Neal turned to look at me for another half-second and said, "Thanks, cutie." Then he placed the syringe on a tilting stack of papers and came to sit beside me and resumed chopping. THUNK, THUNK.
Back in Goa, I prepared for the trip. I'd meet Neal in Bombay in two weeks. I had just enough time to take Bach to a veterinarian for shots and a check-up. In addition to fleas and ear mites, the poor thing had a stomach infestation.
"Where did you buy this animal?" asked the vet.
"Crawford Market in Bombay."
He wrinkled his nose.
I hated to leave Bach while I made the run. I asked Laura if she'd take care of him. She agreed. Laura and Trumpet Steve hadn't been together since Bali. They took turns with their son, Anjuna. After Steve had returned from San Francisco with the boy, Laura had taken charge of him. She and Anjuna lived in a house behind Joe Banana's. My heart was heavy as I dropped off Bach on the way to the airport.
I found Bombay crowded with people returning from the monsoon. Neal wasn't at the Ritz Hotel as he was supposed to be, and I had to call him twice in Poona before he showed up. He, Eve, and Ha took a room down the hall, and it soon resembled their room in Poona dark and overwhelmed by disorder. Room-service trays accumulated one on top of another by the door.
"Why don't you put the frays in the hall?" I asked. "A forest is growing on the roll at the bottom."
"I will." Neal giggled. "I always mean to."
One day I arrived at Neal's door at the same time as an Indian with a fat stomach and a sleazy air. We entered together, and the Indian moved the rubble from a chair and sat, one foot crossed over a knee.
Neal thanked him for coming and told him my name.
"Rachid Biryani," the Indian said, leaning forward to shake my hand.
"Nice to meet you, darling. Want a line of cocaine? I have quality pharmaceutical. The best."
"Um . . . sure."
Rachid handed Neal a packet before opening another to make me the line.
Neal told him, "Add this to my bill, okay?"
"It's getting quite big, my friend," Rachid answered, grinning with only half his face and then winking at me. "Pretty soon you will owe me a Mercedes." He chuckled aloud and slapped Neal on the thigh. Aha! So that's how Neal was getting coke. On credit from this cretin.
Rachid asked me, "How's the cocaine, darling? The best, didn't I tell you. Whenever you want cocaine or heroin, you come to me, Rachid Biryani, give you a good price."
I turned to avoid his leer and spotted a metal mound. "Oh, Neal!" I exclaimed. "You said you'd put those room-service trays in the hall. Instead, you have twice as many. The kitchen is going to run out soon."
By the end of the week, I concluded that Neal had lost his Barbies. He wasn't losing them; they were gone. One afternoon he stopped dead in the street and yelled at the top of his voice to whomever had the misfortune of being behind him at the time. He continued shouting as a crowd gathered.
"I pleaded with them to go away and leave us alone," he told me later that day, explaining the incident. CLATTER, SQUEAL, CLACK, CLATTER, SCREECH. "I held up my kid and begged them."
"Begged who?" I asked.
He paused before answering with a senile, "The C.I.A." Theo he added, "The D.E.A. The F.B.I. You know. All of those."
"The C.I.A.'s been following you around Bombay?" I asked in a mocking tone.
He became serious and told me, "For a long time now. Everywhere I go, they're there. Every time I walk down a street, they're behind me. Every time I sit in a restaurant, they're at the next table. I couldn't stand it 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.