1
Standing barefoot in the snow and staring into the muzzle of the Deb Rani’s Lee-Enfield, it occurred to me that life is full of little ironies. If Maria Santucci hadn’t been such a frigid bitch, then I never would have found myself high in the Himalayas, freezing to death and facing the wrong end of a rifle. And, if I hadn’t been so filthy rich, I never would have wound up as poor as I am, but there’s plenty of blame to go around.
The fact is that my practice as a New Orleans plastic surgeon was entirely too profitable. Between rhinoplasty, ear tucks and boob jobs, I was raking in so much cash that I had reached what economists call the point of diminishing returns. In other words, after taxes, I was taking home less than I would have if I had actually grossed more to begin with.
Anyway, my very capable accountant, Malcolm X. Quattlebaum, hit me with an ultimatum: take a sabbatical before I made so much money that I wound up in the poor house—or Quattlebaum would quit. And I sure couldn’t live without my accountant. At least, I didn’t think so at the time.
Sabbatical is a funny sort of word. I rolled it around my tongue as I would an old wine, sloshing it against my teeth and feeling its bite. It sounded professorial, rabbinical, even. What in the world does a plastic surgeon do on a sabbatical, I queried Quattlebaum. Research new methods of liposuction? Make a study of classic Hollywood noses? Examine breast sizes of young women on the Left Bank?
“Anything you like, Joe Dean,” Quattlebaum told me. “Travel… tour… taste… tempt. It’s entirely up to you. You’re limited only by the stretches of your imagination. Just be sure to keep a record of your expenses, and we’ll figure the best way to write off the whole episode, tax-wise.” He grinned his loopy college-athlete grin. “This sabbatical should make you affordably wealthy, Joe Dean.” Affordably wealthy. Words to live by. If only I’d known what lay ahead, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and money by killing Quattlebaum then and there. With a good attorney, hell, even with a mediocre one and a few thousand dollars in the pockets of the proper parish authorities, the whole thing could have been smoothed over.
Fool that I was, I agreed to take Quattlebaum’s advice. But now I was in a quandary about how to spend my sabbatical. I considered going back to school and attending seminars to better my understanding of the field. After that two seconds, I thought about holing up in the Smokies for the season and doing my best to catch every last trout in Little River.
There was the added attraction of being able to pick up a little business on the side, undoing damage caused by years of inbreeding. Business opportunities aside, the thought of having nothing to do at night in Gatlinburg except visit wax museums or those trinket shops where they sell genuine Indian beaded moccasins made in Korea and polyester t-shirts imprinted with a bear scratching his butt eventually cooled the idea of an idyllic mountain getaway.
I thought of doing charity work at the indigent hospital. That took less time to reject than the back-so-school idea. No, I needed a break from work. I needed some adventure. Travel! That what everyone who hasn’t got any money always says they would do if they had the time and money. Those who do have the money always think they don’t have quite enough money, and they certainly don’t have the time. And here I was with too much money and all the time in the world. It just goes to show you what a little hard work and a healthy amount of greed can get you.
Despite my years of slaving over a hot scalpel, and an even hotter calculator, I had managed to get in a fair amount of travel. Before and after college I bummed around Europe, backpacking and riding the rails. Then came med school down in Grenada. People don’t understand how difficult medical school can be in the Caribbean. Everyone thinks it’s some kind of joke, but trying to achieve the perfect balance between tanning and studying can be terribly frustrating. And then there was my internship in Mexico. Plastic surgery is big business in Mexico. All the Indians with any money don’t want to look like Indians, so they get their noses fixed. Honest to God, I did some great nose work in Mexico.
Medical conventions had taken me to all of the conventional places: Hawaii, London, Paris, Vienna, Cleveland. If I were going to travel, I would need to go to some out-of-the-way place. No McDonalds, no Holiday Inns, no television… Pluto seemed about the only destination that could meet the requirements.
I resurrected some of my boyhood dreams, like traveling through the Yukon or idling on the beaches of Tahiti. The Yukon was too cold, I finally decided. Not enough women, either. Tahiti… now Tahiti had some real possibilities. I could imagine the warm, crystal clear water. The sandy beaches where Captain Cook had trod and where Fletcher Christian had fallen in love. I could see the tall, slender palms swaying above the lush, verdant vegetation. The beautiful brown women wearing nothing but grass skirts that swished provocatively as they walked past. I was almost seduced. Almost. Unfortunately, sagging breasts tend to lose their appeal after working as a plastic surgeon, and I was afraid that I would begin to look upon those nubile young nymphs as nothing more than prospective patients. I had rather dream the beautiful dream that run the risk of shattering it with reality.
No, I needed someplace different. Someplace not teeming with tourists. Someplace about which a future dinner companion couldn’t blandly say, “Oh, yes. Isn’t it lovely this time of year?” I set to work at once, contacting travel agents and poring over world atlases. I read magazines and studied ship and rail schedules. I spent hours online researching tribal customs and mores. And the more I learned, the more depressed I became. It seemed that there was practically no place left on earth that had not been touched by the hand of modern man. New Guinea was one of the few places, but, quite frankly, a place inhabited by people who enjoy dining on other people tends to unnerve me a bit. (“Oh, I say, this is a tender rump roast, isn’t it? Pass me some more of that shoulder, will you?”) There were still a few spots in Africa and in deepest Amazonia that were relatively untouched, but again, either the people, the fauna or the environment qualified those places for a warning label by the Surgeon General.
I put off the idea, and quite truthfully, had forgotten about it when Maria Santucci showed up in my office one day for a checkup visit. Maria was Carlos Santucci’s trophy bride, a beautiful young woman with a magnificent mane of dirty blonde hair, big green eyes, a tiny waist and long, lean legs. Unfortunately, she was also as flat as a flapjack. Mr. Santucci, being a man of means and not wanting an imperfect specimen draped on his arm at social occasions, had accompanied the lovely Mrs. Santucci on her first visit to my office some weeks before.
“We hee-uh fo’ some corrective soi-gery, Doc,” Santucci said in a thick New Orleans accent, all the while chewing on a big, black, stinky cigar.
“What seems to be the problem, Mr. Santucci?” I asked.
He jerked a dimpled, hairy fist in the direction of his wife. “Da broad ain’t got no tits,” he announced.
Mrs. Santucci, decked out in a black satin camisole, chartreuse jacket and white mini skirt seemed absorbed in filing her blood red nails.
“I wanna buy her a set a tits dat’ll have every joik in Noo Awlins droolin’ wit’ envy.”
Well, certainly an admirable sentiment, you’ll admit.
“I think we can accommodate your desires, Mr. Santucci. We could increase Mrs. Santucci’s bust by a cup size and…”
“I don’t t’ink yer lissenin’ to me, Doc,” Santucci said, taking the offensive cigar from his fat lip and jabbing the jagged, wet end of the stogie in my direction. “I want Maria to have the biggest set a tits you sell.” He leaned toward me. “Money ain’t no objection.” Maria Santucci blew a bubble and smiled at me.
The surgery went quite well, and under my skilled hand, Maria Santucci went from a 34B to a 38D, certainly not the largest bust money can buy, but one of the more reasonable bust sizes that money can buy. Carlos’s eyes practically crabbed out on stems the first time he saw his wife after the procedure, while she was experiencing the not-too-unusual symptoms of post-operative depression, complaining about her “big ol’ ugly torpedo tits.”
Carlos Santucci slapped me on the back and pumped my hand with enthusiasm. “Dat’s a great pair a tits, Doc. Worth ev’ry penny.” And the happy couple had left my office, Carlos smiling like a man who’s just hit the jackpot and Maria sniffling and dabbing her eyes.
Maria showed up at the appointed time to have the stitches removed, and I reminded her to take things easy since her breasts would still be tender for a while.
She sighed. “You’re tellin’ me. Carlos is always pawin’ at ‘em, and tweakin’ ‘em, and they hurt like the devil.”
“I suggest you tell your husband to give you some time to recuperate, Mrs. Santucci.”
She looked at me with those big green eyes and said in a level voice, “Nobody tells Carlos Santucci what to do.”
When she showed up for her final checkup, Maria seemed as glum as before, and I asked if she were all right.
She shrugged. “Yeah, I’m okay,” she said, as she stripped off her blouse. I had to admit that I do good work. The scars were healing nicely, and her shape looked as natural as a set of implants can. She seemed so lovely, and so sad that, without thinking, I reached over and cupped her breasts in my hands and gave them a fond squeeze.
She slapped me hard.
“Whattya think you’re doin’, Doc?”
I had obviously misread the situation. “Just checking for leakage, Mrs. Santucci,” I stammered. “Perfectly routine, I can assure you.” I cleared my throat and made a note on her chart. “Yes, the tenderness seems to have abated.”
“You were feelin’ me up!” she insisted.
“Madam! I am a professional. Such behavior is beneath my dignity.”
“You got any idea who my husband is?”
“I believe I have heard his name before…”
“You know what happens to people he don’t like?”
“Mrs. Santucci, I give you my word…”
“Nobody touches these tits but Carlos Santucci,” she snapped as she pulled on her blouse. “You just wait ‘til Carlos hears about this!”
“Mrs. Santucci, please…”
She was gone, stomping through the waiting area with her blouse half buttoned and slamming the door behind her. I should have taken my old man’s advice and been a dentist. You can always fondle the patients while they’re asleep, and no one’s the wiser.
I put a call through to Quattlebaum, who picked up on the third ring.
“Malcolm? Joe Dean. Listen, whattya know about a guy named Santucci?”
“Carlos Santucci?”
“That’s him.”
“Carlos ‘The Fish’ Santucci?”
“I don’t know about any fish…”
“He owns a place call Bishop’s Deli.”
I sighed with relief. “You mean he’s a restaurateur?”
“And the reputed number six man in the New Orleans mob. Hey, you know how he got his nickname? They say somebody crossed him one time, but Santucci acts like nothin’ happened. Instead, he takes the guy fishing on the Gulf. But when they’re fifty miles out, Santucci cuts off the poor guy’s johnson and uses it for fish bait. They say he caught a twelve-pound snapper. Hello? Joe Dean? Hello?”
I had about finished packing when my good friend Finkelstein appeared at my door. He was breathing hard, as if he had just run a couple of miles.
“Finkelstein, what’s wrong with you?” I asked.
“I,” he gasped, “ran all the way from,” he gulped, “my apartment.”
He had just run a couple of miles!
“Why would you do a completely uncharacteristic thing like that?” I demanded. I worried about Finkelstein sometimes.
“Your sabbatical,” he wheezed.
“What of it?”
“I’ve found the perfect place,” he sputtered.
“Impossible. There is no perfect place anymore.”
“No, no. I’ve found it, I tell you. Right here on this old map.”
Finkelstein waved around a tattered brown piece of paper in his right hand. I could see that the edges were frayed, and tiny bits of paper fluttered toward the carpet as Finkelstein continued to flail about with it. He marched around the room holding the map up as if it were a battle flag. I was ready enough to shoot him.
“Well, where is it? What’s the place?”
“What?” he asked, still a little caught up in his jubilant air.
“Where is this wonderful place that you want to ship me off to? Because, as a matter of fact, I’ve decided I’m going to take a sabbatical after all.”
“Oh, yes, yes. The place.” He smoothed back his bushy, graying hair and then spread the map across my desk.
I moved closer to look over his shoulder.
“Well, Joe Dean, it’s a small place, actually. Located in the Himalayas.”
I looked to where he was pointing on the map. All I saw was a tiny smudge of ink. “Where? I don’t see anything.”
“Right here,” he insisted, tapping the smudge. “Chonda Za.”
I looked closer. “What is it, some kind of goat-herding station?”
“No. A goat-herding station!” He had that hurt tone of his. “A goat-herding station, indeed! No, it’s kind of an ancient city-state. Centuries of history. A seat of Indo-Asian culture.”
“What did you say the name of it was?” I asked, just to be polite.
“Chonda Za.”
“Chonda Za. Hmmm. I don’t believe that I ever heard of it, Morty.”
“No, and that’s the beauty of this place. See, it was an autonomous area for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. Then, when the Communists took over China, they annexed Chonda Za. It ceased to exist on maps. The world kind of forgot about it. Apparently, from what I can find out, it still enjoys some degree of autonomy but remains under China’s administration, rather like a miniature Tibet.” As if Tibetans enjoy anything under China’s rule, I thought.
“Hmmm,” I said with what I hoped was a certain degree of noncommitment.
“Well, don’t you see?” Finkelstein fairly shouted in my face. “This is exactly the kind of place that you’ve been looking for. No television. No fast food. No tourists. And best of all, nobody’s ever heard of it.”
* * *
“Never heard of it,” the Nazi-looking woman said, snapping shut her little blue leatherette book and her mouth at the same time. Her bayonet stare pierced through to somewhere past my shoulder blades. Then she smiled a smile that an old friend of mine used to describe as saccharine on steel. Is there any place else you would like to visit?”
“No. For the tenth time. I want a visa for Chonda Za. I do not want to go to Nepal. I do not want to go to Manchuria or Mongolia, Inner or Outer. Not India, Myanmar or any place that ends in ‘-stan’ or ‘desh.’”
Finkelstein had finally convinced me to visit his discovery when he showed me a brochure he had dug up about a sort of Amazon subculture that existed in Chonda Za. It seems that there was a group of young women known as “angels,” who all lived together and existed just to please men. It sounds crazy now, but the vaguely worded literature suggested the existence of some kind of virginal brothel, the best of both worlds, as it were. As it turned out, the whole thing proved to be a hoax, no doubt the brainchild of some evil adman, but we didn’t know that at the time.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you,” Frau Goebbels said. “You’ll have to speak with someone at their consulate. Next,” she yelped as she peered past me.
“There is no consulate,” I shouted. The Prussian Princess looked at me as if I were a bad dog who had just proven that he was not housebroken. “I went to the State Department,” I said quickly. “They referred me to the Chinese Embassy. The Embassy sent me to the Sino-American Buddhist Society, who, in turn, sent me to the National Geographic Society, which absolutely assured me that yours was the correct office.”
