Melba turned and walked away in a huff. It wasn’t until she stopped in for some entertainment at the Thunder From Down Under All-Male Revue Traveling Road Show (Kenya Edition) that she realized she had agreed to meet Clemmie and Petros for drinks but had never discussed exactly where they would meet. “It makes no never mind to me” she thought to herself, “its not like I’ll ever see them again”.

The bartender asked her if she wanted anything to drink and she replied “Just bring me something you can serve flaming”. There were few things in the world that Melba actually cared about right now and her own liver wasn’t making the list either. She then downed the drink, took one more look at the eye candy on the stage and headed out the door in search of suitable overnight accommodations. Before she reached the end of the block she knew she’d found where she’d be staying, the flashing neon light said…

Still, surely she could see through his by now fraying good looks, his unctuous charm, and of course, his left ear.

Given their history, drinks would be awkward. She had picked up a gross of imported mace sprayers in the souks of Mombasa.

“Of course, that would be lovely, Clemmie,” she said. “But first I should tell you…”

The flight to Mombasa was agonizingly long, like watching a Kevin Costner marathon on a cable television station that should’ve lost its broadcast license. The flight would’ve been unbearable too if it were not for the flight attendant with the noticeable limp, the missing left ring finger, and the friendly face. Melba almost didn’t recognize her at first, but who else would wear dangling train engine earrings other than her old college friend Clementine?

They chatted for awhile about career choices, mutual acquaintances, and whether Kenya had an extradition treaty with the United States or not. The two long lost friends then hugged like two zoo chimpanzees being reunited after a long medical quarantine before parting when Clementine suddenly paused and said “Melba, you must join my husband Petros and I for drinks tonight”. Melba paused, stuttered, and replied…

She’d never been, but she knew there was coffee in Kenya. From the headline that of the soiled newspaper that came apart in her hands like a pre-schooler’s used Kleenex, she realized her father’s business was on the ropes. VALDEZ-TITTUTE the headline shrieked.

She knew the odds of finding a legitmate exporter in a sink of iniquity like Mombasa were few.

That was the way she wanted it. Legit was the last thing she needed.

In the false bottom of her footlocker she arranged her necessaries with the urgency of a senator hustling to a video camera. She threw in a Kabar and a pound of biltong. Before slamming the trunk closed,for good luck and good measure, she tossed in a…

Melba turned her attention back to the package that the t-shirt had come in and with one look at where the newspaper used to line the bottom of the box was from knew what her next step was. She immediately went online and booked a seat on the next plane to…

She had so wanted to believe that he hadn’t contracted it from the skanky Moldovan she’d seen smoking at the bar, a sad, bruised captive trying to work her way out of the Russian mafia’s bondage.

When he passed the herpes on to her, though, the only thing she wanted more than a one-way ticket out was the ice-pick she jammed into Petros’s sun-kissed left ear. After that, she didn’t stick around long. She was too busy…

Melba lifted the t-shirt out of the package and holding it by the shoulders let it fall in front of her. Could it be? Was this the shirt she’d last seen worn by that young man Petros whom she’d met on the airplane traveling home ten years before? To this day she was one hundred percent sure she’d never met him before, but he had insisted he had known her since elementary school.

“Ahh, Petros” she said aloud as an ever so slight smile shown on her face. She tried to remember details of the conversations they had shared, but all she remembered were those deep brown eyes, that rich bronze skin, and that…

Who’s Hal? Who’s Al? Could they have been responsible for the minute sneaker treadmarks on the ceiling of her bathroom? Were they the leather-clad little people with bandanas on their heads she remembered seeing groping one another in the porch hammock? Wasn’t her torts professor named Halal? The whiny creep with ear hair who was such a Red Sox fan?

She couldn’t place the name. The brown wrinkled paper crackled as she lifted the bag to look inside. As the last possible mouthful of bile reached her teeth she remembered where she’d seen the name “Halal.” It was what that crazy Arab girl had to have labeled on all her meat in elementary school. It was some kind of a religious thing. The smell reached her nostrils two seconds after she saw it: a warm, wet…

Melba wiped the vomit residue from her mouth and seeing as mouthwash was the one thing she’d forgotten to get off of last week’s shopping list, she decided to eat the better part of a box of Altoid’s. At that moment, the words “Curiously Strong” on the tin box of breath mints could’ve also referred to the repulsive scent emanating from her mouth. Depressed by the fact that she had no one in her personal life to offend with her poor oral hygiene, she suddenly became aware of the fact that all of the unwelcome guests from the night before had departed. All that they had left behind was a medium-sized brown-paper-wrapped package on top of her recently refinished apothecary table. A package with large black handwritten letters on it that spelled out…