Don't Order Dog (2 page)

A.T. Road, Guwahati
September 25, 11:35am
Planet Assam, India
 

Jeri –

Holy shit. I mean it. Holy shit. I have no business being here, in this gritty land of maniacally cruel humidity. There is not enough morphine in my IV drip to even begin to erase the endless torrent of loathing that pours like the monsoon rains upon this place. Everything here surely hates me. How can it not? I hate myself right now. Goddamn what I wouldn’t give for a double-shot of Fortaleza and a Camel Light.

Last night I spun restlessly on the razor-thin mattress of my two-star hotel room for hours before finally kicking insomnia in the nuts. It’s the goddamn heat. It burrows into your skin like a flaming hookworm and shits hot sauce into your blood stream. I swear to
god Jeri, I’m sweating from the heat inside. Believe me, I contemplated a midnight swim in the river Brahmaputra, but this is India… Buddha knows what might swim up my ass and perform a hostile takeover should I doze off under the spell of my favorite nighttime muse Lady Xanax.

But enough about my anal phobias. We have far more important matters to discuss. I imagine you’re reading these words as you sit in your favorite corner behind the bar; your fingers creasing this very page as your other hand rests delicately against your cheek. Just the knowledge that this letter will soon find its way to your sublimely slender fingers makes the dull, piss-warm weight of this place momentarily bearable. Have I mentioned our kids will be gorgeous?

Enclosed is a photo of me beside a shrine to Shiva at the Umananda Temple. Please forgive my cropped head. The young miscreant I assigned the task of photo-taker displayed a level of stupidity I have not seen since the time I asked for directions in Ohio. Please also note my Joe’s Last Stand t-shirt, the very one I bought at the bar so many months ago. Tell Joe I do not expect compensation for providing international advertising. As with all things, I do this out of desperate, reckless love for you.

My time here in India is drawing to a close, which is a blessing bigger than my tequila-ravaged liver. I took my last tuk-tuk ride to the market last night, which means this assignment is done. And just in time. I’m burned out baby. Anything more than a day here and my morality and urine both become horribly clouded. I can say with an uncharacteristically high level of objectivity that this place is categorically fucked. The people worship many gods. The gods all have many limbs. When not worshipping the gods, the people eat dogs. I kid you not. Consumption gone awry, my dear.

Gods and dogs Jeri, gods and dogs.

Right. Well, you have drinks to serve, and I’m late for another lunchtime rendezvous with Benji. You don’t need to say the words Jeri, I already know.

Ta!

-
         
Mysterious Joe’s Last Stand Guy

p.s. Don’t order dog.

Jeri Halston laughed out loud.

The rich staccato sound of it echoed warmly against the dark, oak-paneled walls of the old saloon. The handful of patrons sitting inside Joe’s Last Stand Saloon turned and stared at the attractive twenty-six year-old bartender sitting behind the bar, but Jeri didn’t notice. She finished reading the letter and slowly stood from her barstool in the corner, a smile still lingering on her face.

“What is it Jeri?” Chip Shepherd asked from his usual seat at the bar. Chip was a regular at Joe’s; one of the sixty-something-year-old locals who considered retirement a fair excuse to drink away the afternoon hours in the ancient saloon that sat on the outskirts of Flagstaff’s old downtown. He ran a hand through his scruffy salt-and-pepper hair and furrowed his brow in curiosity.

“This letter I just got in the mail. It’s the funniest, strangest thing I’ve ever read.”

“Who’s it from?” the older man asked.

Jeri glanced again at the precise handwriting etched across the heavy pages of hotel stationary and shook her head in bewilderment. “I have no idea,” she replied as she dropped them on the counter of the bar and picked up the envelope they’d arrived in. The familiar red and blue stripes of an airmail parcel were stenciled on its battered edges and nearly half of the front side was covered in colorful exotic stamps and postmarks. Jeri stared at them admiringly for a moment before turning the envelope on its side and shaking it gently. A small Polaroid photo fell into her hand.

The photograph was just as the letter described. A large, ancient-looking temple sat off-center in the background, surrounded on both sides by a dense wall of lush, tropical trees. And in the foreground, wearing a blue Joe’s Last Stand Saloon t-shirt, Jeri’s mysterious admirer stood casually.

Unfortunately, as warned, the photographer had failed to include the author’s head.

Jeri studied the picture closely for anything that might reveal a clue to the man’s identity. His tan, muscular arms were crossed loosely, his thin frame leaning slightly back towards the right. She briefly imagined a handsome, equally tanned face with a mischievous grin staring back at her. Unfortunately, nothing in the image, real or imagined, seemed to offer any answers.

Across the counter, Chip leaned forward inquisitively. “May I read it, or is it some kind of pornographic love letter from your fan club?”

Jeri broke her stare from the Polaroid and smiled at Chip.

“Nothing pornographic, Chip. But don’t blame me if that antiquated heart of yours can’t handle it.” She slipped the photo and letter back into the envelope and slid it across the counter.

“Wow… all the way from India, huh?” the older man said quietly, admiring the envelope.

“I guess so,” Jeri answered absently. The image in the Polaroid still hung in her mind.

“Well, let’s see what was important enough to be airmailed from India,” Chip replied. He unfolded the letter and slowly sipped at his beer as he read.

As she waited for Chip’s inevitable opinion, Jeri gazed out the saloon’s arched window at the cars that flashed by on Historic Route 66 outside.
It was her favorite time of year, when the late autumn sun bathed everything in warm, honey-golden light. She watched quietly as the leaves of the maple trees planted along the sidewalk trembled at the passing cars, their red-orange colors shimmering with an ethereal glow.

Chip dropped the letter on the bar and picked up the Polaroid with a slow, deliberate motion. He examined it carefully for a few moments before placing it and the letter back in the envelope. Jeri watched as he then drained the last of his beer, a thoughtful expression painted on his face.

“So, what do you think?” she asked, tucking an errant strand of copper-brown hair behind her ear.

Chip stared absently at his empty glass for a moment before leveling his
stare on her. “I think I need another beer.”

“Fine,” Jeri replied as she walked over to the beer taps. This was what she loved most about the old man. Everything about him was deliberate and calculated. Even the gaze of his piercing blue eyes had a calming effect as they peered out from his handsome, weathered face. A professor of archeology in his earlier days, Chip was an amalgam of some of her favorite things– part gray-haired professor, part rugged cowboy, and part grumpy old man.

She poured him a fresh beer from the tap and handed it over with a prying smile.

“So?”

“So I think the same thing I thought before I read the letter,” Chip answered, a paternal tone creeping into his deep voice. “That I still don’t understand why a beautiful, brilliant young woman like you is wasting her life pouring drinks for gruff old men like me and witless little Neanderthals like them.” He pointed his thumb at a group of college-age men sitting at a table behind him. The men were too engrossed in a conversation to catch the insult, but Jeri knew Chip wouldn’t have cared either way.  

Jeri rolled her large, amber-colored eyes. “Do we have to have this conversation every week?” she asked, feigning annoyance. In truth, she didn’t mind the older man’s fatherly advice. The death of her real father just a year earlier had left Jeri devastated. Until that moment, he had been the stable center of her impetuous, wildly adventurous life. Brilliant and endlessly patient, her father had been her rational tether to reality as she bounced from one adventure, destination, and interest to the next. But all of that had changed with his death, and Jeri was still trying to accept the absence. If nothing else, Chip’s occasional words of wisdom provided a comforting if only fleeting dose of the man she missed so much.

“Yes, we do have to have this conversation every week,” Chip answered. “And I intend to keep having it until I’m no longer looking at the prettiest girl in Flagstaff when I order a beer.”

“I’m not the prettiest girl in Flagstaff,” Jeri retorted. “Not by a mile. And even if I was, I don’t see how that would have anything to do with my choice of profession.” She grabbed a towel and began absently wiping down the counter of the bar.

“I’ll give you that,” Chip replied, nodding his head. “But, then again, this particular bartender also happens to hold a handful of bachelor’s degrees and a Masters in Economics. Isn’t that right?”

Jeri ignored the question.
“Now, I may not be the sharpest tool in the proverbial shed anymore,” Chip continued, “but I think I’m still smart enough to recognize talent being wasted when I see it.” Finished with his sermon, he grabbed the fresh pint in front of him and took a long deliberate drink.

Jeri turned and paced quickly down the bar towards Chip. Her slender figure moved with graceful ease as her eyes burned into the older man’s down-turned face. Chip kept his eyes fixed on his beer as she stopped in front of him. She then slowly leaned across the counter; her fair, oval-shaped face hovering just inches from his. “You didn’t answer my question,” she said flatly, tossing the towel at his chest.

Chip looked up at her with a wry grin. “Oh, you mean the letter?” he asked.

“Yes Chip, the letter.”

“Well I think he sounds like one helluva guy,” he replied cheerfully, raising his glass. “I just hope he writes you again.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Jeri replied, grabbing the letter from the counter. She turned and walked back to the far end of the bar, concealing the thin smile on her face as she stared at the envelope. She slid back onto her barstool in the corner behind the counter and looked out again at the autumn afternoon. The glow of the maple leaves was beginning to fade, their shadows tracing intricate shadows against the wooden blinds in the window. In a few more hours the sun would fall behind Mars Hill, the chill of autumn would return to the clear mountain air, and the neon sign hanging on the old brick façade outside would paint flickering crimson on the sidewalk outside. It was then that the magic of evening would return, bringing the nightly wave of thirty-something couples and college-age hipsters with it.

“It is rather interesting though, isn’t it?” Chip asked as he stared contemplatively at his beer glass.

“What’s that?” Jeri responded.

“How well he seems to know you,” the older man replied. He took a sip of his beer and looked over at her, his blue eyes still swimming with thought. “I was watching you while you read that letter. You were sitting there, in your favorite spot behind the bar, holding the letter in one hand, your other hand on your cheek–”

He paused for a moment as Jeri’s eyes widened with the realization of what he was saying. “Just like he described.”

Tareeq 135 Madinat, Al Jubail
October 5, 8:04am
Planet Saudia Arabia
 

Jeri –

I’m looking nervously over my shoulder as I write you, fully expecting the twitchy coolness of morning to be chased from the room by the approaching simoon before it wrings me completely fucking lifeless. Did I complain about endless precipitation in my last letter? I’d trade a billion grains of sand for one sparkling drop of
ma
. Make that two billion, and throw in a double-shot of Fortaleza and a Camel Light.

Camels, camels everywhere, and none of them to smoke.

The flight getting here was a disaster of colossal proportions. The mescaline and Prozac wore off somewhere high above the surreally sparkly Indian Ocean. And what I thought was a rogue band of harmless, cuddly chia-pets turned out to be a staff of churlish Air Iran flight attendants. I swear I did nothing wrong, Jeri. There I was, innocently floating in post-hallucinogenic meditation when suddenly they were shouting at me from all sides. I vaguely gathered from the pointing fingers and distorted curls of their lips that it might have something to do with my shirt being inexplicably removed and my fly incomprehensibly unzipped, because the Farsi flowed from their mouths like jackals learning hooked-on-phonics. The fact that the cabin held the warm pungent stench of a curried, oven-baked jockstrap certainly didn’t help matters. I considered asking the passenger next to me how to say ‘What, fucknuts?’ in Farsi, but EVERYONE was looking at me like I was the one who was delusional. While my memory after this is sketchy, I have compelling evidence that suggests I was bodily probed by the authorities during my layover in Dammam. Hard to say, as either the mescaline kicked back in, or they did something so terrible to my nether regions that I immediately retreated into my mental “happy place” and shut the whole thing out.

So here I am in Al Jubail, twitching and writing, waiting for a new assignment and that goddamn wind the locals call simoon to suck out what little water I have left in me faster than a parched kid can straw-suck a cherry coke. This has to be hell on earth, my love, just without the hookers and Justin Timberlake.

I would bitch-slap Jesus for a cigarette right now.

Let’s talk about
us
Jeri. There’s no doubt you’ve chiseled your way into my enlarged, slightly atherosclerotic heart. I only hope you’re as comfortable about our situation as I am. Allah knows I haven’t always followed the “straight and narrow”, but that’s probably because I have no fucking clue what that saying really means.

Just know this, sweet pea. 1) I have solemnly relinquished my heart to the whims and circumstances of your physically oh-so-distant equivalent and 2) I haven’t felt this giddy in the groin since that time I found a stack of Playboys in my pop’s closet. By this measure alone, I know I’m in deep.

The morning sirens are sounding, so I’d better sign off. Time to grab the prayer mat and square off with Mecca. We’ll see who flinches first. I’m not a Muslim, Jeri. I only play one on TV.
You don’t need to say it, I already know.

Ta!

-
         
Mysterious Joe’s Last Stand Guy
 

p.s. The enclosed picture requires no caption.

p.p.s. The food here tastes like sand and shit-fed meatloaf.
Don’t order dog.