Naked in Dangerous Places - Cash Peters [12]
Check-in complete, I'm just debating which of the crew I should enlist to carry my bags when a teenage porter scurries over and grabs them.
“Alo,” I say.
“Alo. Me carry, sir,” he insists, grabbing handles.
Sir.
Hm, being British, I rather like that. We had an empire once. I'm not sure what happened to it; doubtless we squandered it away on women and booze. Still, like it or not, that unique sense of unearned authority as well as an inbred right to lord it over the little people remains in my blood to this day, I can't help it.
“Why, tank yu,” I say to the porter.
And without help—though to be fair, none was offered—he staggers off, dragging the luggage along a wiggly wooded pathway that takes us through wild gardens of plumeria and radiant orchids.
The production office has done us proud. On other occasions, either out of necessity or to save money, we've been holed up in scruffy wayside motels that were, in my opinion, one step up from wrapping yourself in cardboard and sleeping under a viaduct. But this time—perhaps because motels and viaducts have yet to reach Tanna—we've been booked into a glorious five-star resort nestling right on the edge of the ocean and, at high tide, very possibly in it.
The bungalows are basic, but comfortable. I only have one complaint about mine: the roof doesn't fit. Some might say I'm quibbling to bring this up—“Typical Westerner, so spoilt. Can't sleep unless his bloody roof's nailed down”—but I'm sorry that's how I am. In most hotels these days it's become quite the thing for the ceiling of your room to be attached to the walls. So much so that I no longer ring up in advance to check. But not here. Here, there's an alarming four-inch gap between the top of the walls and the beginning of the thatched eaves, a gap that, unless I'm mistaken, leads directly to the outside, the same outside where millions and millions of bugs are.
Oh, and, not to be a whiner, but the bungalow door ends woefully short of the floor. An open invitation to any insect or rodent, and possibly midgets as well if they crouch, that wants to just walk right in.
I figure I can fix the door by wedging a rolled-up bath towel underneath it. But the gap around the ceiling—well, that I have no answer to. Unless it's a clever device for ventilating the place, and …
A-haa, I see!!!
“How,” I ask the porter before he leaves, “do I make the roof go down?”
He regards me a little weirdly at first, then brightens up when I start conveying roof-lowering movements to him through the medium of mime. “Yes,” he nods.
“I knew it. Is there a lever …”
“Yes,” he replies.
“… or a switch?”
“Yes.”
“No—which one? Which is it? Lever or switch?”
He's looking puzzled now.
I turn to the room and spread my arms. “Can—you—show—me—where—the—roof—control—is? Where in the room?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Fabulous, thanks.”
And I wait.
We both do.
For quite a while, actually.
Until eventually I snap, “You've forgotten where it is, haven't you?”
He nods again. “Yes.”
Then, slightly panicked, he gives a small bow and shoots out the door without his tip.
Well!
More than a little annoyed, I set about searching for the controls myself, because I know I'll never sleep if I'm exposed to the outdoors in this way. Optimistically, I even flick what appears to be a light switch. But in keeping with a roof that doesn't fit, they also have lights that don't work.
As I'm cursing my bad luck, Tasha arrives at the door carrying a clipboard and wearing her backpack, a fine sheen of perspiration across her brow.
Actually, at a certain angle, and with the afternoon sun glancing off her face like it is now, she bears a striking physical resemblance to a young Sharon Stone, her beauty enhanced further by a winsome street-urchin quality that most actresses would die for, that tends to attract male attention wherever we go, drawn by the large brown eyes, big smile, and funky, short, blonde-streaked hair that sticks out in wisps and tufts at all angles,