Tapas on the Ramblas (14 page)

Could he afford them? Was he desperate for money? And one of the two men was hauling around an awful lot of extra cash; especially on an all-expense-paid cruise. Why? Was it to pay for bad habits or the good life? Or for murder?

"Good morning, passengers!" Judy Smythwicke's singing voice spilled from the ship's PA system like syrup from a bottle. "And what a delightful morn it is here in Tunisia! Now, just a few tips for the day.

Remember this is a conservative country, so please dress accordingly. No bare legs, no bare shoulders. I'd keep my expensive jewellery at home today ladies, if I were you."

Oh come on Judy, I thought to myself as I awoke from a deep slumber, it's the guys who have the jewels on this boat.

"And do beware of purse snatchers and pickpockets," she suggested as gaily as if she were recommending arugula salad over Caesar for lunch. "And I must tell you I spy a few clouds lollygag-ging about, so I do suggest a parasol even though it does appear to be bluing up nicely on the horizon."

Parasol? Bluing up? Judy Smythwicke was beginning to irritate me.

Dress conservatively. No bare legs. No bare shoulders. No jewellery. How could any serious drag queen abide by those rules, I wondered to myself, correctly predicting that many would choose to stay on board and get stinking drunk by the pool. Go
d help us all when we returned.
 

As Charity considered Tunis the most exotic of our stops, she'd requested that Richard arrange a tour guide and bus for the sole use of the Wisers for the day. So after being processed by Tunisian Immigration, while the other passengers were being crammed into a few large buses, we were being met by a little brown man in a freshly pressed brown shirt and brown trousers named Azib who led us to a roomy, air-conditioned minibus.

Even though Errall and I sat together while we waited for whatever it is one waits for before a tour bus can leave, we said little more than two words to each other. I hadn't gotten much sleep and by the looks of it, neither had she. Not until you see someone early in the morning, before coffee, cosmetics and a comb can you really call yourselves friends. Errall was working on all three in a disjointed manner. Her nearly cold coffee was slopping about in a Styrofoam cup while she tried with her free hand to manipulate a makeup mirror, hairbrush and stick of lip gloss. All with little success.

"Truce," I called as I grabbed the coffee and mirror from her, putting the coffee between my knees and holding the mirror up in front of her face so she could finish her ministrations.

"Of course," she quickly agreed, assessing her face in the mirror. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I just wanted to be alone, y'know?"

"Sure," I said offhandedly but saying nothing more. I wasn't in the mood to get into it right then; I just didn't want to spend the day not talking to one another. So while she fixed her face, I surveyed the bus.

All the Wisers were on board except Harry's father and grandfather, Jackson and Patrick who'd both decided to remain on board. I also noticed that Flora, obviously heeding the dress code to the extreme, had returned to her former drabness, leaving last night's metamorphosis in an abandoned pile of fabulousness somewhere on the ship. Phyllis would be crushed.

"That didn't mean you had to stay out half the night," she said, a mischievous glimmer appearing in her two blues as she peeked out at me over the top edge of the mirror.

"Can you believe we're in Northern Africa?" I tried for a segue.

"You slept with Richard," she said, digging in a satchel for some cream stuff.

"We were dancing."

"You're walking bull-legged. Where is he? How's he walking? Isn't he coming along on this junket?"

"No." And I was glad. I didn't want to talk about this. "He's with some of his other clients today."

"That so? Or in his cabin recovering?"

"I liked it better when we weren't talking."

"Give me back my coffee and it's a deal."

Over the jabbering of the Wisers I heard the bus grunt to life. The door closed and we began to move. I handed Errall her coffee and she allowed herself to be distracted by the moving landscape on the other side of her window. I began to lay my plans. It was time to divide and conquer. I'd now had a chance to meet all the players in the game. It was time to assess each one's level of suspicion.

I decided to begin with Ted and Marsha Moshier. Of everyone, except possibly Patrick Halburton, and after last night, Nick Kincaid, they seemed to be the most disgruntled of the bunch on this trip. Their dislike-particularly Marsha's-for Charity simmered below a surface of fakery. Her dislike for gay people, like Charity and Dottie, was even more obvious and she appeared to be continuously distressed about having her children, particularly the twins, Nigel and Nathan, under the influence, so to speak, of a bunch of lezzies and fairies. I knew from their own daughter, Kayla, that their marriage was on the rocks. I was curious to see what else I might find out if I spent some time with them. I didn't relish the
thought but I was on the clock.
 

As the bus haltingly made its way through a section of diplomats' residences to the massive Cathedral of St. Louis atop someplace called Byrsa Hill, it became abundantly clear to us that Azib was a clever man who knew English very well and did not suffer fools gladly. As a result, he did most of the talking and, except for a fearless Charity, few of us asked questions. This was okay as he seemed to predict most anything we'd want to know, explaining in depth every structure, rock formation and vegetable we passed, tossing in some rather colourful and, I think, politically fiery conjecture along the way.

Whenever possible throughout the day, I positioned myself close to Ted and Marsha, engaging them in small talk, getting them used to me hanging around, waiting for a chance to do my detecting shtick. Along the way we visited the few remaining pebbles of Carthage, which was once the dominating power in the western half of the Mediterranean until some Russell Crowe-like Romans threw a tantrum and destroyed it all. The Antonine Baths were not at all what I'd reckoned on for a gay tour. Then we stopped in a lovely whitewashed town called Sidi Bou Said which, unexpectedly, looked liked every whitewashed-walls-blue-shutters-bougainvillea-covered Greek isle village you've ever seen on a postcard. According to Azib, long before the Romans came along, the Greeks also tried to conquer Carthage. Although they tried for about two hundred years, yet never succeeded, it certainly looked as if they'd left behind an interior decorator or two.

Our last stop of the day was for a late lunch and shopping in the city of Tunis itself. We drove through rather modern-looking streets clogged with modern-looking traffic jams, and ended up in a parking lot near a massive, flagstone square where sharply dressed businesspeople mixed with schleppy students and housewives with children, none of whom covered their faces with fabric. And there were tourists, lots of tourists.

As we stepped off the bus into this unknown world, Azib raised a yellow umbrella high over his head.

Had Judy Smythwicke gotten to him too?

"It is a beacon," he told us in his clipped accent. "Where we're going is very, very crowded," he warned. "If you fall behind, just keep your eyes on the sunshade."

It seemed ridiculous at first as we paraded through the spacious square. We looked like a group of grade school children on a field trip being led by an overly cautious teacher. But then, just as suddenly as dusk can turn into night, the modern world around us disappeared when Azib led us through a doorway. I thought it was the entrance to a restaurant. Instead we were in the medina-the old quarter, a maze of narrow alleyways with patchwork roofs of battered tin and cardboard. It was as if we'd stepped into a tunnel. If any of our group was claustrophobic, I felt sorry for them. Immediately, that once silly umbrella became a yellow lifesaver floating above a swirling sea of heads.

The medina is a place that has lost some of its importance in many modern Arab cities, but many still consider it a sacred place where traditions of hundreds of years are practiced and continue to prosper. In Tunis, the medina appeared alive and well with its bustling alleyways lined with shops (called souks) and eateries offering a mind-boggling array of goods and foods. The air was thick with humidity and the cloying aromas of smoke, leather, ripened fruit, riper fish, old rugs and newly dyed fabric hung in it like smog.

As my head spun on its axis attempting to take it all in, I felt Marsha's small hand attach itself to the back of my shirt, and every so often I heard her whimper as she caught sight or smell of something unpleasant. Shoulders rubbed with shoulders, and elbows and hands seemed to be everywhere. On either side of us, shopkeepers beckoned with promises of incredible deals and fought for our attention by asking us if we were "USA." Often two or more salespeople from opposing souks would start a rousing argument over who was offering what and who had the best deal and even after we moved on we'd still hear them bickering with passionate intensity. The restaurants, with fronts wide open to the street, were the most curious, dank and dirty places filled with smoke from rolled cigarettes that the men inside were sucking back one after another as if they were tubes of oxygen. The furniture was rudimentary, made of rough-hewn, unpainted, untreated wood. Diners ate off cracked plates and drank cloudy liquid from chipped glasses that looked unwashed. No women ate in these restaurants, but plenty of skinny, skanky dogs, all brown, skulked about with a disturbing proprietary air.

My appetite, usually quite healthy, evaporated.

Azib and his yellow umbrella stopped short before a narrow, unmarked door. He spoke something very quickly, which I could not hear as I was too far back. He opened the door, beckoning us to follow. And just as it had when we'd entered the medina, with a step, our circumstances once again changed drastically. We left behind the rubble and rabble and found ourselves in the peaceful sanctum of what looked to be a high-class Arab restaurant, mercifully quiet and foggy with incense. Azib exchanged words with a tall, pleasant-looking man in the ornate foyer who then motioned for us to follow him inside. Azib seemed unconcerned about whether everyone had successfully made the journey from the bus, but I did a quick head count and was relieved to conclude that all were present and accounted for.

Most of the restaurant's tables were in a central courtyard beneath a stunning mosaic-tiled roof two storeys up. Other, more private tables were hidden in alcoves behind arched doorways that circled the courtyard like a row of Ms. At either end of the oblong room was a dramatic staircase leading to an upper level where I later learned was room for even more dining and the bathrooms. I was hoping the restaurant enjoyed a busy dinner hour because right then, the place was nearly deserted. Only a few of the other tables were inhabited; most by small groups that looked like families, their dark eyes following us with mild interest as we passed by. We were seated at the far side of the courtyard at a table long enough to accommodate our entire group. Azib sat at one end, Charity, Dottie, Faith and Thomas surrounding him. I took a seat at the other end, Ted and Marsha and Nick (sporting bruises from the brouhaha the night before like a mighty lion wearily used to such wounds of battle) to my left, and James and Errall to my right. The five young cousins, hungrily exploring the fantastically foreign locale with their eyes and chattering away like excited birds (except Flora, no chatterer her), were squeezed in between.

I've always found that watching someone who doesn't know they're being watched is a good get-to-know-ya exercise. I took a few minutes to assess the group, observe their interactions with one another and the unfamiliar surroundings. At the far end of the table, the sisters, Charity and Faith, seemed wholly intent on listening to the geography and political science lecture being elaborately delivered by Azib.

Every so often the women tossed unhappy looks in the direction of the youngsters at the table, disappointed they weren't hanging on to Azib's every word. Next to them, their partners, Dottie and Thomas, were less rapt, but seemingly satisfied to sit there and divide their attention between Azib and, in Dottie's case her knitting, in Thomas' case his fingernails and knuckles.

Nigel and Nathan (the twins) and Harry (Charity's dearly departed sister's great-granddaughter and Jackson's daughter), were thoroughly enjoying themselves and one another's company on one side of the table, while opposite them, Flora and the twins' sister, Kayla, and her uncle, Nick, presented a more sullen grouping, almost indifferent to the restaurant's exotic ambiance and each other. Errall, situated between Harry and Harry's greatgrandfather, James McNichol, was having a more interesting time. James, dressed like a 1940s Cary Grant, and therefore apparently thinking he was him (on a bad, bad day), was making clumsy, dotty attempts at charming Errall and at the same time trying to ascertain exactly the nature of her relationship with me...while I was sitting right next to him listening to every gooey word. Errall tried to brush him off as nicely as she could-a stretch for Errall-by focusing on the giggly goings-on between Harry and Nigel and Nathan. But James was not easily dissuaded and Errall was finally reduced to whispering a few, I'm sure, well-chosen words into his hairy ear after which he maintained a subdued silence.

The first part of the meal consisted mostly of polite oohing and ahhing over the elaborate table settings and questioning Azib about what the heck we were eating. Our appetizer consisted of three dishes, one a combination of lemon and hot peppers, another closely resembled salsa and the last was a bowl of chunky tuna salad. This was followed by a salad of olives, peppers and onions mashed together, topped with sliced boiled egg and a side of dry tuna and then a main course of couscous, cooked carrots and potatoes (not sliced, but in their entirety) and an astoundingly massive shank of lamb for each of us.

"You don't like the food?" I whispered to Marsha, even though Azib could by no means hear me over his voracious chewing and lesson-giving at the other end of the table.

She eyed me warily. Despite occasionally attaching herself to the back of my shirt, Marsha'd been playing cool with me most of the day (as Charity's advisor, and therefore an instrument of her diminishing fortunes, I was not on her list of favourite people). She'd been giving me all the non-verbal signals she could think of to get me to buzz off and stop hanging around her and Ted, but I think I'd finally worn her down. She was tired, uncomfortable in this foreign setting and hungry. "What do you think this is?" she asked, poking at the meat with her fork.

I glanced at Ted who was about to take a big bite out of his portion but put it down when he heard the question. He stared at his wife, then the meat, then his wife. "He said it was lamb, didn't he? It's lamb, don't you think? What else could it be?"

"You see all those dogs out there?" Marsha said, hunting between her potato and two carrots for something edible. Did she think she was going to find a Big Mac in there?

Ted blanched. "You don't think...?"

"Just make it look like you've eaten something by moving stuff around," she instructed her husband.

"You don't want to offend them. God only knows what'll happen then. We can go to the buffet when we get back on the ship."

"I'm bloody starving over here, Marsha."

"Well you go right ahead then, but don't come crying to me in the middle of the night when your guts are falling out of your asshole."

Ted grudgingly began rearranging the food on his plate.