Bad Trips by Keath Fraser

Author:Keath Fraser [Fraser, Keath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-79719-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

from THE OLD PATAGONIAN EXPRESS

Limón looked like a dreadful place. It had just rained, and the town stank. The station was on a muddy road near the harbor, and puddles reflected the decayed buildings and over-bright lights. The smell of dead barnacles and damp sand, flooded sewers, brine, oil, cockroaches, and tropical vegetation which, when soaked, gives off the hot moldy vapor you associate with compost heaps in summer, the stench of mulch and mildew. It was a noisy town as well: clanging music, shouts, car horns. That last sight of the palmy coast and the breakers had been misleading. And even Mr. Thornberry, who had been hopeful, was appalled. I could see his face; he was grimacing in disbelief. “God,” he groaned. “It’s a piss hole in the snow.” We walked through the puddles, the other passengers splashing us as they hurried past. Mr. Thornberry said, “It blows my mind.”

That does it, I thought. I said, “I’d better go look for a hotel.”

“Why not stay at mine?”

Oh, look, it’s raining. It blows my mind. Kind of a pipeline.

I said, “I’ll just sniff around town. I’m like a rat in a maze when I get to a new place.”

“We could have dinner. That might be fun. You never know—maybe the food’s good here.” He squinted up the street. “This place was recommended to me.”

“It wasn’t recommended to me,” I said. “It looks pretty strange.”

“Maybe I’ll find that tour I was supposed to be on,” he said. He no longer sounded hopeful.

“Where are you staying?”

He told me. It was the most expensive hotel in Limón. I used that as my reason for looking elsewhere. A small, feeble-minded man approached and asked sweetly if he could carry my suitcase. It dragged on the street when he held it in his hand. He put it on his head and marched bandy-legged, like a worker elf, to the market square. Here, Mr. Thornberry and I parted.

“I hope you find your tour,” I said. He said he was glad we had met on the train: it had been kind of fun after all. And he walked away. I felt a boundless sense of relief, as if I had just been sprung from a long confinement. This was liberation. I tipped the elf and walked quickly in the opposite direction from Mr. Thornberry.

I walked to savor my freedom and stretch my legs. After three blocks, the town didn’t look any better; and wasn’t that a rat nibbling near the tipped-over barrel of scraps? It’s a white country, a man had told me in San Jose. But this was a black town, a beachhead of steaming trees and sea stinks. I tried several hotels. They were wormy staircases with sweating people minding tables on the second-floor landings. No, they said, they had no rooms. And I was glad, because they looked so disgustingly dirty and the people were so rude; so I walked a few more blocks. I’d find a better hotel. But they were smaller and smellier, and they too were full.

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