Orange is the New Black - Страница 3

My companion gasped and shrank back in his seat. “Don’t!” he shouted.

I looked at him, disgusted and perplexed. Our taxi driver took the money from me and handed it out his window to the beggar. We rode on in silence.

WE HAD tons of time to kill. We blew off steam in Bali beach clubs, Jakarta military pool halls, and nightclubs like Tanamur that were borderline brothels. Nora and I shopped, got facials, or journeyed to other parts of Indonesia -just the two of us, girl time. We didn’t always get along.

During a trip to Krakatoa we hired a guide to lead us on a hike in the mountains, which were covered by dense, humid jungle growth. It was hot, sweaty going. We stopped to eat lunch by a beautiful river pool at the top of a towering waterfall. After a skinny-dip, Nora dared me-double-dog-dared me, to be precise-to jump off the falls, which were at least thirty-five feet high.

“Have you seen people jump?” I asked our guide.

“Oh yes, miss,” he said, smiling.

“Have you ever jumped?”

“Oh no, miss!” he said, still smiling.

Still, a dare was a dare. Naked, I began to crawl down the rock that seemed like the most logical jumping place. The falls roared. I saw the churning, opaque green water far below. I was terrified, and this suddenly seemed like a bad idea. But the rock was slippery, and as I tried in vain to edge back like a crab, I realized that I was going to have to jump; there was no other way. I gathered all of my physical strength and flung myself off the rock and into the air, shrieking as I plunged deep into the green gorge below. I burst the surface, laughing and exhilarated. Minutes later Nora came howling down the falls after me.

When she popped up, she gasped, “You are crazy!”

“You mean you wouldn’t have gone if I had been too scared to jump?” I asked, surprised.

“No fucking way!” she replied. Right then and there I should have understood that Nora was not to be trusted.

Indonesia offered what seemed like a limitless range of experience, but there was a murky, threatening edge to it. I’d never seen such stark poverty as what was on display in Jakarta, or such naked capitalism at work in the enormous factories and the Texas drawls coming from across the hotel lobby where the oil company executives were drinking. You could spend a lovely hour chatting at the bar with a grandfatherly Brit about the charms of San Francisco and his prize greyhounds back in the U.K., and when you took his business card on the way out, he would explain casually that he was an arms dealer. When I rode the elevator to the top of the Jakarta Grand Hyatt at dusk, stepped into the lush garden there, and began to run laps on the track that circuited the roof, I could hear the Muslim call to prayer echoing from mosque to mosque throughout the entire city.

After many weeks I was both sad and relieved to say goodbye to Indonesia and head back to the West. I was homesick.

For four months of my life, I traveled constantly with Nora, occasionally touching down in the States for a few days. We lived a life of relentless tension, yet it was also often crushingly boring. I had little to do, other than keep Nora company while she dealt with her “mules.” I would roam the streets of strange cities all alone. I felt disconnected from the world even as I was seeing it, a person without purpose or place. This was not the adventure I craved. I was lying to my family about every aspect of my life and growing sick and tired of my adopted drug “family.”

During a brief stay in the States to visit with my real and very suspicious family, I received a call from Nora, who said that she needed me to meet her in Chicago. O’Hare Airport was known as a “safe” airport, whatever that meant, and it was where the drugs were flown. I met her at the Congress Hotel on Michigan Avenue. What a dump, I thought. I was used to the Mandarin Oriental. Nora explained tersely that she needed me to fly out the next day, carrying cash to be dropped off in Brussels. She had to do this for Alaji, and I had to do it for her. She never asked anything of me, but she was asking now. Deep down I felt that I had signed up for this situation and could not say no. I was scared. And I agreed to do it.

IN EUROPE things took a darker turn. Nora’s business was getting harder for her to maintain, she was taking reckless chances with couriers, and that was a very scary thing. Her partner Jack joined us in Belgium, and things went downhill rapidly. I thought he was greedy, lecherous, and dangerous. And I could see that Nora trusted him far more than she cared for me.

I was scared and miserable, retreating into almost constant silence as we all moved from Belgium to Switzerland. I moped around Zurich alone, while Nora and Jack schemed. I saw The Piano three times in a row, gratefully transported to another place and time as I cried throughout the movie.

When Nora informed me in no uncertain terms that she wanted me to carry drugs, I knew that I was no longer valuable to her unless I could make her money. Obediently I “lost” my passport and was issued a new one. She costumed me in glasses, pearls, and a pair of ugly loafers. With makeup she tried in vain to cover up the fish tattooed on my neck. I was told to get a conservative haircut. Caught in a cold Saturday afternoon rainstorm trying to find a hairdresser who would transform my overgrown blond tresses into something presentable, I staggered dripping into a tiny salon, the fifth I had tried. I had been met with an arctic Swiss reception in the previous four, but now a soft familiar accent asked, “Y’all need some help?”

I almost cried when I saw the fellow who was asking-a sweet young southerner named Fenwick who looked like Terence Trent D’Arby. He took my wet coat, sat me down in his chair, and gave me hot tea and a haircut. He was curious but gentle when I balked at explaining myself or my presence in his salon. He talked about New Orleans, music, and Zurich. “It’s a great city, but we have a terrible heroin problem here. You see people just lying in the streets, out of it.” I felt ashamed. I wanted to go home. I thanked Fenwick profusely as I left his salon, the only friend I’d made in months.

At any time, with one phone call, my family would have helped rescue me from this mess of my own making, yet I never placed that call. I thought I had to tough it out on my own. I alone had signed up for this misadventure, and I alone would navigate it to some conclusion, although I was now petrified that it might be a very dismal end.

Nora and Alaji developed an elaborate and risky scheme to switch suitcases inside the Zurich airport, but mercifully the drugs she wanted me to carry never showed up, and I narrowly avoided becoming a drug courier. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before disaster would strike, and I was in way over my head. I knew I had to escape. When we got back to the States, I took the first flight to California I could get. From the safety of the West Coast I broke all ties with Nora and put my criminal life behind me.

CHAPTER 2. It All Changed in an Instant

San Francisco was a welcome refuge-I might be a freak, but at least I was among many. I found a place on the Lower Haight with my old friend Alfie, a brewery coworker from back east who was now living in San Francisco. I was shell-shocked and felt like a smoking chunk of SkyLab that had crashed through the atmosphere back to Earth. When Alfie wasn’t around, I would sit on the floor of our apartment and ponder what I had done, astonished by how far afield I had wandered and how willing I had been to abandon myself on the journey. I vowed that I would never relinquish my sense of self again, to anything or anyone.

After spending months in the underworld, it took a while to get used to a normal life. I had been living on room service, exoticism, and anxiety for a long time. But I had several great friends from college now in the Bay Area who took me under their wing, pulling me into a world of work, barbecues, softball games, and other wholesome rituals. I quit smoking.

I was terrified all the time about money and immediately got two jobs. I rose early in the morning to get to job one in the Castro, opening Josie’s Juice Joint and Cabaret at seven A.M., and I got home late at night after hostessing at a swank Italian restaurant across town in Pacific Heights. Finally, I got a “real” job at a TV production company that specialized in infomercials. The job required coaxing passersby onto bizarre exercise equipment in public places, tending to the needs of C-list celebrities on set, and waxing facial hair off perfect strangers. I flew all over the country, filming people who wanted to be less fat, less poor, less wrinkled, less lonely, or less hairy. I found that I could talk to just about anyone, whether it was Bruce Jenner or a mom with a mustache, and find some common ground with them quickly-I wanted to be less poor, lonely, and hairy too. I worked my way up from Gal Friday to a real producer, working on preproduction, filming, and editing for broadcast. I loved my job, much to the amusement of my friends, who would tease me about the latest late-night life-changing widget, scheme, or cream.

I dated but still felt pretty crispy and gun-shy after the flame-out with Nora. I was fine being serially single, with the occasional crazy romance thrown in to distract me from work.

I never talked about my involvement with Nora to new friends, and the number of people who knew my secret remained very small. As time passed, I gradually relaxed inside my head. I started to feel as though there were no second shoe, and it had all been a crazy interlude. I thought I understood risk. I considered my time abroad with Nora as a crash course on the realities of the world, how ugly things can get, and how important it is to stay true to yourself even in the midst of an adventure or experiment. In my travels I had encountered all kinds of people whose dignity seemed to have a price-widely variable-and I thought that next time I had better set my price higher than anyone would pay.