Last Tang Standing by Lauren Ho

Author:Lauren Ho [Ho, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2020-06-09T00:00:00+00:00

26

Tuesday 3 May

12:16 a.m. Very bad start to our trip. Left home later than planned because I had to put on makeup before meeting Suresh at the airport at this ungodly hour.

Speaking of which, why do people use the expression “ungodly hour”? All hours are godly. It just depends on who your god is.

Made it to the airport with only minutes to spare before they closed check-in, but looking fabulous (for myself, obviously, not because I was flying with Suresh). Made it through security checks and frantically texted Suresh, pretending that I had been there for the past hour. No luck. Apparently the freak had been there for two hours, pottering around duty-free, thoughtfully buying boxes of pineapple tarts and TWG tea to cart all the way to Luxembourg.

As if clients, the Sauron-worshipping tapeworms that they are, can be appeased by pineapple tarts.

The only thing that tapeworms understand is, erm . . . hmm. I don’t think tapeworms actually have the capacity to understand. Well, then the only thing tapeworms are driven by is . . .

What are they driven by?

12:25 a.m. I now know all the types of intestinal worms you can get and how to get them.

12:27 a.m. How to get Genevieve to drink from muddy swamp water? How to ensure the swamp water sample contains eggs of flukes?

12:33 a.m. How to get water from a lake containing Guinea worm, surely the Lamborghini of parasitic worms?

12:36 a.m. Pleasant fantasy of Guinea worm bursting forth from a screaming Genevieve is shattered by the insistent buzzing of my phone. It was Suresh asking where I was in the duty-free zone. Realized I had not budged more than twelve feet since I cleared immigration. Shit. Am ten minutes away from the gate and that gate is closing in seven minutes.

12:40 a.m. Went to a pharmacy and bought a box of Zentel. My mother, God bless her, was right in this limited case: kill them worms.

12:43 a.m. Arrived just before they closed the gate, last second. Smiled triumphantly at Suresh as I waltzed into business class, looking immaculate even though I was gasping for breath after sprinting to the gate.

12:45 a.m. Shit. Just looked down at my feet and realized that in rush to the airport, I’ve worn different-colored ballerina shoes in different styles.

Also dropped the box of Zentel in plain sight of Suresh, who was seated across the aisle, when bending over in a panic to stick my handbag in front of my feet so as to obscure the different shoes. The box lay in the middle of the aisle, its lettering visible from space.

“Is everything OK?” he said in a pseudo-concerned voice when I tried to pick up the box with nonchalance.

“I’m being prudent: Europeans don’t boil their tap water.”

“The heathens,” he deadpanned. “Thank God I know for a fact we’ll be served mineral water one hundred percent of the time.”

“Unboiled mineral water is just as bad. We’ll see who’s laughing when you swallow the eggs of a parasitic worm,” I replied.

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