“Thanks, Ray. I feel so much better now.”
“You need a drink.”
“Your invitation still good?”
“I would, but Devi … I don’t know if you made such a good impression.” I spy the exgoddess across the room. She stares back at me with dark fury. I quickly turn away. “Besides,” Ray continues.
“We were just about to get all funky and shit.”
“Lucky you,” I say, meaning it. I look at the clock on my pager. “I guess I can go feel sorry for myself for another seventeen hours.”
“Dr. Ray has another idea. There’s a place down the street. A youth hostel.”
“A youth hostel?”
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it, man. Youth hostels — this is an established fact — are full of horny sluts. Horny sluts on vacation from their better judgment. A good-looking guy like you gets laid with minimal effort, I mean zero rap, as long as you’re cool with unshaved armpits and a lack of privacy.”
My anger is slipping away, making room for sleep deprivation. “I don’t know about the horny sluts, but I’m definitely pro-nap.”
“There he is,” Ray says, sounding relieved. “A little shuteye, then you’ll bang a slut. I recommend Australians. Find one with a friend and bang them both. Go root a couple of sheilas.”
I pat Ray on the shoulder and exit the hotel. The valet appears immediately. “May I call you a taxi?”
I look up at the sky and see threatening clouds and approaching darkness. A perfect match to my mood.
“Thanks, but I’ll walk.”
I set out down a major thoroughfare that feels like New York, only with enviably wider sidewalks. Per Ray’s directions to the youth hostel, I make a right turn at the first light and wind up, a block later, in a neighborhood with a much more suburban feel. A brightly illuminated 7-Eleven-type store anchors a stone-tiled public square surrounded by tenementstyle buildings. The square itself is occupied by a few dozen Korean men, many in business suits, who gather in three distinct circles.
Each circle has its own bottle of the local hooch, passed with cheery camaraderie from one smiling man to the next.
Not a female in sight, I notice. That explains the smiles.
“MY WIFE IS IN MANCHESTER, MY MIStress in Hong Kong, and my lover in Jakarta,” says the Englishman.
“You don’t have a license to kill, do you?” I ask with sarcasm that goes unregistered.
The Englishman grins, his head snaking toward me. “No, but I once saw a man die in my arms.
What do you say to that?”
“I think you’re either totally full of shit or the most interesting man I’ve ever met,” I reply. “But either way, I think you’ve had a little too much of the yellow.”
“Impossible!” he growls, rising to his feet. “I’ve been drinking nothing but orange all night. Now let’s go pull your friend off that dancer before we’re all led off in wristcuffs.”
I’d met the Englishman, along with the Mormon and an American woman who called herself Janie, at the Superior Guesthouse, the hostel Ray recommended — a two-story wooden structure with a front door lit like a Christmas tree, hidden in a back alley between the ass-ends of a restaurant and a flower shop. The kind of place you can imagine the guidebook calling “an undiscovered gem.”
I don’t have a guidebook, and my discovery of the Superior is severely impeded by a blistering rain that begins right after I’ve passed the drinking circles. Coupled with darkness, visibility is a serious issue. I miss the entrance to the alleyway three times before stumbling inside, soaked and miserable.
The room can hardly be called a lobby after the Four Seasons — the small, wood-paneled cubicle has a lot more in common with a sweat lodge. I point toward the cheapest rate and am directed to a room with two bunk beds. Well-traveled backpacks claim dibs on the bottom bunks, so I climb onto the bed farthest from the door.
Sleep comes quickly, but it doesn’t last long: Two hours later, I wake up shaking. Or rather the shaking wakes me up. I open my eyes to see Ray.
He reeks of alcohol.
“You asleep, man?” he asks.
“I was. What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be having sex with a goddess right now? Getting all funky and shit?”
“Yeah, that one got kind of messed up.”
“What happened to taking advantage of her low self-esteem?”
“Hah! Turns out part of the test for becoming a goddess was spending a night alone with a bunch of severed animal heads. Without crying. She was fucking three years old. Bitch is a natural-born icicle.” Ray shivers for effect. “That, plus your going psycho didn’t do me any favors.”
“Sorry about that. I guess that makes us even for the whole international date line fuckup.”
“You should be thanking me. Imagine if you had to spend the whole weekend here. Let’s go get drunk. It’s on me, motherfucker.”
“What about us?” asks a British voice. We look over to see the Englishman, seated Indian style on the lower bunk across the room.
“I’d like to get drunk,” chimes in a voice from the bunk below me. Ray jumps back from the bed, discovering the Mormon’s head just inches from his crotch.
“Jesus Christ,” says Ray. “Where the fuck did you come from?”
“Utah,” replies the Mormon. “But that was a long time ago. Let’s go get drunk.”
Both men are clearly accustomed to being on the road. Each looks to be about thirty, with scruffy facial hair and billowy hippie clothes of indeterminate nationality. Neither has showered for several days.
“Where are we getting drunk?” says Janie, a bigboned but tragically low-waisted American girl with fashionable glasses. She’s holding a manila envelope.
“Is that what I think it is?” says the Englishman, referring to the envelope. “Has our shipment from San Francisco arrived?”
“My shipment,” Janie corrects him. “I know you’re going to try and treat this like your personal stash, but this is mine.”
“What are you going to do with a whole sheet of acid?” asks the Mormon.
“Whatever I want,” says Janie.
“Give us a taste, you sick tease,” says the Englishman, springing to his feet.
Janie relents. “You can each have one tab.”
From the envelope she pulls out a letter-sized page scored into tiny boxes, each inked with a blue star.
And, I gather, an ample serving of LSD. The Englishman and the Mormon hungrily accept their tiny tabs, placing them on their tongues. Janie turns to Ray and smiles. “Care to join us?”