Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Nope.

  I said he was the Tasmanian descendant of the Marquis de Sade.

  Nope.

  No one else had any guesses.

  What he was, he said, was a fag flicker. Or is that fag flickerer?

  Real hilarious, Pete.

  Nobody had any guesses for what Rockstar was. Except me. And I guessed him right. A six-pack to go.

  Kelly was a hard one to guess. All she was wearing was a black silk camisole, black silk panties, black tights. Everything just a little loose. All of it belonged to Dana, as we found out at the Iranian border. She had a white furry tail stuck to the bottom of her spine. She got on the floor, rolled over and played dead. Dana guessed her. “You’re my rabbit test,” she said. And laughed.

  Dana had a weird sense of humour. But so did Kelly.

  I like that in a woman.

  Tim deLuca was wearing a brown cloak and hood. In one hand he had a ring of keys. The bus keys. In the other a banana and a tube of Brylcreem. Charole guessed him. He was a grease monkey.

  I didn’t really notice it at the time but when Tim deLuca sat down he must’ve put those keys near Suzie. Pete definitely didn’t have any place to put them in that outfit of his.

  Teach must’ve gone into that same store in the Grand Bazaar where I bought the Sheik condoms and the pipe. She had a small silver plate and on it was a paperweight in the shape of a sheik’s head. She was easy. Anybody who’d seen Jesus Christ Superstar could have guessed her. I just forgot the name, that’s all, so I let Patrick guess her. He didn’t wait a single beat. Herod, he said, carrying the head of John the Baptist. Then it was my turn.

  I stood up and strummed a few chords on Lucille and lit up a joint and then I put on the shades.

  “You’re simply your basic lovable self,” said Patrick in a tired voice.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “You’re stoned,” said Suzie.

  “Close,” I said.

  “You’re a hopeless case,” she said.

  “Not completely,” I said.

  And there were a few other guesses, none of which were very funny, and so finally I hit a C chord and let go with a song off the top of my head, and it went something like this:

  I’m just a doper on an overland bus

  I was stoned at Stonehenge and I’ll be stoned at Ephesus

  but I must be sailin’ on angel dust

  because things are dark and kind of murky

  and it’s Hallowe’en, and here I am in southern Turkey,

  and then I let go with the chorus, which was basically just, “I got the doped-up doper blues, I got the doped-up doper blues,” repeated six or seven times, and then I sang another verse, which went something like,

  Oh, yeah, it’s Hallowe’en in Istanbul and I couldn ’t think of anything to wear so I rolled a joint and copped some shades it was either that or run around bare,

  and then I did a couple John Lee Hooker blues riffs, and then I sang the chorus again and then another verse that went something like,

  Now they say it’s getting chilly back in ol’ Montana

  the snow is flying down on Franky’s farm

  but here in southern Turkey, things are warm

  but that don’t matter

  when you got the doped-up doper blues

  and you ain ’t got no blue suede shoes,

  and then more chorus, more riffs, and then something more came off the top of my head and I sang,

  Yeah, it sure is Hallowe’en in southern Turkey a time when everyone goes trick or treat; some of us might even get some nookie but most of us will have to beat our meat.

  The little ditty got a hoot from Rockstar but I don’t think it went over real well with the rest. Suzie said something along the lines of, you got that right, mate, and Teach’s face turned as white as Dana’s feather.

  This is the bad thing about being stoned. Sometimes the wrong things come out.

  Kelly just shook her head, but there was kind of a smile around the corners of her lips. Later she came up to me and said, “You just have to be naughty, don’t you?”

  I like the way she said that word. Naughty. I told her I’d be naughty with her any time of day, all she had to do was name it.

  That’s another thing about being stoned. It lowers your inhibitions. Which isn’t always a good thing.

  Kelly said, “I was kind of hoping we’d do this while on a similar level of consciousness.”

  “No problem,” I said, and I took out the last joint I’d rolled.

  Kelly said, “I’ve had one or two bad experiences with dope.”

  “Ever have any good experiences?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Once. I was on acid, listening to “Cathedral” by Crosby, Stills and Nash. That was almost a spiritual experience.”

  Anyway, Kelly had a few tokes and we were talking about Dylan, kind of wondering what he spent his time doing after his motorbike accident, and Gregory Peck and the great job he did in The Omen, one of my favourite all-time horror flicks, and we were talking about this movie Kelly and Charole had seen in London called The Midnight Express, all about a guy who gets busted with hash and thrown into a Turkish jail, when there’s a knock on the door.

  Narcs, I thought. I twisted the top off the joint, dropped it on the floor, ground it down, because you never ever want a glowing ember to make the joint easy for the narcs to find, and went over to the window, tossed the joint out.

  While Pete opens up the door, I’m thinking, fifty-nine years of getting gang-raped by a bunch of bull-Turks six times a day.

  But it wasn’t the friendly neighbourhood drug squad. Nope. It was just a juiced-up druggie. Tall and blond and skinny as a carrot, with zits that’d put the moon to shame. Had eyes that looked like dead guppies on a Turkish road map.

  I don’t know what kind of trip he was on but he took one look at all of us and his eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it occurred to him to maybe go cold turkey for a while.

  “Can we help you?” said Patrick.

  The guy just gawked at him. He probably didn’t understand English. He kind of clawed at the dirty tank-top he was wearing. He also had on some filthy grey jogging trousers all kind of worn out and yellow at the crotch. He was barefoot.

  “You’re welcome to join us if you’d like,” said Patrick. He grinned around at the rest of us. “I’m sure nobody here would mind if Freddy Freak joined in with our festivities, would they?”

  Freddy Freak started doing a soft-shoe shuffle along one wall. All of us just watched him. And he watched us. When he got to the balcony window he pushed it open and disappeared for a couple minutes, and all of us were wondering what he’s looking for. Not that it was any real mystery. But when he came back in it was easy to tell that he hadn’t found what he was looking for. He looked a bit pissed off.

  “Sure you wouldn’t like a raki?” said Patrick.

  But Freddy Freak wasn’t too thirsty. He beeded for the door and was gone and I couldn’t help thinking that I’d just seen an apparition of what I could be like, if I was rich enough and had the right friends. Or the wrong friends.

  Freddy Freak did put a damper on the party for a while, but I found that joint out on the veranda and lit it, which sent Teach and Tim scurrying for their own room. Pete was sucking on a Heineken and he told me about all these rats they got in Turkish prisons, but he didn’t tell me to put it out or anything, maybe because I passed it to Rockstar.

  I forgot what went down after that. A lot of raki, I know that much. And I must’ve lain down for a while. Just to close my eyes.

  When I wake up it’s dark but I can’t feel anything, I feel numb all over. I have this sense I’m in a very strange place. I try to speak but I can’t say a word.

  And then from a long ways away I hear something that might be a door ratding and then there’s screams and suddenly I can see something but it’s not like I’m looking through my own eyes.

  Standing there in the doorw
ay, silhouetted against the puny, fly-speckled forty-watt light bulb out in the hall, are four guys.

  I can tell from the shape of one of them that Freddy Freak’s come back for another visit. But this time he’s brought some of his friends.

  After the screaming stops, I try to get up out of the bed, but I can’t. I try to make my lips move and speak and say to Kelly, ever wake up with a feeling that you’re in a strange dark wood and you’re too far from home? But I can’t. I can’t do anything. And I get a real spooky feeling when I hear my voice say, “Hey, great, Freddy Freak came back to party,” and next thing I know the landscape changes and I’m getting closer to these guys, and at the bottom of my vision I vaguely sense the floor moving. Freddy Freak and his pals, all looking at my crotch. Not my crotch, exactly. Dave’s taken over, you see. And he’s looking at the knife in Freddy Freak’s hand. Then my hand comes up and it’s holding something out. The hash I bought in the Grand Bazaar.

  Look what I found, says my voice, and Freddy looks at the hash, looks at me. Or Dave, I mean.

  It was the first time Dave had ever done that. Taken over, I mean, with me able to look on, see what’s going down.

  I mean, he definitely took over in Bruges. I had proof of that.

  It wasn’t the last time he took over, with me able to keep tabs. But the next time it happened, we had an agreement.

  Freddy Freak says to Dave, “It’s not ours.” His voice high like a tenor singer on laughing gas.

  Dave says that’s okay, we can share it.

  Freddy Freak says, “We want the heroin.”

  Dave says sorry, ain’t got no heroin here.

  Freddy Freak steps forward with the knife and that’s when they start getting sprayed in a way that can only happen when someone’s got the dose and his ugly’s all gummed up. Which

  definitely freaks out Freddy Freak and his buddies. They’ve got horror etched across their faces, like they say in the paperbacks. Dave says, come on, guys, let’s party, and just like that they scatter. Not bothering to close the door.

  Then the rest of the room swings into view. Dana, Suzie, Charole and Kelly. All of them looking shocked and surprised. All of them clutching sheets up to their necks.

  Dave says something to them about how some circumstances call for extreme measures.

  They all just gawk at him. Then Charole jumps out of bed, naked except for panties, and runs over and locks the door. She whirls around and looks at Suzie. She shouts, “I thought you said you locked the door!” while Dave looks at Dana.

  Dana’s laughing. Hysterically, almost.

  When she finally gets control of herself, she says, right to my eyes. Dave’s eyes. “I think you’re so hilarious.”

  “That’s great,” says Dave. “Because I think you’re hilarious too.”

  The floor swings up, like Dave is putting on shorts, and I Kelly comes into view. Sitting up in bed, naked like Charole. She looked really sad and fragile.

  Dave says, “I’m sorry, this is all very complicated, I’ll try to explain it to you, but now, I’m afraid, just ain’t a very good time.”

  Dave pulls on my pants, says goodnight, and closes the door softly. Not that anyone’s likely to be sleeping after those screams the girls let out.

  Coming up the stairs is Pete, pulling on a shirt. “What’s going on, mate?” he said.

  “Oh,” says Dave. “The girls are just a little disappointed that I had to leave so early, but I forgot to take my vitamin E and you know how it is.”

  Pete scowls at him. “Yeah, mate,” he says, “I know how it is.”

  Coming right behind him is Patrick and Jenkins, saying what’s up, and while Dave tells them everything’s under control, Pete knocks on the door.

  Dana answers it.

  “What’s wrong?” says Pete.

  Dana says, “Nothing. Let Mick explain it to you.” Then she slams the door in his face.

  Now why she did that is because she was really pissed off at Pete, and it wasn’t until I asked Dave about it, about five minutes ago, for maybe the third time since it happened, that I found out why. He always told me he’d tell me when I got to this point in the story.

  It was because of a few things. Him giving Charole the eye. Him giving Dana the gears about getting an abortion. Him being lousy in bed. The wham bam rollover type.

  Pete’s looking at him. Dave. Me.

  Dave says, “It’s like I said. A guy can only do so much and then he has to hit the sack.”

  And Dave walks away, down the stairs, stepping over a junkie, going past some guy getting a blow-job in a dark doorway, back to the room where he shuts out the light and gets into bed.

  Rockstar’s voice from the darkness says, “What happened?”

  Dave says, “Nothing. The girls got a little excited about some mouse, that’s all.”

  Then Jenkins and Patrick come in.

  “A little tiny mousie, huh?” says Rockstar.

  Jenkins says, “What’s that?”

  Rockstar says, “Scared ’em.”

  “A little tail will do that,” says Patrick.

  “Every time,” says Jenkins.

  Lights on, and Patrick’s bloated, happy face comes floating into view. “A most prodigious effort, Mr. McPherson,” he says. “It sounded like you really scared them. What did you do?”

  “Nothing you wouldn’t have done in my place,” says Dave. And then there’s more darkness. And then there’s ringing. Telephone. Same kind of sound that this telephone made in my apartment back in Kits. Wasn’t too far from the bed. It sounded like a choked canary. I try reaching out, and I hear something clatter, and Dave’s voice is suddenly in the air, saying, Mick? I say, yeah. He says, sorry I had to do this but it was necessary. This takeover? I say. He says yes. I say, sure, no problem, just let me back in control. He says, can’t do that, not until tomorrow and you make sense out of things. He says, if I let you back in control now, you’ll make a fool of yourself and keep everyone awake. Oh, I say, as though you didn’t make a fool of myself. Yourself. He says, I had to do that, it saved a lot of commotion. I say, Dave, you don’t understand, what’d you say that to Dana for? He says, no, it’s you that don’t understand, and hangs up. Then I took that phone and I hammered it against the wall, and I must’ve done that for hours, or so it seemed, it was like I was in some cell and rats were eating my toes, it was like some dream and that’s the thing I didn’t mention, the malaria tablets, Pete at the border, looking in the rear-view mirror, shades on, saying now that we’re in Turkey, it’s us against them, the infidel against the Moslems, and everyone better make sure they’re taking their malaria tablets.

  I tried to tell myself this was a malaria tablet nightmare. Pete had said something somewhere about how certain malaria tablets are worse than others. Some can give you nightmares.

  That didn’t feel like a nightmare, though. It felt different than anything I’d ever experienced before. And so I kept pounding. When I finally stopped, Dave’s voice says, listen.

  I listen.

  The first thing you’re going to see, he says, when you open your eyes, is Rockstar’s face. He’ll say guess what he saw. You’ll say, the Loch Ness Monster. He’ll say nope. You’ll say what. You’ll do your best to act like nothing has happened. For the benefit of everyone concerned. Got that? I say yeah, got that. Dave says, see what happens when you get too drunk and stoned?13 I say yeah, and he hangs up, and I stare into darkness for what seems ages.

  And then I start to feel myself getting sucked into something, like a warm, bubbling whirlpool, and I let myself

  go·

  The Eve of All Hallow’s

  Suzie has mentioned to me once or twice in the past few days that I really should join in on the spirit of the trip & write a daybook entry. I suppose she’s right. Even though I have this phobia about exposing myself through the written word. There’s nothing as naked as what flows from the soul, they say. Then again, maybe I’ve just been waiting for the right moment. Som
ething to write about. Something I can sink my teeth into, like 1 of Mick’s sandwiches. I thought the apple tree expedition held possibilities but Charole beat me to the punch. Not this time. It’s 4 in the morning. Suzie had the daybook under her pillow. Dana had a pen.

  It all started innocently enough. We had a Hallowe’en party. But it is true that evil spirits do run amok on the Eve of All Hallow’s. The proof is in the pudding, which is a fair approximation of the complexion worn by the person (whom Patrick dubbed, more than adequately, I thought, Freddy Freak) who crashed our party last night, just when it was starting to pick up.

  Well, we girls received another visit from Freddy Freak about 20 min. ago. Along with some of his cronies. Luckily Mick was in the right place at the right time, and, through what would have to be called heroic, if unorthodox, methods (“extreme measures” he called them) thwarted the interlopers in carrying out what were no doubt demonic desires.

  Mick. We all thank you and salute you. But not without a raised eyebrow or two.

  Patrick’s daybook entry

  All Hallow’s

  This morning a Merry Globester woke up early from a night’s hard revelry, and in seeking some liquid refreshment for a parched throat, and not trusting the brown H two O that pours forth from the faucets of the Santa Sophia, the Merry Globester went out to the porch of this fine establishment (now we know what Mr. Cohen means when he says that a place “has a certain amount of atmosphere”) and opened up his mouth to the pouring heavens, the liquor of the gods that was coming down in such profusion. And after he had slaked his thirst, he took shelter beneath the eaves, next to three derelicts, sleeping arm in arm, a lovely sight, and the Merry Globester was meditating upon the pitted and puerile face of one Freddy Freak, so innocent in repose, when he heard the door of the bus, on the street immediately in front of him, squawk open, and out stepped none other than Susan Byrnes, with soap in hand. Upon closer inspection the Merry Globester noticed writing upon some of the bus’s windows.

  First of all, it is certain everyone is asking how Ms. Byrnes managed to have the key to the bus. The Merry Globester doesn’t know. Next: what did Susan Byrnes write on the bus’s windows, with that bar of Zest? The Merry Globester does know. Limericks. And what did the limericks say? Sadly, a sense of proper decorum prevents the Merry Globester from despoiling these pristine pages with such crudity. Such a malicious assassination of character. Truly dreadful. But he might be persuaded to whisper the limericks’ lyrics in an ear or two, if the mouth below those ears can tell him exactly what happened last night in room 203. Yes, he confesses, he’s very curious. But aren’t we all...very curious...people?