Naked in Dangerous Places

by Cash Peters

  Inevitably, when you spend as long as the five of us have together, you develop your own cosmology, with your own rules, your own shorthand and in-jokes and nicknames. Mine is Cashmatic 3000. Awarded because I guess I do so many jobs and I work so hard that I scarcely seem human to the others, more like a robot programmed never to rest. If that's the case, then “melancholy” must be my default setting, because it makes me very sad to think that these people will remember me this way, as aloof, overcommitted, mechanical. Another reason I could become utterly depressed if I allowed myself to. And yet I want to laugh out loud. I mean, how could anyone take this travesty seriously any more? We're talking a mass evacuation. I've spent my whole life as the outsider, playing it solo, refusing to be a team player. As a matter of policy, I don't join things or belong to things. I'm not a member of any clubs, don't subscribe to any causes or support any teams, generally refrain from all group activities, and, apart from a short period working for the government in Britain—which was a massive mistake; I think the government would be the first to admit that—I've never held down a steady job. Now, though, at long last, I finally break all of these traditions by joining a team, and the bloody thing falls apart.

  “It'll be okay, you'll see.” On her way to the door, Tasha gives me the biggest hug, head resting against my chest, smelling of Marlboro Lights. “I love you, Cashmatic. I'll miss you.” With that, she drifts off to join the others, turning around at the last minute: “Oh, one other thing. I just spoke to the office.”

  “And? Any news?”

  “Did Kevin tell you who'll be going to Alaska with you?”

  “No he didn't…”

  My God, that was fast! The walkout only just happened, but already they've replaced them. Such a cold, unsentimental business, this.

  “… who will it be? Do I know him?”

  She's not smiling as she tells me. And when I hear the name, I could die.

  “Noooooooooo!”

  The next morning dawns colder than any so far. In fact, it's not even dawn when we arrive with our bags—and still no tickets—at the airline check-in desk.

  “Morning, guys.”

  The terminal is empty except for a disheveled fat guy with the eyes of a recently bereaved corpse and a smug smile greasing his wet lips.

  “Willy!”

  As much as we hate this unctuous little worm, we've never been as overjoyed to see anyone in our lives. Especially when, at long last, he produces the tickets.

  “Everything go okay with the hotel?” He smiles. “You got the shots you needed?”

  “Sure, Willy, it's all good.”

  By this stage, I think we'd say anything, whatever it takes to get our travel documents back.

  Taking us at our word, he says, “Well, guys, it's been a pleasure,” finally handing over the tickets.

  “Same here. Thanks for all your help.”

  Relieved, we shuffle from check-in to Passport Control.

  Forty minutes later, as we begin taxiing out onto the runway, about to begin our long, difficult, around-the-houses trip home, I sink into my seat, consumed with relief.

  This shoot, more than most, has taken a major toll on my spirits, to the point where I half-wish I could quit too. Though that's just the fatigue talking. Once I'm back in Los Angeles, relaxed, rejuvenated, hanging out with friends, enjoying Christmas and drinking in the New Year, that'll all change, I'm sure, and I'll look ahead to the Alaska trip and the whole crew situation with entirely new eyes. At least, that's what I'm hoping.

  It's a hope that sustains me for several hours more, all the way to Gatwick Airport in England, and from there, on our most pointless layover ever, in a cab speeding across London to Heathrow, up to the check-in desk in Terminal 4, where a woman from British Airways flicks open my ticket to begin sorting through my papers, then stops abruptly, and with the professional coldness I've come to expect from my countrymen, born of centuries of bullying the rest of the world with impunity, hands them back, shaking her head. “Unfortunately, sir, you won't be flying today.”

  We're only two feet apart, but I'm thinking I must have misheard. Did she say I won't be flying?

  “Correct. I can't let you board the plane.”

  And, picking up the phone beside her, she calls security.

  15

  Emma Thompson

  to the Rescue

  “But—”

  “Sir, there's nothing I can do.”

  “But—”

  “Sorry. Now, please go back to your side of the desk.”

  “—But I'm on TV,” I almost say, though of course that only works in America. And maybe not even there.

  Without further argument, my bags are pulled off the conveyor and put back in my hands, along with my passport and ticket, though not my U.S. resident alien visa; but that's only because, imbecile that I am, I forgot to bring it with me! Left the damn thing in a drawer at home.

  America's like an ATM. You can push the buttons on the machine as often as you care to, pound them with your fists, even jam a screwdriver into the slot, but unless you put your Visa card in, it doesn't work. Resident aliens in the United States are told, “Go overseas, by all means. Have a great time. Just make sure you carry your green card (which is actually white) with you, otherwise you're not coming back in again.” That's final. There's no negotiation at all. And if the airline helps you out and lets you on board without it, they're slapped with a whopping fine.

  “How … but… it's … I mean, what am I supposed to do now? I have nowhere to go.”

  The starched check-in woman, already on to the next customer, is becoming what's referred to in Britain as “annoyed.” “Contact the American Embassy,” she says, handing me a phone number. “Maybe they can issue temporary papers.”

  “And how long does that take?”

  “A few days.”

  Oh. Okay. Not too bad, then. Although it is Christmas, so …

  “You're right.” She performs a quick recalculation in her head. “Two weeks.”

  Two weeks????

  I'm starting to perspire. Barely holding it together. I don't have any physical money on me. Don't need to as a rule; the show pays for everything. I have credit cards, so I can get by. But London's pricey. Staying in a hotel for two weeks, what's that going to cost me at current exchange rates?

  “Look, how about you let me get on the plane and I'll deal with this when I reach America? I'm legal. They have me on the computers over there.”

  But that doesn't wash because of the fines. And anyway, I'm too late. Security's arrived. A uniformed officer keeps maneuvering me away from the check-in desk until my fingernails are forced to let go. Giddy with shock, I retreat across the noisy terminal to dump my bags in a corner, out from under people's feet. And there are thousands of feet. The airport's busy as hell today, packed with travelers heading out for the holidays. Laughing, shouting. All with the right visas, too, I bet, damn them. Outside, a typical British winter rages, a driving rain lashing the windows. Not too dissimilar to a typical British summer, as a matter of fact. Each time the automatic doors slide open, a fresh batch of tourists is bustled by a force-ten gale onto the concourse, windswept and dripping. But at least they're dressed for it. Sweaters, raincoats, anoraks. Whereas all I have is my smart cocktail attire from Marrakech. Thin yellow shirt, slacks, not even a jacket. Oh, yeah, and all my underwear is dirty! Let's not forget that.

  “Two weeks?”

  This is Tasha. She's already on the plane. Luckily, she didn't turn off her phone.

  “At least two. I'm completely stuck. What am I going to do?”

  “Jeez, I don't know.”

  “What's happened?” asks a voice in the background. Jay, I think.

  “Cashmatic forgot to bring his green card. He's stuck in the terminal.”

  And I swear I hear somebody giggle.

  “Look, I have to go,” is her parting comment. “The plane's about to take off. Good luck.”

  After a brief good
-bye, the line goes dead. What the hell do I do now?

  Suddenly I'm that six-year-old child abandoned in the department store all over again. Alone, lost, fearful, trampled by hundreds of strangers, and with nobody there to rescue him. Clueless where to turn, the Bewilderbeest slides down the wall and slumps on his case, the true extent of the trouble he's in only just beginning to hit home.

  My next call is to the American Consulate, even though I already know it's a waste of time. Four P.M. on the Friday before Christmas, are you kidding me? The staff's probably been partying for three days already; if it's anything like the office I used to work in, there'll be sex in stationery cupboards by now and people photocopying one another's buttocks.

  “You have reached the United States Consulate. Our offices are now closed…”

  Told you.

  There's one slim chance remaining. Mandy My dear friend from my British radio days, the one who came to visit me at the Trump International during the New York up-fronts. I can call her. She has a flat in London. She'll put me up.

  “Hi. Sorry I'm not available to take your call…”

  Oh, good grief!

  “… I'll be out of town over the weekend, returning Monday. But if you leave a message I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks.”

  I'm tempted to hang up without a word. Instead, I stick a finger in one ear to muffle the din and mumble a few mournful grunts into her machine, ending with a glum, begrudging, “Merry Christmas anyway.” Hey, spread a little cheer, why not?

  And that's it. I'm right out of options.

  Two bleak, empty weeks with no money, no clothes, no clean underwear, and no place I can stay without frittering away half my life's savings—that's what's ahead of me. I don't even have change to buy a train ticket into Central London.

  Oh, and by the way, before you say it, I am totally aware of the deep irony of this situation, don't think I'm not, and how, if I had a TV camera trained on me right now and a crew standing close by, things would be very, very different.

  If this were the show and not something as tedious and unwatchable as real life, then within minutes of being ejected from the British Airways desk, I'd be inundated by an army of helpers offering to give me food and take me on a whirlwind tour of the city on a big red bus, alighting at the Dorchester Hotel, where the duty manager would hail me with a “Hey, Cash, how are you?” before I'd even introduced myself. And straight away, for no discernible reason other than the fact that he doesn't want to look like a miser on television, he'd offer me his best suite for free, with full privileges. Oh, the time I'd have.

  That's the world of reality television for you.

  If nothing else, the dire situation I now find myself in has served a very important purpose, proving, in one single microcosmic real-world moment, how incredibly stupid the concept behind our show really is. My friends were right; the e-mailers were right; and, though it pains me to say it, even the bloody New York Times critic was right, bless her heart: when you don't have any money and you're not being filmed, then nothing is free, nobody comps you a goddamned thing, nobody feeds you or gives you a bed for the night, not even for five hours of one night, and total strangers are utter bastards. They won't lift a finger to help you. In short, you're totally screwed.

  I'm still processing the absurdity of all this and questioning for about the fiftieth time why, why, why I allowed myself to get talked into doing a travel show in the first place, and how I'm going to manage on my own for the next two weeks, when my thoughts are interrupted by the muffled chirruping of my cell phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Cash?”

  Never in my life have I been so grateful to hear from Oscar-winning writer and actress Emma Thompson. Or in this case someone whose voice is identical to Emma Thompson's. Same nasal diction, same upbeat theatrical twang.

  “Hi! Where the devil are you?”

  Mandy!!! Oh, thank God!

  “Heathrow. Where are you?”

  “Paris. Having Christmas lunch with the people from my housing association. I just called my machine to check messages and …”

  But enough about her.

  I pour out the whole story of my plight, laying it on thicker than a Victorian mattress, whatever it takes to induce her to cut short her long weekend in Paris and return home early. After all, what are friends for?

  “Okay, okay, alright, I get it. Give me a couple of hours.”

  “You mean it? You'll come? I can stay?”

  “Darling, of course you can stay.”

  If anybody ever asks, I love this woman to bits. Write that down and read it back to me. I love this woman to bits.

  In fact, even as I'm scrambling to my feet, infused after experiencing my own little Christmas miracle with a fair dose of the Yuletide spirit, I'm so bursting with happiness that I resolve there and then to reward her for being such an incredibly loyal friend all these years. Yes, by way of a gift, I'm going to waive the hefty sum she owes me for the incidentals incurred in my hotel room at the Trump International, which she left without paying for.

  Or some of it anyway.

  Okay, half.

  16

  A Real Celebrity Calls

  One of the most fascinating things about working in public radio—well, maybe “fascinating” is stretching it a bit, but one of the strangest certainly—is that, no matter how hard you try or how long you've been on air—years, or even, as in my case, decades—you nevertheless remain completely unknown to the population at large.

  Don't ask me why this is, because our audience is in the millions, and the reach is coast to coast, so statistically, you'd think, there has to be someone somewhere who's heard of you. But no, that's not the case. For reasons nobody has yet been able to truly account for, the majority of public radio broadcasters tend to inhabit an alcove in the shadowy recess of some celebrity dungeon where the press refuse to take notice and the spotlight never shines. However, all that changed the instant the show began airing on TV. Within days, I noticed people staring at me in restaurants, actually to the point where I became convinced I had something on my face. Baristas at Starbucks, who'd never looked at me twice before, would scribble my name on the cup before I'd told them what it was. Weird shoppers in Whole Foods started taking uncommon interest in what brand of dried apricots I was buying. And now and then teenagers would circle me in the street, whispering into their cell phones, “I'm telling you, man, it's him—I swear. You know—him, that dude! He does that cool show where he flies around with no money. No, I don't know the name of it. Or him. But he's right here!”

  And though none of this is in the same league, I admit, as hordes of paparazzi screeching down our street in SUVs every time one of our celebrity neighbors leaves his home to go to the supermarket, by public radio standards my popularity was stratospheric. Didn't matter where I went, someone would point at me or call out to me from an escalator, or walk up and shake hands, with a cry of “Oh my God, it's you! You're …” At this point they'd stop, hoping I'd fill in my name as if this were a DMV form, and when I didn't: “… that guy!!!”

  That's right!

  One day, I was walking along Westwood Boulevard on my way to the office when a young man eating breakfast in a diner came screaming out the door.

  “Hey, Chris! HEY! HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYY!!!! Chris, it's you! My wife and I, we're your biggest fans,” he shouted, when he finally caught up with me three blocks later, because I run quite fast. “My wife—man, she never misses your show.” He pulled out a disposable camera. “Would you mind?”

  “Not at all.”

  I grabbed the camera, took a photo of him, handed it back, and walked on.

  “No. Of us! Together. I'm telling you right now, Chris, she will not frickin' believe this.”

  These encounters are difficult enough as it is. But this one was made worse by the fact that I wasn't looking my best. Nine months of nonstop stress, long, tedious flights,1 missed mealtimes, getting up in the middle of the nigh
t to take cars to the airport, and a schedule that would sap the strength of not one, but five gladiators, had left me emaciated, with protruding cheekbones and gray bags under my eyes the size of a Gucci purse. I was also, as it happened, newly discharged from hospital.

  During our Newfoundland shoot, somebody gave me a battered cod's tongue to eat. It's a delicacy there (and only there, I should think), and very much what it sounds like: a fish's tongue with a jellied splodge of muscle like a giant booger at one end, where it was ripped from the poor creature's mouth, then deep-fried.

  “Wanna try some?” a local fisherman had asked me, ordering a plate of them.

  No thank you. Cod's tongues are deep-fried. I don't eat oil. It's on The List.

  But hey, it's TV. And TV's about teamwork, apparently.

  “Wow,” I said, sinking my teeth into one, “these are fabulous.”

  Not so fabulous that I'd ever eat them again, mind you, but certainly as good as any piece of cod with a large deep-fried booger at one end could be.

  Unfortunately, the fallout from this was calamitous. Not only did the batter bring me out in hives, forcing me to wear thick concealer for days afterwards, but it kick-started a series of events that almost killed me.

  A panicked Tasha rushed into my room that night at the hotel to find me curled up on my bed in agony, belching—BLEEEEEECH!—clutching my stomach, and sobbing.

  “It's your gall bladder,” a doctor told me later. “It's gone into spasm. We may have to operate.”

  “But I'm shooting a TV show.”

  “I don't care. Once you have one gall bladder spasm, that's it—it's only a matter of time before you have another. I think you should let us operate.”

  “No,” I spluttered, hysterical, “you can't operate. I'm a Christian Scientist.”

  Not strictly true, but Newfoundland's part of Canada, and I wasn't sure if Canadian doctors were up to speed on recent medical advances—anesthetic, for example. Unwilling to take the gamble, I instead accepted his kind gift of a large container of Demerol and checked myself out of the hospital next morning to continue making the show.