little prayers

Sometimes it pays to check your email, did you know? This isn't Jonas - this is Phoenix, from LA (like that's not confusing) and I opened up my email yesterday to find a polite request from Jonas - would I be willing to guest blog on Beyond Wunderman? Possibly on Monday? And could I keep it fairly short? (I tend to get long-winded with both my pep-talks and my blog posts).

I said yes, yes, and probably. And when I asked if he had any specific ideas about what I should blog about, the always wonderful and agreeable Jonas did a sort of cyber-shrug and said I should write about whatever I felt like. And since I noticed he has quite a few travel stories on here, I thought I'd share one with you guys.

Enjoy, and it's nice to meet all of you!

little prayers

March, 2001. My mom and aunt have come to visit me in London where I'm going to school. It's the coldest winter the Brits have had in about 300 years; Mike and I got in a snowball fight two days ago when I went to visit him at his school a few miles outside of Kensington. My roommate Emily understands better than anyone the weirdness of having family visit while we're studying abroad. She calls it "cartoon crossover" -- the awkwardness of two realities not quite meshing, my two moms crashing into a universe that I have made completely for myself. My mom and aunt arrive, loudly, already complaining about the cold. When I look at pictures years later, I will laugh as I am photographed in a thin jacket and jeans, completely at ease in the London weather, and my mom and aunt are packaged tightly in bright pink scarves and hats, like fluorescent mummies. Their eyes peer out nervously from underneath their neon jacket hoods, but it is my smile that is forced, frustrated with their unabashedly American style.

I am their tour guide for the day, and I find myself embarrassed by their slowness, their inability to figure out how to queue at a Tube stop; their incessant need to photograph the same random cobblestone streets that I trip down every day to walk to my classes. I ask for directions in my best British accent; the locals don't notice, but my mom and aunt titter, as if I'm playing a joke. In reality, the joke is on them - my insistence that I blend in to the local environment is a constant poke at how much my mother and aunt are unable to. Standing awkwardly in puffy parkas with maps and white tennis shoes, they are oblivious and out of place in my world.

The air that day crackles with electricity. Something hums in the air when I inhale, and there's a weird energy that feels thick on my face and bare hands. We venture first to Westminster Abbey, and as my mom and aunt are busy taking flash photographs of yet another statue, a voice comes over the loudspeaker set up throughout the church, used mainly to announce closing times and such. It's one of the clergymen speaking. In a calm voice he informs us that London is under attack by a terrorist group calling themselves the Real IRA. Several people have already been killed by Tube stop explosions, and yet another bomb was set off in a rubbish bin in a public square. Because this is pre-9/11, it feels like a dream. I am still so young, and it has never occurred to me that a place that I call home would ever be under attack by terrorists. The fear that hits me gets lodged in my throat and travels slowly down to my stomach, tying it in knots.

Then the clergyman suggests that we recite the Lord's Prayer together. The wind knocks violently on the old doors of the church, and every movement echoes throughout the room. I look around and see tourists of every nationality and race and faith, their heads bowed, cameras dangling from their necks and fanny packs drooping. "Our Father, which art in Heaven," we all mumble together. The clergyman leads us through the prayer, and suddenly I feel like a pilgrim, passing from one land to the next, making my journey my home, and feeling a sense of kinship with these strangers as we all speak the same words, sometimes hesitatingly, reaching out to each other in hope. When we finish the prayer, we raise our eyes and look into the faces of each other, now family. My mom slips her hand into mine, and I squeeze it, letting the resentment and frustration slide away until only love remains.

The week ahead ...

Hey you,
It's Sunday night and all is dark in these here parts. I am heading out of Paris for a bit, and maybe for good ... decisions, decisions. Ah well, it is winter time after all. I am embracing the oncoming winter this year, mainly because the heatwave last summer messed with my head (and with my hair) but also because I have begun to appreciate winter clothes more and more as the last few weeks have progressed. 
Reading that back. 
I always go back and read the first paragraphs of letters - they're so important don't you think? I never re-read posts on my blog until it is too late (days later, typos all over the place). Right, so from those few sentences I have concluded that I am a winter person now. I used to be an autumn person and I would spend autumn walking and walking around this great, walkable city, but now, because E refers to autumn as "the season of death," that particular pleasure has taken on a slightly sour taste. As you know, she is a bubbly, generous person with a smile like a gondola normally, but come November ... urgh. 
What the hell am I saying? Ok, leaving Paris, leaving Paris in my winter clothes. .... leaving the blog in some capable and very welcome hands. 
I have finally got my act together and invited a few excellent people to leave some guest posts over the next week, so be sure to come check them out. If you like this blog, you will love this lot ....
That must be all for now surely? 
Jonas

Stop me if you've heard this ...

Just a couple of quick points before you go any further into this post ...

°1 I posted this once before, but in three parts. It was a very long time ago (relative to how long I have been blogging), but still, you may have read it.

°2 It's a long post. Some people don't like long posts (including me) so don't feel obliged to stick around and read it. If you are planning on zooming off somewhere else though, I suggest you check out the blog list over there on the right. It's full of great blogs, and that's before we get to the ones which are excellent. 

°3 If you are flying anywhere these days, take your own booze because airlines seem to have forgotten that when you pay for a plane ticket you are instantly entitled to unlimited amounts of booze. And if you have a window seat takes lots of photos because they will look even better than you think. Drink your booze, take lots of photos and then try smoking while pretending to talk into your cell phone.

Ok, enough fucking around already. Here is a story I just can't stop going back to and tinkering with ...

At 20'000 Feet, Clouds Taste Just Like Vanilla Ice Cream.

I THINK it was March ‘04, but I can’t remember, dammit. Dates are the worst thing now, they come and go like the wind. No, they go more than they come. They go and that’s that. In fact I could be wrong because once they have vanished they are gone for good, so long. What? Right! So this was March, ‘04 like I said, and E was due to leave – we were at the airport already, but I said to her, “Hey now, I have a better idea. I’m gonna come with you. Let’s fly together.” In those days, yes, those good old days, it was still possible to buy your ticket and jump onboard, which I did. Arm in arm we crossed the tarmac to the waiting aircraft. E turned to me and said I was slightly crazy and I had to agree, although I did point out that this craziness had only come to me since she had entered my life. So she laughed, and then I laughed and together we said things like “ah well” and “hah” and “yeah” and it was in this frame of mind that we boarded the plane. I had never flown with her before – if only I had known! She was some crazy cookie back then, some crazy cookie! And still is now. Crazier probably. Crazy as a cat in a can – that’s a phrase right? As crazy as a cat in a can? No doubt.

We sat. We rummaged through the pockets in front of us, and after studying the emergency exit plan on the laminated cards, E stood up and clutched at my arm. She grabbed our carry-on bags and yelled at me to hurry up. She was right. I hadn’t noticed as we arrived on board, but by God, there were still a couple of spaces next to one of the emergency-exit doors. As the other passengers removed their jackets and tried to stuff their expensive hand luggage into overhead compartments, we squeezed past, our eyes on those empty seats. I didn’t rush; I knew from past experience that there was little chance of anyone getting in E’s way when she was in this determined mode.

We sat down with thumps and looked at each other, considered a high-five then changed our minds. A high-five was out of the question and we both knew it. After takeoff and the removal of seatbelts had taken place I turned to her and said “I bought this,” as I pulled a bottle of 16-year-old Glenfiddich from my bag. E clapped her hands together in delight. “It’s going to be a long flight,” I said, “so we’ll need water to dilute it a little.”

“I have water,” she said, holding up a bottle of Evian, still sealed.

“Beakers! We’ll need plastic beakers” I went on.

“Or glasses”, she suggested. “Maybe they have real glasses on this flight.” When I looked doubtful she added, “It’s still only 2004.”

“I can’t remember when the switch to plastic beakers occurred,” I said, rubbing my chin. We gave each other exaggerated shrugs. I turned around just in time to hassle one of the stewardesses about our concerns over what material their drinking glasses were made of. She looked unimpressed, so I gave her a speech which suggested we were going to be drunk and annoying for most of the trip and if she wanted us to remain quiet she had better just help us out. She returned with two plastic beakers and a small pile of tiny square napkins which suited us just fine. “I wonder when the food will come,” I muttered.

I forget how much Glenfiddich we had tucked away, but it was already dark outside, the in-flight movie long finished and most of our fellow passengers fast asleep, when E suddenly elbowed me hard in the ribs and said, “Ooh, I have always wanted to try this.” In the blinking of an eye she leapt out of her chair and pounced upon the emergency exit door, cursing under her breath as she heaved at the opening apparatus. “Help me,” she hissed back at me. I grabbed the laminated emergency landing card from the chair pocket and knelt beside her.

“Ok, wait. Wait,” I whispered. We held the card between us and studied the instructions. “Ok, well hold this bit, point A,” I said, “and then we need to twist this bit I think.”

“No, that’s C,” she said.

“Damn. Where’s B then? It must be this,” I said, pointing at a red painted handle.

“Yeah, that’s B,” she agreed.

“Ok, well, you hold A and B and I’ll turn C.”

“It’s a good job this isn’t really an emergency,” she pointed out.

I nodded.

“Wait,” she said. “Let’s have more whisky first.”

“Yes!” I nodded enthusiastically. “It’ll warm us up.”

We snuck back into our seats and as she pulled the cork from the bottle with her teeth I reached up and switched off the overhead light. “Where’s the blanket?” I asked her. I took the bottle from her hand as she pulled a blanket, which was stored under her chair, from its plastic bag. I filled the sole plastic beaker that didn’t have a crack the length of it with whisky and then we pushed the arm rest up out of the way and huddled together under the blanket as we shared the drink. The water had run out an hour or so before.

“What made you decide to come with me?” she asked.

“I had to. I have had a lot of internal conflict, it’s been difficult. We met at such an inconvenient time.”

“For both of us” she added.

“Yes, and I realise, that no matter what happens in my life, no matter what route it takes, I will always be wondering how it would have been. I’ve been standing at a crossroads, do I do ‘X’, or ‘Y’? That’s may sound harsh, but do you understand? But I know I would spend my life thinking about how things would have worked between us. So here I am! On a plane! I think we both know that this is a dream though. I’m worried. I have lots of dreams with you in them. I’ve told you before; I call them ‘E dreams’.”

“Well, Mister,” she said, draining the beaker, “there’s only one way to find out!”

“The door!” I said, snapping my fingers.

This time I was out my chair as fast as she was. “Ok; A and B, you got ‘em?” I asked.

“Yeah yeah, come on!”


I grabbed at C and looked at E. She was smiling like a thief and I had to fight the urge to lean over and give her a huge kiss on the cheek. “OK,” I said. “After three.”

Clearly, neither of us had thought through the consequences of this action particularly well.

The first thing I noticed after I turned the handle was E’s smiley expression turn to one of shock and surprise as her long hair was blown up and around her head, and I heard her squeal. I lost my grip on C and fell forward just in time to grab E’s ankles as she was sucked from the plane. As the rushing air pulled me out after her, my own feet, luckily, hooked onto the rail which the emergency door normally clicked tightly against, and there we hung, like some kind of drunken trapeze act at twenty-odd thousand feet above the Atlantic Ocean. I looked back up at the plane and hoped that my feet wouldn’t cramp as I fought to remain attached to the rail. As I held tightly onto E’s ankles I was sure I could hear her voice fighting against the roaring wind and the screaming engines, shouting back up at me, shouting something about ice cream. Stretching and straining my neck I finally made eye contact with her. She didn’t seem too concerned with our current predicament.

“Ice cream,” she shouted again. She appeared to be smiling.

“What,” I yelled back, my voice almost torn away in the wind before it could even reach my ears.

She pointed down towards the clouds which skimmed past her head and then, before my very eyes, she tilted her head back and stuck her tongue out, lizard like, scooping up the clouds from below her like some parched feline. Then she looked back up at me again and grinned.

“Hey,” I shouted, “what flavour is it?”

“It’s kinda, erm,” she licked her lips, “kinda vanilla-y,” she yelled. “Tastes good though,” she added, nodding and licking her lips some more. She tilted her head back and licked at the clouds again, and then she wiped her mouth with her hand and shouted, “Want some?”

“Damn right I do. Hang on a second,” I said, and we both laughed at this silly joke. I pulled her back up until our faces were together, kissed her briefly as we hung upside-down and agreed that yes, the clouds did taste vanilla-y. She hooked her feet onto the rail at the emergency exit and then I let go, reminding her to grab my ankles as they passed, which, thankfully, she did. Anyway, the point is, thanks to the surprising fact of the flavoured clouds we forgot to determine if this was a dream or not.

It took a while but eventually we were back in our seats, although we had had a bit of difficulty getting the emergency door closed behind us – there was a slight problem getting C back into its original position. We dumped our bags on the floor in front of it to help keep it shut.

“You would think,” I said as we curled up until the blanket once again, another Glenfiddich warming between us, “that someone would have mentioned that before.”

“Mentioned what?” she asked, sounding as though she was beginning to doze off.

“Mentioned that clouds taste like vanilla ice cream. I never heard that before, did you?”

“Maybe they just … I dunno, forgot to tell us or something,” she replied sleepily.

“Hmm. Vanilla though. Who would have thought?”

“Hmm.”

“What do you think they will taste like on your side of the pond?” I asked her, although I just can’t for the life of me remember if she answered or not. Ah well, like I said, my memory isn’t what it used to be.

That's it.

A reply to Jack Moon's message.

Jack,

Christ, I forgot about those sample chapters. They are already irrelevant, the book has become an organic, slithering beast that I am struggling to keep pointing in one true direction … well, fuck it. Ben didn’t seem to keen anyway did he? Can’t you just forward the entire message? I find it hard to believe that a man of his supposed stature would stoop so low as to refer to me an ass in an email which by its very existence fuels the possibility, however vague, of future professional relations between him and us. But what do I know? On second thoughts, don’t forward it. I have enough going on right now without deciphering the old man’s nonsense. Just tell him what I keep telling you; it’s not a serialization of the book, and it isn’t the downward spiral of a wannabe writer. If the book gets published, then the blog will be the “extra stuff” that wasn’t in the book, mixed up with occasional bursts of reality like some kind of word-soup. Or word-candy (I stole this phrase from a reader, can you believe that?)

I’m going to be in the CITY over the festive period this year although at this point I have no idea if I will be alone, with E, or even with (and I know how you are going to react to this …) the guys. Not Norf though, just the other two. It’s girlfriend dependant as ever of course, but as soon as Hutch and Stepek heard I was heading in your direction their eyes began to shine – don’t take that as a compliment. They just want a legitimate excuse to leave home for a few days, toute seul.

Let’s leave it at that for now.

Jonas

A message from Jack Moon

Jonas,
I had planned on forwarding Ben's email to you this morning, but then I began to wonder about the morals of such an act so instead i will just steal words from it and type them here instead. That's not the same thing is it? I'll get to the point of his message in a minute or two, but first i must ask you if you still plan on coming back to the CITY in the next few months? I think it will help things move along a lot faster, assuming they even begin to move at all.
Ben's email asked more questions than it answered. In trying to simplify the enormous amounts of bullshit he tends to write, i have slimmed his message down to just a few of those questions and then erased some of them leaving just a couple. The first one was "Jack, what is the connection between the blog you directed me to at (I think Jack meant "and", not "at") the book the guy is supposed to be writing?" and another asked, "Which parts are fiction?" and then later he made some statements like, "If it is factual then you can forget it becuase (sic) he sounds like an ass," which means you of course. The things is, he had liked the sample chapters so maybe some clarification of what you are trying to achieve with the blog would be good because right now it seems to be putting him off you.
Jack. 

Everyone around for the night ...

Hutch was just being Hutch, while Norf lay in the corner, staring out from wherever he imagined he was with one red eye, E had popped out because K was supposed to be coming around and we had no Bombay Sapphire left over from the night before. Julie was flicking though E's magazines and looking at her watch in an attempt to pass a "can we go the fuck home now" message to Stepek who was lying on the floor with his head half hidden under the sofa, stroking the cat from downstairs and mumbling "it puts the lotion in the basket" while Rachel sat at the table and cried about ... whatever Rachel always cries about. Hutch probably. I wished I had gone with E.

To Edinburgh and back again. °4. Back to Paris at last ...

“You don’t look so well,” I told Ken as we buckled ourselves into our seats, sore headed and gunky eyed, desperately hoping for some sleep on this late-evening Geneva Paris flight.

“I’ve surely felt better,” he mumbled back at me, “I wish I had eaten some food, my stomach feels like a fish tank. Don’t talk to me Jonas, I’m miserable.” He closed his eyes and folded his hands pathetically upon his lap.

I shrugged and looked out of the window at the view over the runways, over the fence and into France. Being close to the border between two countries gives me a buzz, almost in the same way as being in the city does. On a border you always somewhere where things have happened, and while history isn’t really my thing – I convince myself that I prefer to look forward than back – I can’t help but imagine past tensions seeping from the earth and into my body. It’s a feeling I had all summer as we tore through countries and across borders in Stepek’s cab, as unstoppable as we were directionless.

“Yeeello’!” the man across the aisle from me suddenly shouts out. I snapped my head around to stare at him. He was talking on a cell phone.

“What?” he yelled into it. “Ah huh, yeah, yeah, sure ok, yeah. Yeah? Yeah! Sure, yeah, yeah, ye – ha! Sure, sure, yeah sure,” nodding pause, “yeah, uh huh, yeah,” another pause, tongue half out, then; “yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah …”

“Hey!” I yelled at him, reaching over and shoving his shoulder.

“We haven’t started moving yet buddy. I’ll switch it off when we do, ok? Mind your own business,” he said, staring at me with wide, sweating eyeballs before returning his attention to his phone again. “Yeah, yeah, uh huh …”

“No …” I tugged his sleeve.

“What?!”

“What did you say there? At the beginning, when you answered. Say it again.”

“What? I don’t know. Hello maybe. Jesus …” back to the cell, “yeah? Sure!”

I turned back to Ken, exhilarated, and yelled into his ear. “Yeeeeelllo’!” making him jump where he sat and screech like a little girl.

“What the fuck Jonas?”

“Yellow! It’s how assholes like him,” I jerked my thumb in the direction of the cell phone dickhead, “say hello!”

“Uh?”

“Dammit Hutch,” I said, leaving him to his hangover as I planned my route from Charles de Gaulle airport to Jusseiu Metro station …

and then ... and then ....

Yeah yeah, I'll get back to the story of how Ken and I got back here eventually ... but first, there was something I wanted to ask you all.

What kind of books does everyone read?

Isn't that just the worst question? Almost as bad as "what do you do?", or "what music do you like?" etc etc ... Personally, when I get asked what I read I generally lie and make up lots of Russian sounding names, but that's because I can never actually remember what I read, (which could be because the part of my mind that insists on lying leaps into action first.)

Damn, I'm rambling here.

The point being ...

... whatever. That's gone too. Anyway, just wondered what kind of stuff you read. Assuming you do read of course - I hardly do anymore, I just ... yep ... look at the pictures.

Oh yeah, the point was that I was having a conversation with someone stunning who mentioned a book blah blah blah and then blah blah and I said "no, really?" and it went on and on from there ...

*

To Edinburgh and back again. °3 : Detour into Geneva.

The temptation to fill this post with huge letters spelling out the words fucking easyjet fucking fucking fucking easyfuckingfuckingjet bastards subsided as we flew low over lake Geneva and skirted those  angular, cold and generally hard, Alps. But those foul words had been all we could utter while we sat  and ground our teeth against rum-splashed ice cubes back in the plastic Edinburgh airport bar. It had been a hellish trip, a desperate failure of a trip by all accounts, and just as we had been warming to thoughts of an early return to the city of lights we got zapped by the most predictable of predictable news: our Paris flight had been cancelled. And so had the next fucking three.
No sooner than the time it took for this dark information to appear on the screen before us, Ken and I clutched onto one another and began a crab-like running stumble through the angered masses, and then, with an uncanny sense of togetherness, we forced our way onto the escalator and into the 'food village' where we fell, breathless and still numb with anger onto a pair of welcoming barstools. We decided to take our anger out on the barman, and passed a wicked hour or more bemoaning commercial air travel in the 21st century whilst glugging down enough malt whiskey to make his suggestion of taking a flight somewhere else, like, say, Geneva, and then flying from there back up to Paris seem like a sensible idea.   After another half-hour of whiskey we began inventing our own words: Ken started this off by saying something like, "I am going to invisible-ize myself in a minute," and repeating it to everyone who came near us.
Tough negotiations at the ticket desk were abandoned in favor of simply acting sober enough to be allowed to buy tickets for the next flight to Geneva. Another hour or more in the bar-less departure lounge dried me into mid-afternoon hangover status, which messed my mood further, as did the realization that this return trip via Switzerland was a stupid and expensive idea that ultimately meant we would neither be home until midnight nor be able to afford food for the next few weeks. I looked down at Hutch, curled up and snoring at my feet, and had to fight the urge to ram the toe of my boot into his gaping mouth.
But yes, the descent onto the Geneva runway soothed my mood somewhat, the freezing but fresh Swiss air giving me a buzz as we crossed the tarmac and entered the airport, our onward journey to Paris still a vague, and in fact unconfirmed, mystery .... 

To Edinburgh and back again. °2

Each time I come back here I want to leave almost instantly - what a sad statement to make about the place where you lived the largest part of your life. It's fine to feel that way about the town you were born and brought up in - hometowns are the pits - but Edinburgh was supposed to be different, an independent awakening.

Although awaken me it did, only to things I then realized I never wanted to be, people and lifestyles I never wanted to emulate. I could go on and on here, but instead I'll just point out here that I am not talking about the people and cultures of Edinburgh in general, I am talking specifically about the people I found myself surrounded by. The Scots, on the whole, are an astounding bunch.

"She wasn't home," Ken blurted out as he crash-landed into the chair opposite me. We were down in Henry's Cellar Bar. Initially alone, I had been drifting off into my fourth rum while a dark-haired girl with an acoustic guitar played on the stage at the back of the room. Smiling hugely as she sang, I had been happily detaching myself from reality and oozing into the spirit of her lyrics before Ken arrived, frantic and smash-handed as ever.

"Fuck me Hutch, we came all this way and she's not even in? Did you call her f... ah goddamit Hutch, you don't have her number do you?" He was already shaking his head. "Well, call someone who has her number and take it from there."

"Like who?"

"Hutch, she's your sister. Surely you know someone who has her number. Your parents perhaps?"

"I seriously doubt they know she is here ... they don't even know I live in Paris. They can't see past Delaware Jonas, I don't even think they believe in Europe, never mind cope with the thought of their offspring living on it."

"Well ... in that case we will need more rum Kenneth." I threw a ten pound note at him and told him to take his time at the bar, then clapped loudly as the girl finished another epic. I clapped doubly loudly as I was annoyed at having missed most of the song because of Hutch's family dramatics. 

Suddenly it occurred to me how we could find his sister's cell number, get Hutch's gear and then get out of town.

"Stepek will surely still have her number," I said when he sat back down again. "Sorry," I added as his face darkened and his frown intensified. Being reminded that Stepek used to nail your sister must sting mightily. "Um ... also, could you just move your head a little to the left Ken, I can't see the girl over there." I pointed past him towards the stage and gave him a wobbly smile.

"I'm going outside to phone him," he said, standing, still looking dark. The last thing I heard him say as he stomped his way towards the doorway was something along the lines of "he better not have it ..." At least, I think thats what he was saying.

"And ask him about the yellow thing," I shouted, sliding back into my rum and returning my attention to the stage once more.

To Edinburgh and back again. °1

During the hour or so of the short, greasyjet flight, Ken and I must have consumed as much rum as we would on the nine hour trek across the pond, so desperate were we to escape the scene. Doesn’t it seems to be the goal of some companies to take everything that used to be enjoyable about air travel and chuck it out the emergency exit? Damn them.

Hutch had begun some murmuring immediately after take-off while I buried my nose into my zoom-book. I soon discovered though that I was already too far gone to write anything of worth, way past the point of critical assessment. I had slammed that zoom-book closed and rammed it into the mesh pocket before me.

“Yellow,” I said to Hutch as I tapped my pen furiously against my knuckles. He replied with a lazy, pale, “Huh?”

“Yellow. The word Yellow Hutch. Tell me the first thing that crosses your mind when I say … no, forget it. Give me that.” I snatched from his hand the emergency escape plan and wrote the word Yellow, followed by an exclamation mark, across the top, digging in hard with my ball-point to leave an impression on the laminated fear-sheet.

“Yellow!” he shouted, holding the card before him. “That’s the color of cowardice.”

“Cowardice, of course!” I replied. It gave me cause to think. “Ken, do you think I am a coward perhaps?"

“No.” He shook his head viscously. “No I can’t think of any situation I have witnessed in which I would have said, or after the event, either assumed or even thought that you are a coward. Were a coward.” He looked at me, wide eyed. “Christ. Did that even make sense? I feel quite drunk already.”

I looked away. “Yellow belly,” I said slowly, drawing out each syllable and exaggerating the movement of my mouth. Then I said; “old yeller,” the same way. I shook my head a little and then turned once more to Ken. “What was 'Old Yeller' again?”

“Uh, a film wasn’t it? About a tree or something? J, what’s all this yellow talk? I don’t like it. It’s sobering me up.”

I shared out some more rum and told him the story of the magazine in the Metro. A week or more had passed since that night.

“Yellow?” he said. “A yellow what? You should have asked Stepek, J. He would know, or at least come up with a good idea.”

“Stepek! Of course! Ken have you switched your cell off?”

“Ha! Are you serious? What if we are going to crash and I need to call Rachel? I may not even have the three minutes it takes the damn thing to boot up.”

“I thought as much. Give it to me!”