When Nathan and Sarah were done searching they looked up at our handiwork. “God he looks weird,” Sarah said.
Nathan just sat on the bed and put his head in his hands. “It’ll never work,” he said. “Never.”
“Sure it will!” Freds exclaimed, zipping the anorak up a little farther. “You see people on Freak Street looking like this all the time! Man, when I went to school I played football with a whole team of guys that looked just like him! Fact is, in my state he could run for Senator—”
“Whoah, whoah,” I said. “No time to waste, here. Give me the scissors and brush, I still have to do his hair.” I tried brushing it over his ears with little success, then gave him a trim in back. One trip, I was thinking, just one short walk down to a taxi. And in pretty dark halls. “Is it even on both sides?”
“For God’s sake, George, let’s go!” Nathan was getting antsy, and we had been a while. We gathered our belongings, filled the packs, and tugged old Buddha out into the hall.
IX
I have always prided myself on my sense of timing. Many’s the time I’ve surprised myself by how perfectly I’ve managed to be in the right place at the right time; it goes beyond all conscious calculation, into deep mystic communion with the cycles of the cosmos, etc. etc. But apparently in this matter I was teamed up with people whose sense of timing was so cosmically awful that mine was completely swamped. That’s the only way I can explain it.
Because there we were, escorting a yeti down the hallway of the Everest Sheraton International and we were walking casually along, the yeti kind of bowlegged—very bowlegged—and long-armed, too—so that I kept worrying he might drop to all fours—but otherwise, passably normal. Just an ordinary group of tourists in Nepal. We decided on the stairs, to avoid any awkward elevator crowds, and stepped through the swinging doors into the stairwell. And there coming down the stairs toward us were Jimmy Carter, Rosalynn Carter, and five Secret Service men.
“Well!” Freds exclaimed. “Damned if it isn’t Jimmy Carter! And Rosalynn too!”
I suppose that was the best way to play it, not that Freds was doing anything but being natural. I don’t know if the Carters were on their way to something else, or if they were actually coming down to attend my reception; if the latter, then my last-minute inspiration to invite them had been really a bad one. In any case, there they were, and they stopped on the landing. We stopped on the landing. The Secret Service men, observing us closely, stopped on the landing.
What to do? Jimmy gave us his famous smile, and it might as well have been the cover of Time magazine, it was such a familiar sight; just the same. Only not quite. Not exactly. His face was older, naturally, but also it had the look of someone who had survived a serious illness, or a great natural disaster. It looked like he had been through the fire, and come back into the world knowing more than most people about what the fire was. It was a good face, it showed what a man could endure. And he was relaxed; this kind of interruption was part of daily life, part of the job he had volunteered for nine years before.
I was anything but relaxed. In fact, as the Secret Service men did their hawk routine on Buddha, their gazes locked, I could feel my heart stop, and I had to give my torso a little twist to get it started up again. Nathan had stopped breathing from the moment he saw Carter, and he was turning white above the sharp line of his beard. It was getting worse by the second when Freds stepped forward and extended a hand. “Hey, Mr. Carter, namaste! We’re happy to meet you.”
“Hi, how are y’all.” More of the famous smile. “Where are y’all from?”
And we answered “Arkansas”, “California,” “M-Massa-chusetts,” “Oregon,” and at each one he smiled and nodded with recognition and pleasure, and Rosalynn smiled and said “Hello, hello,” with that faint look I had seen before during the Presidential years, that seemed to say she would have been just as happy somewhere else, and we all shuffled around so that we could all shake hands with Jimmy—until it was Buddha’s turn.
“This is our guide, B-Badim Badur,” I said. “He doesn’t speak any English.”
“I understand,” Jimmy said. And he took Buddha’s hand and pumped it up and down.
Now, I had opted to leave Buddha barehanded, a decision I began to seriously regret. Here we had a man who had shaken at least a million hands in his life, maybe ten million; nobody in the whole world could have been more of an expert at it. And as soon as he grasped Buddha’s long skinny hand, he knew that something was different. This wasn’t like any of the millions of other hands he had shaken before. A couple of furrows joined the network of fine wrinkles around his eyes, and he looked closer at Buddha’s peculiar get-up. I could feel the sweat popping out and beading on my forehead. “Um, Badim’s a bit shy,” I was saying, when suddenly the yeti squeaked.
“Naa-maas-tayy,” it said, in a hoarse, whispery voice.
“Namaste!” Jimmy replied, grinning the famous grin.
And that, folks, was the first recorded conversation between yeti and human.
Of course Buddha had only been trying to help—I’m sure of that, given what happened later—but despite all we did to conceal it, his speech had obviously surprised us pretty severely. As a result the Secret Service guys were about to go cross-eyed checking us out, Buddha in particular.
“Let’s let these folks get on with things,” I said shakily, and took Buddha by the arm. “Nice to meet you,” I said to the Carters. We all hung there for a moment. It didn’t seem polite to precede the ex-President of the United States down a flight of stairs, but the Secret Service men damn well didn’t want us following them down either; so finally I took the lead, with Buddha by the arm, and I held onto him tight as we descended.
We reached the foyer without incident. Sarah conversed brightly with the Secret Service men who were right behind us, and she distracted their attention very successfully, I thought. It appeared we would escape the situation without further difficulties, when the doors to the casino bar swung back, and Phil Adrakian, J. Reeves Fitzgerald, and Valerie Budge walked out. (Timing, anyone?)
Adrakian took in the situation at a glance. “They’re kidnapping him!” he yelled. “Hey! Kidnapping! ”
Well, you might just as well have put jumper cables on those Secret Service agents. After all, it’s kind of a question why anyone would want to assassinate an ex-President, but as a hostage for ransom or whatnot, you’ve got a prime target. They moved like mongooses to get between us and the Carters. Freds and I were trying to back Buddha out the front doors without actually moving our legs; we weren’t making much progress, and I don’t doubt we could’ve gotten shot for our efforts, if it weren’t for Sarah. She jumped right out in front of the charging Adrakian and blocked him off.
“You’re the kidnapper, you liar,” she cried, and slapped him in the face so hard he staggered. “Help!” she demanded of the Secret Service guys, blushing bright red and shoving Valerie Budge back into Fitzgerald. She looked so tousled and embattled and beautiful that the agents were confused; the situation wasn’t at all clear. Freds, Buddha and I bumped out the front door and ran for it.