4.2 The Doors

In a matter of days, Shalin’s family settled, bills paid, rent paid. There were two guys: a school-going boy and her own brother. They probably slept on couches in the sitting room.

In my petite cubicle, I kept a small collection of surfboards. Among them, I own a rare beautiful piece of a hollow wood longboard, shaped and designed by hand, grossly polished and kept in its original cover. Six boards placed by the wall behind the bed. I locked the door and carefully lowered the piece without making the slightest noise to disclose a crack in the wall.

There were holes in the crack that gave view of the big room on the other side of the wall. I even grinded the crack to widen a gap from my side so that I could put my eye on it and get a wider vision. From the other side it looked like a fine crack in the wall. It did not block even after painting.

After peering for an hour, I began to grasp that there were three mattresses placed on the floor. This bedroom had a bright light if lit. Most of the time it remained in night light.

I caught a glimpse of the girls changing clothes in the room. Only their hips came in view. One night I saw a knee moving right next to the peephole. She was lying on a bed placed close to the wall. I could not see the girls while lying on the mattresses placed on the floor. When the bed sleeper got up one morning, I saw her wearing a pair of white panties. It could probably be Shalin.

Few days later, I enquired Asmr about his magic that could do a trick perhaps to solve my problem. Asmr is a strange character who says their folks hate the gods. It is not like not believing in a god but put their scares in gods whom they think run a White House from above – as below.

Asmr belongs to the Divi Tribe of Nativa – better known as the aborigines of Los Varados. For them folks, necessity knows no bounds – requires no laws. They keep an unusual custom in their heritage; folks wear amulets and girdles on their hips, draw eyeliners and dip in bare skin on moonlit nights in the Bight of Nativa. They enter the water in a sacred piece of garment of a square-shaped black wrap called a falda. Everything is divi for them.

“What exactly is your problem?” he asked.

I explained and told him, “I want the girl to come to me, not the other way around.”

Asmr said, “I know a very powerful black magic to raise the anzala of fahsha in a woman that’ll kill herself to get to you. Even if she has to cross an ocean, she’ll walk on water or drown at it.”

“Great! What do I have to do?”

“Simple,” he said, “Get me a black orchid.”

“Black orchid?”

“A very rare black orchid,” he explicated, “Black Pearl or Midnight Blue. Green, purple, white, red, orange, won’t do.”

“Where can I find a black orchid?”

“It’s not as easy as you think.”

“It must be in Maldivia Gardens,” that was Jokey who suggested that.

“No,” said Asmr, “you won’t find it there. It is in the woods of Enselvado. You need to dive deep and comb for it.”

“Five miles of hill country!” uttered Murry.

“Five and a half,” corrected Asmr.

Maldivia Gardens in Eden Well contains plants of angiosperm or flowering species in tens of thousands. On the east foothills and not too far from Azul. However, the woods and the hills of Enselvado stretches from north to Devil Hill in the south, some five and a half miles. Thickly wooded like a rainforest and not easy to go in. A vineyard and hemp fields, vast grassland, lie further towards Point South.

“Mode goes to Devil Hill,” said Murry.

Mode claims he belongs to Kenya. He climbed a cargo ship in a dock and hid in the hold. Halfway through the trip, he was apprehended. They dropped him on a raft in the middle of the ocean. He was picked by some divers in the Azul. These days he worked for his boss keeping an observatory on Devil Hill.

“We do not have time for that,” I thought.

“There are options,” said the guru, “Cockroach-on-a-string! For that I need to sit and recite with a roach tied to a brass nail. Another mundane ritual is Mundar if you dare. For these things you need strands of hair from the subject. And you need to observe a procedure.”

“Is it difficult?” I enquired.

“No,” Asmr shook his head, “the hardest part is to get a lock of hair.”

“That is the easy bit,” I claimed, “I can pick a hair from their trash.”

“No. You won’t know whose hair it is. You must get hairs from her whiskers. If you can, I suggest you go with Mundar,” and he explained.

I was stunned with his insane idea of peeing in front of the girl.

“Have you done this before?” asked Murry.

“It’s taboo. I don’t do these things now,” said the guru, “I do simple stuff for headaches and…and…”

“And what?”

“Never mind!”

“And what?”

“Abortion.”

“Damn! That’s taboo too!”

 

If you are on a deserted island with one album or an artist, just one album, what would be your choice? Plenty. We can’t cut it down to a single artist or an album. My three choices in that case would be Delbert McClinton, Bob Seger and Joe Cocker.

If you ask me, what would be the artist or album that you would not take? My response will be The Doors.

Last two months I have been listening to Riders on the Storm played repeatedly on a cassette tape player. I’m talking about one of the greatest songs ever done but if you can’t hear its bass, the drums, the keyboards and this tune going on and on, it gets caught in your ears and you start to hear it constantly like a tinnitus. Particularly, if you have no feed, no kick, no booze, no wine or a bottle, as we call it.

A cassette tape recorder, I believe it was, while we do not have cassette tapes on the racks in the shops. Maybe that was the reason Shalin’s brother was left with this one album of The Doors and played it repeatedly on his deck. And what was he doing in there! I found it out much later. He was a dope.

Meanwhile, my routine was, when Jokey comes, I lock the door to my kitchen cubicle and in few minutes, it’s filled with smoke. Jokey comes every five minutes. As soon as he steps on the road, he gets a sugar pack and he comes back to smoke his piece with me.

One night, mid of the night, we fell asleep on the floor after finishing a bottle. When I woke up, I saw Jokey standing beside my computer. Holy shit! He was standing there and peeing on to the keyboard half asleep.

If I date a girl, we have to cross the passage from my cubicle to the kitchen. My tenants are used to this and I am accustomed to their lifestyle. East wing girls see to their boyfriends to do a lot of interaction in the little airy space by the corner.

One day I saw that tiny girl called Natasha on the drumstick tree over the wall as I parked outside my gate. I stepped on to the entryway and poked my head through the arched wall opening to the east wing and looked up at her. She wore a pair of beach shorts, thin legs sticking out of big leg holes. I saw coal black grass on her crotch.

Before Shalin came, one day, Sabo came and said that the glass on the door had broken. His door was fixed with a thick clear glass panel, a heavy door, painted with black frames.

“My wife in a rage threw a high heel at me. It hit the glass and cracked.”

I asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

And he said, “I cannot fix a glass sheet but I can mend it with a plywood board.”

That day I went to the east wing to have a look at the broken door. I noticed he had blocked an opening in the rear side of the room where I planted a tree to bring in some fresh air. Now this room looked entirely dark and mattresses placed into the depths where I could not see a thing.

I told him, “You better do it fast and remove the broken glass. It could be unsafe with kids staying here.”

They weren’t really kids except for one child, his daughter. He thought I should get married to one of the girls but I dismissed those ideas. I usually do not talk anything personal. And I don’t go to help him or his wife out of brawls. I mean real tough brawls and awfully loud. If Shalin was in, she would often step up to the arched door and get engaged. I do not think she helps anyway to calm them down. I figured that I have not seen Shalin wearing briefs. I try to imagine her because I am a dreamer.

I hear voices. I hear noises. I hear doors banging and girls screaming. One day Sabo’s wife got made with him for buying a book for a girl student. She was saying, “What kind of a stick got into you to buy her books!” Stick meaning an erection.

I began to see new faces, little faces, more girls and kissing cousins. I assume there’d be eight sleepers in the east wing. Family life and I’m lucky not to have a bird nest or that kind of trouble.

Jokey and I sit and listen to boyfriends and girlfriends shouting, screaming and screeching, quarrelsome over wrong dates.