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.
