Day 11 3/4: Aqaba

Raj and I don't speak to each other often. It happens at least once a day.

This is the usual: He says something, I either retort with sarcasm or tell him he's overreacting, and then his voice goes up to blinking red on the meter, or, Exasperation Notch. He insults me, I insult him back, we both start to scream, then storm off in opposite directions. Most of the time he phones within the hour and we pick up the conversation as if nothing's happened. Sometimes, we both stay shitty because we're so unbelievably peeved at what the other has said.

This was one of those times. In addition to telling me I looked "washed out," Raj also said I had a bad attitude, shitpicked my makeup and wardrobe choice. Yep, I was staying mad. I stayed mad all the way down the hall, in the elevator, out the hotel and during the entire walk to the seafood restaurant. In fact, I stayed mad right through ordering, and until the appetizers came.

James played the glue, as he always does, made Raj see he had been unnecessarily testy, starting with those nasty texts, and got him to apologize to the both of us. This in itself is absolutely shocking. Raj doesn't apologize, he just says, "Anyways" and goes right on talking as if nothing ever happened. I was on cloud nine thinking that a "Sorry" had actually come out his mouth, when my balloon burst itself all over the calamari. "Kookoo, I totally forgot it's that time of the month for you. No wonder you're acting weird and saying stupid things." I knew it was too good to be true.

Dinner over, we rolled out of the restaurant and took a taxi to a mall. Yes, a mall. Malls in Jordan are open until the wee hours of the morning, just in case tourists or the rich ever need designer shoes on the fly. We didn't last long in there either, just not in that shopping kind of mood.

All the way to the mall, James and I listened to Raj cluck. All the way back, we listened to Raj cluck. We got out of the cab and walked around, listening to Raj cluck, so I wasn't surprised one bit when out of nowhere James said, "BOOZE!", and mowed us down to get into the liquor store not ten paces away.

This was my first liquor store in the Middle East, and I was pretty surprised to see it. Evidently there's more incentive to being a Christian in Arabia then just eating pork chops: you can own a liquor store, put a huge, light up Jesus in the tequila section, wear three gigantic gold crucifixes, and a Hawaiian shirt. Yes, that's what the shopkeeper was wearing, and that light up Christmas Jesus over the tequila totally freaked me out. I supposed that whole turning water into wine thing gained him a few fans.

The prices in this store were so amazing, Raj had to convince both me and James to not buy the five litre bottle of Chivas Regal for a paltry 47 dinars. It was the size of my torso, and while every fiber of my being knew I'd never make it past airport customs without getting thrown into a cell, my inner shopping diva was screaming, "Do you know how much this costs at home? Get it!!"

Reality won. I did not get the Chivas. James did not get the Chivas. I got some cherry vodka, and James got beer. We'd had enough clucking, and needed to drink. We got Raj a beer too, and wandered around looking for a place to guzzle.

My bottle wasn't a twist off, so James cracked the cap off a brick wall, and we tucked in to drink right there on the sidewalk. This is when Raj started freaking us out about religious fundamentalists shooting us if we were spotted, so we liquored up sitting between a Volkswagen and a Peugeot in a parking lot. Privacy AND necessity. Not long afterwards, we celebrated our daring with gelato.

Significantly loosened up by alcohol and ice cream, we ended our night back on the Radisson beach. Not so yucky at nighttime. None of us is a big fan of night swimming after seeing "Jaws," but by the ocean at night is a wonderful thing. The air was cool, the breeze was in my hair, and the water nipped at my toes. I left Raj and James alone awhile to do their mushy couple thing, and got comfortable on a dock aways from shore. I saw my first and only night in Aqaba sitting on sandy wood planks and looking out across the Red Sea, over to the lights of Egypt and Israel.

Venice, Barcelona, Aqaba. My three most romantic places that never were. Venice for the narrow streets, masquerade shops and impossible canals; Barcelona for the dancing and Spanish fire of it all; Aqaba for the impossibility of being in three places at once and saying, "I looked out across the ocean to Egypt."

It would have been nice to say, "We looked out across the ocean to Egypt."

It would have been even nicer to say it with him.