Audé tore the sweat-soaked sheets from his legs and stumbled toward the bathroom in that seedy Rawlapindi hotel room for what seemed like the hundred-thousandth time in three days, then collapsed retching over the stinking bowl.
There was absolutely nothing left to come up. He had projectile-vomited the last chunks of that unidentifiable curried-something two days earlier, and now there was nothing left in his system but angry Pakistani microbes stubbornly refusing to leave.
He hadn't felt this bad since that night in senior year in high school when he and Tommy got drunk. It was the only time in Audé's life that he ever drank, and he was up until six in the morning, hurling his guts out and begging his mother not to leave his side.
This time, though, he was alone, with nothing to keep him company but those damn travel brochures that Rai had given him, touting the country's resplendent natural beauty. He had suggested Audé take a day trip to see K-2, the second highest mountain in the world, towering more than 20,000 feet above sea level on the Pakistan side of the Himalayas. "K-2, my ass," Audé thought. K-2 was 17 hours of hard driving away from Rawlapindi, through some of the most rugged, and now dangerous country in the world.
Chalk that up as just one more thing Rai screwed up on this trip. He had screwed up everything, as a matter fact, Audé thought. Audé wasn't even supposed to be in Rawlapindi, this squalid, teeming, angry slum that cuts around the edges of Islamabad like a scar.
Joseph Rai's leather connection told him that he was supposed to have been sent to Karachi, 600 miles to the south, and that meant that Joseph had to drive all the way to Karachi to get the samples and then back again.
Now Audé was holed up in this rundown hotel waiting for Joseph to return without so much as a phone number to get hold of him and check on his progress.
Well, at least he had some spending money. Yeah, right. Before he left, Joseph had slipped Audé a 1,000 Rupee bill, and told him, "It's like 200 American bucks."
It's like 17 American bucks, Audé discovered when he tried to go for a night on the town, and instead had to settle for a leprous bowl of some microbe-infested curry. Still, he had enough left over to hit an Internet café. That's when he got the news. Missy's mother had died.
"I should have been there," he said, for the ten-thousandth time in three days as he stumbled back from the bathroom and collapsed on the sweat soaked bed.
It was 6:10 a.m. when the phone rang in Audé's room a shrill Third World jangle that lodged in his joints and rattled his teeth. The concierge the obsequious desk clerk who Joseph had instructed to keep an eye on Audé four days earlier was calling to tell him that Joseph had finally returned.
"Send him up," Audé said.
He and Joseph made small talk while Audé inspected the bag Joseph had fetched from Karachi. Deep in his heart, he was hoping that he'd find some flaw, some reason to leave the bag behind, but the leather all looked good, and Audé grabbed it, and headed off to catch a cab to the airport.
"See you next time," Joseph said.
"Yeah, right. See you next time, Audé responded, thinking to himself, "not a chance."
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