Version 1 after first round with Editor
I wandered out into the cool night air and headed away from the quiet end of Roma Norte towards the bars along the Avenida Álvaro Obregón. Then I stopped to look at a bulletin on the door of a jazz café when suddenly a man pulled me by the arm and shoved me inside.
Alice slipped her arm under mine as if to seek protection in the folds of my body but I felt like a child warmed in her embrace. Each step we took through the mist revealed a new tree broken from its roots and lain flat on grass that shone with the morning dew. I asked: "Why does your father always talk to me about religion?"
When the woman I was making love to turned into a pig I knew that I had become too cynical. I watched her face fill out, her cheeks lose their definition and her nose turn up at me to form a perfectly cylindrical snout. Her skin became rough. It became pockmarked and covered in fine grey hairs and then her mouth widened and opened up to reveal a coarse and unclean set of teeth.
Haroun was of a naturally nervous disposition. Already self-conscious and clumsy, this also made him appear stupid in other people's eyes which then exaggerated his already scattered behaviour.
The countdown had begun; music span from the speakers, clubbers jumped up, arms in the air, shouted each number, thirty-nine, thirty-eight, thirty-seven, music beating each second with its rhythm. Alone in a corner, slumped against the wall, thinking, I was trying to remember the year that was nearly over. How apt it was to be single, now, just as I had been when it had begun.
Jed took hold of the dried lizards, I took the bong and together we ran to the train. A three foot bong is difficult enough to handle without having both hands occupied with plastic bags of food and drink, and a rucksack on your back. I pinched it under my arm and stepped out from the tourist waiting room into a calm night heat. The sounds of Beijing eluded us on the platform.
We'd gone to Dali, to a market on the lake, but Ben had fallen ill with dysentery so we hadn't been able to stay long. In fact it had gotten so bad that we had to get him to Xichang to find help. I too, had run up a fever after we'd been caught on the hills in the rain with only our T-shirts... It was only Darius who was OK.
I'm a-walking down Nathan Road with a strut in my legs like I'm dancing, the crowds thick as steam off the paving. Cars are pressed cheek to cheek and blowing fury and the neon billboards stretch into the middle of the road ends touching and bouncing fire red and orange; and I'm seeing all this on my toes, alive with the noise rattling in my ears, the clatter of kettle drums and disco beats, and high pitched screams like noodle sucks and slurps and the slice of a gaggling chicken throat.
It would be a long bus journey from Lijiang to get there and it was not clear where I would stay once I was there. The guide books did not show anything. And it was not certain why it was off limits. Perhaps it was a route, albeit circuitous to Tibet. Perhaps it was because the society who lived there was matriarchal.
All around the walls hung heavy sequined tapestries. Scenes of death, love, of the battle; of evil and good; of the demons and the heroes of the Ramakien, all portrayed in relief. Rich gold embossed details on coarse brown fabric. A Burmese man sat at a table tuning a receiver to the World Service.
