The Thong Also Rises (4 page)

And that's when I opened my purse, swiped my drugs into it, and very, very,
very
quickly walked away as fast as I could without generating electricity between my thighs.

The narc that I'm married to followed behind by a couple of steps, and when we finally reached the car and got in, neither of us said a word until we were at least ten miles outside of the Nogales city limits.

“We are assholes,” my husband finally said, still visibly shaken. “I can't believe we did that. That was horrible! I never thought we'd get out of there. I'm so glad to be out of there!”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “No thanks to you, Donnie Brasco! ‘No, no, I didn't buy anything. Nope. Not
me.
Not I.' Stoolie!”

“Stoolie?” my husband shot back. “What about you and your ‘I'm an
American
!' act? Are you aware that you said it in a
Texas accent
? ‘Ah-meh-rih-cahn!!' Oh! Oh! And ‘this is for my LADY TROUBLES!'
Lady troubles?
Where
are you,
Charleston, South Carolina, circa 1940?”

“No, I was in MEXICO, about to go to PRISON!” I shouted.

“But yer ehn Ah-meh-rih-cahn!!” my husband shouted. “Who's on more medication than my grandma!”

“You are a dork,” I said matter-of-factly.

“No, you are a dork,” he retorted. “And you are never going to Mexico again.”

“I already know that,” I informed him.

“And we are never telling anyone about this, O.K.? No one. No one needs to know what idiots we are. O.K.?” he said firmly.

“O.K.,” I agreed.

“Swear?” he insisted.

“On Ah-meh-rih-cuh!” I swore.

Laurie Notaro is currently unemployed and childless and enjoys spending her days searching for Bigfoot documentaries on the Discovery Channel, delights in a good peach cobbler, and has sadly discovered that compulsively lying on her headgear chart in the seventh grade has come around to bite her in the behind. Despite several escape attempts, she still lives in Phoenix, Arizona, where she is technologically unable to set up the voice mail on her cell phone, which she has never charged anyway. She is the author of
I Love Everybody (and Other Atrocious Lies)
from which this story is excerpted.

On our third morning in Paris, I discovered that I was having “feminine problems.” Armed with a phrasebook, I marched down to the pharmacy. Swallowing any remnants of American pride and Catholic shame, I began to tell the sweet, bespectacled granny behind the counter that I had an issue “down there” and would need some type of cream. Words were exchanged but we were not communicating. Then, the untranslatable happened. Without warning,
Grandmère
squatted behind the counter, spread her knees, and made earnest jabbing motions with her index finger between her legs. I was so flabbergasted, all I could say was, “Uhh,
non.
” We tried a few other more subtle hand gestures until we finally arrived at the same answer and the right medicine. And while I
will now always have fond memories of how helpful and kind the lady at my pharmacy was, I pray to all saints in France that I never have to hold another conversation that involves
Grandmère
jabbing at her hooha.

—Cookie Everman, “
Grandmère
”

A renegade Aussie in Laos struggles with the advice of Helen Keller.

A
S THE PLEASURE-PAIN MAXIM WOULD HAVE IT, THINGS
went rapidly downhill on our way back to the Mixai, when we were nearly run over by a
samlor,
pinched on the bum by a familiar-looking midget, and driven to fits of apoplexy by a shady monk who sprang out at us from a gloomy alleyway. Back in our room, the lightbulb burned out and I wound up stubbing out a cigarette in El's pot of expensive moisturizer. And after a restless sleep plagued by ravioli-induced nightmares and mosquitos, I could only hope Lady Kismet would be a bit kinder in the morning.

But Fate's a bitch. We spent the entire morning battling it out with everyone we came across. Our waitress at breakfast threw a spoon at me after I asked six times for milk. The cleaner at the Mixai yelled at us for smoking in our room. And on our way to register our presences with the Australian Consulate, two kilometers away, our
songthaew
driver took us on a forty-five-minute junket before charging us ten bucks for the pleasure.

“I think I've had it with city life,” I grouched as we pushed open the doors to the consulate. “Even a little pit like Vientiane is getting too stressful for me.”

“We should go up-country,” El said. “A city is a city anywhere, but we'd get a real feel for Laos if we headed north.”

The doors of the consulate slammed shut behind us and we leaned on the unattended front counter. “I reckon. What about that town we read about, the one with the bouncy-sounding name?” As usual, we had no plans and I had no clue.

“I think it's called Luang Prabang. It sounds utterly brilliant and really gorgeous. Hey, is anyone even in here?”

“On my way!” came an Australian voice from behind a heavy office door. The voice was saddled with a less strident ocker twang than Bruce's had been back in Nong Khai, but I cringed anyway. Back in Australia, where we spend so much of our time poking fun at the flat whines of the Yanks and the bizarre vowels of the Kiwis, it's easy to forget we have an accent at all. But spend some time overseas, preferably somewhere they don't broadcast
Home and Away
, and it hits you like a ton of bricks. We sound like freaks. Even in their rare moments of calm, Australian women sound constantly hysterical, and the men manage to give the impression that their words are suffocating somewhere between the glottis and their last meat pie. All this while hardly moving our lips at all.

The door swung open and a well-dressed woman approached us. Apart from the fact that she wore shoes, she looked like a typical Queenslander: blonde, tanned, and hungover. But despite her bloodshot eyes, the woman was polite and efficient, negating my theory about her Queensland origins.

“G'day girls, I'm sorry to have kept you. My name's Louise. How can I help?”

I stared at a framed copy of the words to “Advance Australia Fair” on the wall while El explained that we wanted to register ourselves. “We were told we had to,” she finished.

“Well, you don't have to,” Louise said. “But it's a good idea. At least then we have an idea of where Australian citizens are when they're in Laos. That way, if anything happens, it makes it easier to identify you.”

I winced. “Isn't that a bit dramatic? I mean, what's the worst that could happen?”

“It's just a precaution,” Louise soothed. “If you play it safe, you'll be fine. But if you start wandering off into certain areas, you could find yourselves in big trouble. Laos can still be a very dangerous, unstable country.”

“Well,” El said, “it's not like we're going to wander into the opium fields and start harvesting, if that's what you mean.”

Damn, there went all my plans.

“Of course there's that,” Louise said. “But that is a bit dramatic. What I mean is that we have posted a traveler's advisory for Australian citizens on a few areas up north where there's been some trouble. If you steer clear of them, you should be just fine.”

“Up north?” El asked with a twinge of anxiety. “We were planning on going to Luang Prabang.”

“I'd give that a miss if I were you,” Louise said. “The highway is too dangerous.”

“Why?”

“This actually hasn't come out in the press yet, but in the last week, there's been missile attacks on tourist buses by Hmong bandits.”

“What happened?” we gasped.

“Well, these rebels fire at the buses, y'know, blowing them up, and then come and raid what's left for valuables.”

Apart from our lives, El and I didn't have anything of value with us. But how were these gun-crazy hill tribers supposed to know that? Strike bus travel. But we were still desperate to get out of Vientiane and into Luang Prabang.

“How about along the river?” El asked. “Can't you take a boat up there?”

“You can,” Louise nodded. “But again, we'd advise against it.”

“What now?” I whined.

“For a start, it's the dry season and the river is incredibly shallow. The speedboats that travel up it wind up hitting mudbanks and crashing. There was an accident just a fortnight ago.”

“What about a slow boat?”

“I was getting to that. This is very much under wraps still, but there was an Australian citizen shot off the top of one of those slow boats only a few days ago.”

Jesus. And there I was thinking the worst thing that could happen in Laos was being forced to drink black coffee.

“That's a disgrace,” I said, shaking my head. “But hey, what about a plane?”

El nodded at me and looked at Louise, who in turn was staring at us like we lunatics. “You guys really want to get up there, eh?” she said.

“Yeah, we really do,” I said. Five minutes ago, I hadn't known where I wanted to go. But now, despite, or maybe even because of, the warnings against it, I was chomping at the bit to get to Luang Prabang.