One of the flight attendants came around pushing a trolley. On it were small Styrofoam cups and full-size bottles of whiskey.
“Would you like?” The dark-haired woman smiled at Boutros and me, gesturing toward the bottles and cups.
Indian custom? I shrugged. What the hell? “Yes, please. One for me, and one for my friend here.” I leaned back a little so she could see Boutros in the middle seat. I doubted she could miss him, though, dressed as he was in palazzo pants with a yellow-and-purple paisley pattern, and a white muslin peasant shirt. His black hair stood up in a multitude of directions, and his mustache, waxed, stuck out so far, he could make the truthful claim that one could see the mustache from behind him. The goatee below the mustache was just beginning to gray. His earring and nose ring were connected by a dangling silver chain. He liked to say his face was “done up like a Christmas tree.”
Sometimes I wondered if people even saw me when I stood next to him.
“One?” Boutros scoffed. “Amateur. Could we have two?”
She nodded, smiling, and poured us each two shots of whiskey. She handed them over, and we both quickly downed the first and then handed the cups back to her. Boutros belched and said, “Check back on us, would you?”
The flight attendant’s smile didn’t waver. Serenely, she moved on to the next row to ply the whole plane, I presumed, with strong spirits.
Boutros slid his cup aside so he could reach for his leather backpack, which he’d stored under the seat in front of him. “Surprise! I’ve got a little something here that will help shorten the flight, if you know what I mean.” He grinned mischievously as he groped around in the bag’s outer compartment. He brought out a prescription bottle and shook it. A couple of pills rattled.
“Morphine, sweetie, from when I had that cyst out in hospital. Remember? I punched that nun when they started cutting before the anesthetic set in.” He leaned close, rubbing up against my shoulder. “I saved these two just for you and me, darling.”
“You’re too good to me. They say time is the most thoughtful gift, but I beg to differ. I say it’s drugs.” I returned the shoulder nudge, then held out my hand like a beggar.
We popped the morphine, washing it down with our second shot of whiskey. The unvoiced plan, of course, was that we would sleep on the overnight transatlantic flight, arriving in London the next morning refreshed and ready to begin our sightseeing after dropping our stuff off at Boutros’s friend Trevor’s place in Westminster.
Maybe I was too excited to sleep, but even after a third shot of whiskeyandmorphine, I was still wide-awake for the full eight-hour flight. And perhaps my excitement was contagious, because Boutros couldn’t catch a wink either. We watched our flight’s progress on a screen on the back of the seats in front of us. I thought,Hurry, hurry.
If anything, the drugs and alcohol had the curious effect of making us even more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than either of us usually were. After trying fitfully—and desperately—to sleep, fluffing the thin and starchy pillows our flight attendant had given us, we passed the night talking about what we’d see and do, following the vivid colors and subtitles of the inflight movie,Raja, which was, from what I could gather from the subtitles, a romance about a young man reuniting with the woman he was supposed to marry years earlier. We ate the meals the airline offered—chicken tikka masala and basmati rice for me and saag paneer and rice for him. Even though it was Indian food, which Boutros and I both adored, it was airline food… and thus barely edible. Fortunately, they brought out the complimentary whiskey cart again near the end of the flight.
And, at around 10:00 a.m. London time, we touched down on the runway at Heathrow International Airport.
Chapter 2
WE TOOKthe tube from the airport to the St. James’s Park stop in Westminster. Walking out of the tube station, I had the nagging sensation that this was all a dream. I was sure I’d wake up at any moment in my double bed in my one-bedroom in Rogers Park, my black-and-white cat, AJ, pawing at me and demanding his breakfast. The Chicago L would thunder by just outside my bedroom window, throwing up sparks from the tracks. Sun would throw slats on the old hardwood floors.
Except now there was this almost surreal aspect to everything—the bustling crowd on the sidewalk, the curdled-milk-white sky, the British accents I heard in snatches of conversation, and the simple sense of history that was everywhere I looked.
My God, I’m really here!
I realized in an instant howyoungmy homeland is.
We lugged our bags along the sidewalk as we searched for Boutros’s friend Trevor’s apartment. Along the way, we passed through St. James’s Park and then on into narrow streets, some with open-air vendors selling fruit, baked goods, and touristy souvenirs. I made a mental note to get myself, at some point, a Mind the Gap T-shirt with the iconic London subway system logo.
We saw things that required me to simply halt our passage and stare—these were postcards come to life. Westminster Abbey, the houses of Parliament (and Big Ben!), the buildings clustered along the Thames. Everywhere I looked was a piece of living history. I knew I should be worn out, but my heart raced, and I felt energy that should come from a good night’s rest but was, in reality, the result of the adrenaline my overexcited system was pumping out.
We passed a couple of teenage kids, a boy and a girl, camped out on the sidewalk in front of, ironically, a bank. They were surrounded by fast-food wrappers, an open guitar case, and a couple of rolled-up sleeping bags. The boy had a mohawk and wore tight, pegged jeans paired with a provocatively ripped Ramones T-shirt. The girl’s turquoise cotton-candy hair, pulled up in a sort of beehive, framed her elfin face. She wore a plaid school uniform skirt, white blouse, ripped fishnets, and cherry Doc Martens.
Boutros leaned down to add a couple of pound coins to their guitar case. There was already a mishmash of currency there—coins mostly, along with some bills.
He eyed the kids. “I want you to promise me you’ll spend that money on drugs.”
They giggled but eyed him a little suspiciously.
We walked on, the morning glaringly bright, the wind warm, bordering on hot.
“Are we there yet?” I asked. The tiniest bit of fatigue was beginning to filter in. I spied it out of the corner of my mental eye, waiting to be acknowledged. I knew its patience was running out.
“Almost. It’s just up the way, I believe.” Boutros cast a gaze at me. “This is cool.”
“What?”
“I’m seeing this throughyoureyes. It makes it all new again. And exciting.”
