Indian masseur, though. I fixed up the front room for him, instead.
For the opening of Cleo's Casino, the players and guests arrived in the early evening. Serge and a dozen Indians crowded into the kitchen. 'Why are so many Goans here?' I whispered to Serge.
'I suspect they're plain curious. News of your dinner is all over the beach.'
As I'd expected, too many people came, but it sorted itself out, with some uninvited leaving and others sitting at tables against the wall. I sat at one end of the main table, and Serge—who ran back and forth to the kitchen—sat at the other. After we consumed the appetizer, which had been waiting an the table, I grandly rang the brass bell I had bought for the occasion. Expecting one Goan to come through the swinging doors (made at my design by the carpenter), I was aghast when no fewer than eight, of all ages, dashed into the room, picking plates from whichever side was closest and plopping down the next course.
Oh, no! I wanted to the. Hadn't they read my instructions? Arid crushing chaos, I flew into the kitchen crying. 'Serge! Did you see that? An army charged in with the next course!'
'Miss Cleo, everything's fine. This is Goa, not Las Vegas. Relax. Here, taste this.'
And so passed the first formal dinner on Anjuna Beach. Though I couldn't eat more than a bite, Serge's Boeuf Bourguignon was supreme, and everyone agreed it was a Goa first. During dessert, I sensed the players were antsy to start the game. They retreated to the boudoir-turned game-room upstairs, where I had everything arranged on a green tablecloth to match the green walls. The others moved to the living room, where a party began. Frantically I ran around coddling guests.
'Will you calm down!' said Serge. 'Relax and enjoy your party. It's sensational.'
It really was sensational. People came and went all night. I limited the upstairs spectators so there wouldn't be too much noise. In the bedroom I laid out the opium, but the people who tried to smoke succeeded only in splattering brown goo on the linoleum floor. Egads, my linoleum! As prearranged, the masseur arrived in the morning. I had eggs and toast brought in for the interested people, while most of the players stayed upstairs with the game. For lunch I ordered a buffet placed within reach of the poker table, so nobody would be discouraged from nourishment by distance.
Late in the afternoon, Serge announced he was leaving for a while.
'Where are you going?'
'I have things to do. I be back.'
'Ohhhhh, must you?'
As soon as he left I felt depressed. I was exhausted. My nerves were frayed from pre party anxiety plus a ton of coke. How could he leave me? Where was he going? To his wife? Another one of his girlfriends? I felt abandoned. SO tired.
After a last check for problems, I hung a blanket over the platform downstairs and crawled underneath to rest. Where was Serge? I hugged my knees and cried. Too much coke. Not enough sleep. No food.
Too wired to doze, I lay there miserable. Crowds no longer packed each room—almost everyone was upstairs, with one or two in the dining room and someone in the front room getting a massage. The house was quiet, with only an occasional curse from the game and murmurs filtering from the hack. I couldn't dose my eyes. They popped open and filled with tears. Giving up on sleep, I crawled out and wandered about feeling lost. I didn't offer dinner and stopped emptying ashtrays. Serge didn't return till morning.
Happy to see him, I couldn't be angry. As the game neared its final hours, I recorded the event with my movie camera. Doctor Bo, slightly Coke Amuck and paranoid, scowled at me through the viewfinder. I laughed. Another heap of coke and Serge's return had cheered me considerably. I didn't even mind trudging up and down the stairs to open the door, where my imported-from-Bombay doorbell now rang repeatedly.
'
Petra slunk in with one palm raised to her forehead like an Apache on the warpath. 'WHAT'S going ON here. The WHOLE beach is Talking about it.'
Serge went from nostril to nostril, dispensing snorts of coke. Ashley climbed on a table and fanned herself with an ostrich feather as she watched the end of the game. She placed herself in Dayid's line of vision to lend support during his bout of losing.
'ABOMINATION!' said Dayid forcefully, throwing down another hand of cards. 'That onerous luck!'
That night, after everyone finally left. Serge and I lay downstairs under the platform, and I fell asleep in his arms.
Before he left, Dayid had handed me my share of the winnings—$ 465. That's all? It should have been more. Apparently, seeing how fast the money had been piling up, the players decided to stop putting aside a percentage for Inc. Not fair! With my habits, a few hundred dollars wouldn't last long at all.
'So when's the next game?' Serge asked when I woke up a day later.
I gave him a dirty look. 'Please. I don't think I could five through another one of those.' That was the last of Cleo's Casino.
As the end of the season came closer and closer, the weather grew hotter and hotter. Serge stopped visiting his wife every week. 'Last time I went, I found her latest boyfriend using my toothbrush,' he exclaimed. 'My toothbrush! A dirty, creepy junky. She has no finesse!'
Then one day Serge left India to do business.
And once again I returned to Neal.
April brought my birthday. To celebrate, Neal and I taxied to the Fort Aguada Hotel, the fanciest in Goa, an hour's drive away. We ordered an exquisite dinner in the elegant dining room and snorted our lines of coke off the tablecloth. As usual we couldn't eat much, but we enjoyed the food tremendously by slinging it across the room from the ends of our forks. Afterward, we strolled through the Lobby and squeezed together on a chaise lounge by the pool, where we kissed and snuggled. For a birthday present Neal gave me a diamond nose pin. We joked over which side of my nose I should pierce. We didn't return to Anjuna till noon.
Too much coke. Not enough sleep. No food.
'WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE GOING TO EVE’S? NOT NOW!'
'We've been gone all night.'
'BUT IT’S MY BIRTHDAY!'
'I have to go.'
'DON’T GO.'
He left. I was crushed.
As each day became hotter than the one before, things also became crazier. Too much coke, not enough sleep, and no food induced a sharp edged insanity. Sometimes, alone in the house, I'd hear noises and imagine someone had broken in. Naked, I'd tear through the rooms shouting at the intruder. In one hand I held a kerosene lamp, in the other—raised above my head—a hammer.
'WHERE ARE YOU? I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE COME OUT!' An hour could go by and I'd still be opening closets, hunting the hiding person I knew was there. 'HERE I COME. I’M GOING TO GET YOU!!'
Feeling like Roy Rogers, I chased shadows and battled the silent, coke-warped air.
Neal was no less Coke Amuck, and I feared he'd set the house on fire. I'd watch him stagger through the living room with a kerosene lamp, which he'd then balance on the edge of something; and I'd think—one of those lamps is going to fall and set the saris on fire, it's inevitable.
Fire had been a childhood fear of mine. The image of it torching my skin had terrified me. Now, the sight of Neal with a kerosene lamp in his band aroused the old nightmares.
So I went to Panjim to buy a fire extinguisher—heavy, bulky, industrial sized. And I slept with it. Neal and I no longer slept in the bedroom, partly because it was too hot up there, but mostly because we slept wherever we ended up nodding out. After days awake and spacey, one of us might say to the other: 'Maybe we should sleep. Has it been a longtime?' It was this thing to do. When I felt ready. I'd take my standard sleeping potion—five mandies and twenty Valium (smack too, but that didn't count; that was 'normal'). Then I'd do an immense line of coke to last me till the pills worked. Scientific. But what usually happened was that I'd be speeding like mad when the downs finally took effect. So I'd be falling over and stumbling around, yet wide awake. Hours would pass, and with them the effect of the pills. Which meant I'd have to start the process over—more pills to sleep, more coke to amuse me till I slept.
