'The Mahatma opens his eyes and compresses his lips and spits two long, red streams of betel nut juice out through his nose holes. It runs down over his mouth and he licks it back in with a long, coated tongue and says, 'How in the fuck should I know?' The acolyte says, 'You heard the man. Now cut. The Swami wants to be alone with his medications.' Come to think of it, that is the wisdom of the East. The Westerner thinks there is some secret he can discover. The East says,
'How the fuck should I know?''
That night Lee dreamed he was in a penal colony. All around were high, bare mountains. He lived in a boardinghouse that was never warm. He went out for a walk. As he stepped off a streetcomer onto a dirty cobblestone street, the cold mountain wind hit him. He tightened the belt of his leather jacket and felt the chill of final despair.
Lee woke up and called to Allerton, 'Are you awake, Gene?'
'Yes.'
'Cold?'
'Yes.'
'Can I come over with you?'
'Ahh, well all right.'
Lee got in bed with Allerton. He was shaking with cold and junk sickness.
'You're twitching all over,' said Allerton. Lee pressed against him, convulsed by the adolescent lust of junk sickness.
'Christ almighty, your hands are cold.'
When Allerton was asleep, he rolled over and threw his knee across Lee's body. Lee lay still so he wouldn't wake up and move away.
The next day Lee was really sick. They wandered around Quito. The more Lee saw of Quito, the more the place brought him down. The town was hilly, the streets narrow. Allerton stepped off the high curb and a car grazed him. 'Thank god you're not hurt,'
Lee said. 'I sure would hate to be stuck in this town.'
They sat down in a little coffeehouse where some German refugees hung out, talking about visas and extensions and work permits, and got into a conversation with a man at the next table. The man was thin and blond, his head caved in at the temples. Lee could see the blue veins pulsing in the cold, high-mountain sunlight that covered the man's weak, ravaged face and spilled over the scarred oak table onto the worn wooden floor. Lee asked the man if he liked Quito.
'To be or not to be, that is the question. I have to like it.'
They walked out of the coffeehouse, and up the street to a park. The trees were stunted by wind and cold. A few boys were rowing around and around in a small pond. Lee watched them, torn by lust and curiosity. He saw himself desperately rummaging through bodies and rooms and closets in a frenzied search, a recurrent nightmare. At the end of the search was an empty room. He shivered in the cold wind.
Allerton said, 'Why don't you ask in the coffee shop for the name of a doctor?'
'That's a good idea.'
The doctor lived in a yellow stucco villa on a quiet side street. He was Jewish, with a smooth, red face, and spoke good English. Lee put down a dysentery routine. The doctor asked a few questions. He started to write out a prescription. Lee said, 'The prescription that works best is paregoric with bismuth.'
The doctor laughed. He gave Lee a long look. Finally he said, 'Tell the truth now.' He raised a forefinger, smiling. 'Are you addicted to opiates? Better you tell me. Otherwise I cannot help you.'
Lee said, 'Yes.'
'Ah ha,' said the doctor, and he crumpled up the prescription he was writing and dropped it in the wastebasket. He asked Lee how long the addiction had lasted. He shook his head, looking at Lee.
'Ach,' he said, 'you are a young person. You must stop this habit. So you lose your life. Better you should suffer now than continue this habit.' The doctor gave Lee a long, human look.
'My god,' Lee thought, 'what you have to put up with in this business.' He nodded and said, 'Of course, Doctor, and I want to stop. But I have to get some sleep. I am going to the coast tomorrow, to Manta.'
The doctor sat back in his chair, smiling. 'You must stop this habit.' He ran through the routine again. Lee nodded abstractedly. Finally the doctor reached for his prescription pad: three c.c.'s of tincture.
The drugstore gave Lee paregoric instead of tincture. Three c.c.'s of P.G. Less than a teaspoonful. Nothing. Lee bought a bottle of antihistamine tablets and took a handful. They seemed to help a little.
Lee and Allerton took a plane the next day for Manta.
The Hotel Continental in Manta was made of split bamboo and rough boards. Lee found some knotholes in the wall of their room, and plugged the holes up with paper. 'We don't want to get deported under a cloud,' he said to Allerton. 'I'm a little junk sick, you know, and that makes me sooo sexy. The neighbors could witness some innaresting sights.'
'I wish to register a complaint concerning breach of contract,' said Allerton. 'You said twice a week.'
'So I did. Well, of course the contract is more or less elastic you might say. But you are right.
Twice a week it is, sire. Of course, if you get hot pants between times, don't hesitate to let me know.'
'I'll give you a buzz.'
