to fall over. "I better he down," he said, supporting himself against the wall as he returned to bed. "You can move those things and sit," he added, pointing to a chair.
"No, that's okay. I can't stay long. I'm taking the Goa boat in the morning."
In the taxi to my hotel, the thought hit Neal's going to the. He can't five long like that. He'd Bone way past a temporary bout of Coke Amuck. Why hadn't I recognized that before? This was a more serious Coke Amuck—like Gigi's, who'd died shortly after her marriage to Marco. A Coke Amuck that wouldn't wear off in a few hours. A Coke Amuck that went on and on, until the person burned out completely. Instead of resenting Neal for hampering my scam, I should have worried over my friend's deterioration.
I had to get Neal to a hospital. But how to keep him in a hospital long enough to get him well? As soon as the urge for coke hit him, he'd bolt like a mosquito in a typhoon. What could I do?
I formed a plan. I knew if you were in jail and sick, you were transferred to a hospital and kept under guard. It would be impossible to leave under the eye of a twenty-four-hour police watch. If I could have Neal arrested, I could see to it that he be put under a doctor's care.
In a flash of inspiration, I knew whom to ask for assistance — Inspector Navelcar! He would know police officers in Bombay and could have Neal both arrested and hospitalized. I'd go to Goa to arrange the plan with Inspector Navelcar and then return to Bombay to make sure Neal was being treated. A little baksheesh to the hospital and Neal would be pampered like a maharaja. India was convenient that way. This seemed the only way to save my friend's life.
Problem—the police needed a reason to arrest Neal. I should return to Neal's room and hide some dope—then I could tell Inspector Navelcar where to find it. Good idea. I should return right now. I should tell the driver to turn round and go back to Neal's hotel.
But I didn't do it then, either.
When I checked out of the President Hotel, the deck clerk was surprised to see Bach.
Back at Anjuna Beach, I opened my dope den. I called it Anjuna Drugoona Saloona and tacked handwritten advertisements throughout the beach.
ANJUNA DRUGOONA SALOONA: Two-Story House Near Apolon's Chai Shop
It went well. Better than well. Within a week I was dealing four or five grams of smack every day, along with four or five grams of Rachid's I sold the coke in smaller and smaller quantities, until lines for ten rupees each. People sat around all day buying one line at a time. The profit grew as the quantities shrunk. I imagined myself a tycoon.
For publicity I held a raffle. With each packet I made I included a Raffle ticket said Anjuna Drugoona Saloona and had a number. The drawing take place at the end of December, with a Genuine. American Dildo Vibrator as first prize, a Champion Frisbee as second, and a brown stash bottle with attached spoon as third. It took me forever to write all slips of paper.