I offered her a snoot of coke and felt thrilled to be part of these spectacular people.
"NEAL!" I shouted, spotting my old friend distributing acid to the crowd. I ran to kiss his cheek. "Where've you been?"
He giggled and shook his bangs. "What a story. Open your mouth and have a drop of this first." He held an acid-packed straw over my tongue and tapped. A drop fell.
"Mm, thanks. So, what happened?"
"I went to California and found out I was a father! I met this woman the year before. We were only together one night. Shortly after, I left the country."
"Meanwhile she had a baby?"
"Can you believe it?"
"Were you writing each other?"
"No, nothing like that. I never thought I'd see her again in my life." I laughed. "So now you've brought her here? The baby too?"
"Both of them."
"Oh Neal! Has this woman been to India before?"
"She's never been anywhere before."
I clapped my hands, giggling.
Later I met Eve, the mother of Neal's baby. Wavy long hair covered most of her face, with her half-concealed eyes looking spaced-out. "Neal's told me about you," she said in a soft voice—sickly soft, almost a whisper. It sounded controlled, like she had a scream she was trying not to let out.
"What do you think of Anjuna Beach?" I asked. Her one visible eye focused on me again. "Two weeks ago, I never guessed I'd see Neal again. Now here I am." She arched her back peculiarly and seemed to shift inward, focusing on a private thought. "Well, good luck." I said, thinking Neal had snared himself a bizarre one. Actually, I was almost sad that Neal had a woman and baby with him. He'd been a great friend to hang out with. I wondered if it would be the same with than around.
Soon, daylight crawled over the hill. As the stars faded, dawn energy had everyone up and dancing. Through the eye of my movie camera I watched them face skyward to dance with the sunrise. Here and there, a sleepy head surfaced from a worm shape to behold black night turn whitish blue. I filmed Paul on the stage singing a song he'd written, inspired by such an occasion: "Welcome in, come on welcome in, come on welcome in the dawn, welcome in the dawn . . ."
This had to be the best place on the planet.
Later that morning, I took a walk with Paul to his house on Joe Banana's hill behind Tish and Junky Robert's. He and Pan had been having problems lately, mostly over his use of smack. Pam was now pregnant and living elsewhere on Anjuna Beach.
"You must come see what I'm doing to the house," I said as we climbed his front steps. "I bought fifteen mattresses in different sizes. A tailor in Mapusa is sewing covers for them Poor man had a hard time measuring them while they were stuffed in the back seat of a taxi."
Paul began to chop coke and I pounced on a pen and paper I spotted.
"Let me show you what I'm doing in the dining room," I said. Lying on my stomach, I drew. "See, this is the table having made. I bought nine orange and nine yellow rugs to go under every side cushion." Paul stretched out next to me and placed the mirror on my drawing. I snorted a line and moved the mirror aside. "For the two ends, I have bigger carpets in the same colours."
"Yeah?" Paul peered at my scribbles. His body aligned the length of mine, one hand resting on my back.
"Every cushion will be different." I resumed drawing. His hand moved across my back and down my legs. "See, some will be striped this way, and some striped that way." When his arm could reach no further, it backed up, burrowing under my skirt.
"Two walls will be orange, two yellow . . ." He reached the top of my legs. I'd stopped wearing underwear months before. "Ummm . . . the shelves too, one yellow, next one, um, orange . . ." His fingers slid between my thighs and stroked the moist area there. He found my clitoris. ". . . napkins too, half orange half yellow . . ." He massaged in circles. ". . . Hmmm . . ." I opened my legs wider. "Ummm . . . orange . . ." His circles continued, and my hips moved to their rhythm. ". . . lots of orange, mmm . . ." The tip of a finger slipped inside me. "Mmm. . . uh, want to hear about the ninety saris I bought?" I asked.
"Tell me."
"Umm. . ." I rolled on my back keeping my legs apart He placed one of his legs between mine. His finger re-entered me, this time plunging deep. "MMMmm" I took hold of his hair. "Um. . . well, ninety saris, five yards of material each for the living room and the bedroom. . ." His finger thrust in and out. "Umm. . . I had the carpenter drape them. . . from. . . the ceiling to . . . create a . . . tent effect mmmmm."
Weeks flew by, marked only by the colour of paint I was currently using. I snorted enormous amounts of coke and, in coke furore, worked day and night on my fantasy house. Everything I'd ever dreamed of, I created in my new home. I made trips to Bombay for special things. While there, I also stopped at the safety deposit box at the Mercantile Bank Coke consumption nibbled hungrily at my money.
Neal visited often, and we'd turn each other on to smack and coke. He was a welcome break from the non-stop work on the house. The super-excessive energy of the coke spurred me to greater and greater detail and fanciness. Not a piece of furniture was one colour only. The low cost of Goan labour allowed me to hire an army of painters for pennies an hour. I indulged my every coke-inspired whim.
Neal listened patiently as I described my latest flights of creativity. CLICK, CLICK, SCRAPE, SQUEAK, SQUEAK went his razor blade on the glass block with the engraved lion. "This house is really coming along," he said during a visit, shaking his bangs and looking around.
"The upstairs is almost finished," I said. "I had linoleum laid on the floors. Red and white for the bedroom and blue and green for the boudoir."
"Boudoir? Uh-oh," he said, taking the glass block from my hand as I was about to snort a line. "Maybe you shouldn't do any more of this."
I laughed and grabbed it back. "Well, that's what I call it. Actually, I don't use the room for anything. It's just a place to walk through to get to the bedroom."
"And linoleum!" He smiled. "You're revolutionizing the beach. Where do you think you are? Beverly Hills?"
"But this is my home. I'm going to be here forever." I paused, gave him a pixie smile, and said, "Wait till you see my next project." Displaying papers covered with coked-out curlicued designs and intricate measurements, I explained, "I'm going to cut the kitchen in half and make a bathroom!" Neal slapped a hand to his forehead. "I've already designed it. See, look. Over here, I'm putting a flush toilet and a shower."
He shook his head. "A flush toilet? How can you do that?"
"They're building the septic tank now. And this little rectangle next to the toilet is a sink, a real enamel-type sink with faucets and a drain. I have it all figured out. . . Where's the other diagram? A tank on the roof will supply the water. It'll have to be lugged there from the well."
"You'll have the only flush toilet on the beach. Here." With a SQUEAK SQUEAK and a final CLICK, Neal passed me the block again. "Maybe this toot will inspire a sauna or a whirlpool bath. Who'll fill the tank?"
"The maid, though she doesn't know it yet, be glad to have a bathroom inside the house. You should've seen me the other night, coked-out and wired. I hadn't slept the night before—I'd been staining the wood of the staircase. Come to think of it, I don't think I slept the night before that either. Anyway, about 4 a.m. I took the pump-lamp outside to the toilet. Yippy, it was so bright in that tiny enclosure. Every bump on the wall formed shadows that swelled and contracted. Spooky! I couldn't wait to get out of there."
"Coke'll do that, especially if you don't get enough sleep," Neal said. "You know that much by Starko's? I'm positive it followed me home the other night."