"GOD BLESS YOU," shouted the man on the front steps. "AND DON’T FORGET THE GOOD NEWS. TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT IT."
Now I had to prepare for Eve's visit. For sure she'd come; she knew I was still dealing drugs. I didn't have much left for her to steal since I'd peddled my jewellery and returned Kadir's. I made a quick run to collect stash bottles and emergency caches of opium. I hid them upstairs under a mattress. I'd have to remember to keep valuables on my body when she arrived and prevent her from going to the second floor. I'd also have to watch her behaviour toward the one or two customers I had left. I didn't want her driving them away.
Within hours of my finding her, Eve appeared at the door. "Hi. We're here," she whispered.
From that day on she came regularly and stayed for hours, sitting quietly and smoking bhongs. She never looked anyone in the face when she spoke. Instead she'd fidget with her belt, her hair, or whatever lay in front of her. She made people nervous. When she was out of earshot they'd take me aside.
"That's a strange one you've got there," they'd tell me.
"Oh, Eve's okay."
"Her kid's even worse," they'd comment next.
Ha had become a nasty beast. She'd yell and throw things and stamp her foot and do everything you told her not to. She never smiled, never laughed. She'd grow crankiest at night. Eve let Ha carry on by herself, no matter what she was doing—a fit of rage, even a destructive rampage. Not only did I have to watch Eve, I had to watch Ha too.
"No, Ha, please don't touch that," I would say, spying her molesting a souvenir I'd bought in Moscow. "It comes from Russia." Ha loved it when you told her not to do something; it gave her a sense of direction. "NO, Ha. I said do NOT touch that. You'll ruin the fur." Just what she wanted to hear. "STOP! Don't pull the fur OUT!"
Eve paid no heed. Only if it was late at night and Ha was particularly bratty would Eve finally call her over.
"Come here, Ha," she'd whisper. Then Eve would blow hash smoke in the face of Neal's daughter. "It helps put her to sleep," she explained. Yes, it was time for me to leave Goa.
Occasionally Eve managed to get her dexterous hands on something or other, but since I kept money and drugs tied around my waist, she only stole candles and rolls of toilet paper. The house was bereft of items worth stealing.
Empty spaces left by sold objects surrounded me. They matched the empty spaces inside me left by missing people. I sold the four-foot Kashmiri lamp that had hung over it. Now the dining room was a vast desert I hated to walk through. Gone from the bedroom were the Laotian mobiles that had hung between the bags of glucose at the glucose party. The fancy brass doorknobs and light switches in the shape of Hindu gods were gone too.
One day I found myself with no dope in the house. Not a granule. I'd already snorted off the carpet whatever vaguely resembled smack, along with a lot of dust and sand. I possessed only Opium and the package of morphine that had been sitting in my blowtorched safe for years. Yuck. Morphine was disgusting. You couldn't smoke it or snort it because of its horrible taste. Maybe I could fix it? I'd never tried fixing myself before.
Well, why not? I'd give it a try.
The only vein I could see was a tiny one in the middle of my right arm. I hit it first try. But I felt nothing. Maybe I hadn't used enough powder. I wanted to do it again, but now a bump covered the vein and I could no longer see it. Veins were visible on my hand, though. I decided to try one of those. Couldn't get it. I tried again. It moved. I tried a different vein. Damned thing wouldn't hold still! I tried over and over and over. No good. After a half hour holes speckled my hand, but not one of them had reached a vein. Hmmm. Interesting. Was this how Maria had felt when she couldn't get a hit? By the time I finally gave up, the back of my hand sported dozens of red dots.
"What happened to your hand?" Eve whispered later when she came by.
"Couldn't get a vein."
"Rands are impossible. The veins roll. You need someone to hold one in place."
Yes, it was past time for me to leave Goa.
I needed a departure date. Any date. It didn't matter. How about March sixth? Okay. March sixth it is. On March sixth I'd leave Goa forever.
"Come here. Bach," I called, having made the decision. His ears were my favourite place to wipe tears.
I owned one special item—a three-foot Balinese wooden sculpture I'd shipped from Denpasar. A myriad of carved figures peeped from its core. Painted in pinks, purples, and gold, its flat top made it usable as a table. I couldn't bear the thought of selling it. How could I condemn such a wondrous piece of art to the smoky back room of the Sikh chai shop?
I decided to give it to Canadian Jacques. A bulky chunk of heavy wood, it should probably not have been lugged across the shadeless sand in the hot mid afternoon.
"Bonjour," said Jacques as I came in. "What have you there?"
"It's for you. My last memory. I want to give it to you before I resort to selling it. I'm leaving soon."
"It's beautiful. If you return, you can have it back."
"I'm not coming back."
"You never know. You might luck into something this monsoon." I shook my head.
"When are you going?"
"March sixth. I'll go to the consulate in Bombay and ask them to send me to New York."
"They do that?"
I nodded. I had it planned. "They'll give me money to go to the embassy in Delhi, which is where I have to go anyway to finish my court case and pick up my passport. Then the embassy will provide the ticket to New York."
"You Americans have all the advantages. I don't think my embassy would pay for me to go home."
"No, I think they all do. They can't just leave you to starve in some foreign country. I'll have to reimburse them, of course. They're not going to hand me a free ticket. Even the American embassy won't do that."
"What about your dog?" he asked, giving a not-too-pleased look at Bach, who was sniffing a pile of his clothes.
"I'll have to leave him. He's an alien; the U.S. would never allow him into the country. He doesn't have papers. No chance." There was a huge lump in my throat. "I think land in New York dead of a broken heart."
Later that afternoon I presented Alehandro with the red Buddha bhong. Let the fat Buddha smile for the crowd at Alehandro's. The living room carpets had been sold, and the sacred pipe deserved better than to sit on a naked floor.
In February the Bugs took over the house. Couldn't they have waited another month? They invaded the bedroom first. I woke up one morning to find, not one, but two trails of ants marching on my body. Eeek. A troupe of large black ones had entered under the outside door. They strode across the red-and-white linoleum, mounted the carpet, hiked up the mattress via my pink satin sheet, proceeded over my naked back, came around my waist, hopped to the sheet from my stomach, then made their way over the carpet on the other side, across the linoleum, up the wall, and out the window. The smaller grey ants took approximately the same route but traversed my legs. Hey, come on, guys! There must be an easier road than this. Especially since the bedroom was on the second floor. I'd seen ants plenty of times before, but they'd usually had the courtesy to go around the bed. Many a time I'd amused myself by watching them scatter in confusion as I plopped something in their path. This new habit of theirs was a little much. I knew the root of the problem—I'd given my insecticide spray to Petra.
Downstairs I was faced with another predicament: Bach's flea collar had expired. My poor friend scratched continually. To make matters worse, the little buggers over bred themselves and had abandoned him in search of vaster horizons. Now the fleas were jumping all over the house. If I'd had the insecticide spray, I could have killed the fleas and obliged the ants to find an alternate roadway. Alas, the spray was gone, and I couldn't afford a new one.