It's in to town. . .

. . to get the necessary pieces. First to a gents' clothing store, where stock and style have been frozen since the invention of polyester. We pick out some fine inflammable slacks and wide-collared dusty dress shirts. Then, it's next door to the shoe store for the cheapest pair of black slip-ons rupees can buy, the price actually dyed into the shoe sole. We're almost there, but glancing at each others faces, we realize we still look like unkempt bushmen. Wandering around looking for the final touch, we end up talking with someone who introduces themselves as a private jeep driver and touring railway station master. After a short round of bargaining, he promises us an escorted day trip the next morning up to the top of Adam's Peak (allegedly holding Adam or Buddha's terrestrial footprint) and guaranteed first class tickets for the sold-out train tomorrow. Serendipity! How nuts is that? He offers to drive us home for free, but we ask him to point us in the direction of a good barber, and ten minutes later there is a straight razor at my foamy jugular.

It's my first time getting a classic barber shave, and I am trying not to give off the stench of petrification, as barbers can smell fear. Now I know it's widely spoken that a classic shave is one of man's great pleasures, but the knife wielder can't be over 16, there's no running water, and I have a beard so complicated with whorls and cowlicks it looks like a meteorological map. It doesn't help that the only barber scenes I can envision while this is happening either involve
grisly mafia assassinations or the Three Stooges ("Excuse me sir, were you wearing a red bowtie? No? Well, here's your ear back. Nyuk Nyuk"). I get through 95% of the shave and all that remains is to rid me of a strip of mustache, when Barnaby starts making jokes. This is deadly serious, because I'm fucking hopeless at keeping a straight face in a serious situation when there's something funny in my brain. Come to think of it, I believe that's why the debating team I joined in high school for a semester was expunged from the city finals. Anyhow, if my pubescent caretaker had slower reflexes, I might currently have a harelip wicked enough to guarantee casting in the next batman movie, but I walk out with the supple, floral skin of a baby and nary a nick. Success. So, walking coiffed and cologned out of our hotel to the Hill Club, we finally look the part, but maybe also a little like extras from a 70's commercial for fondue. We have a dinner reservation, of course, and plan on taking them up on their free loan of jacket and tie for members. We're welcomed in by the maitre d' and led to the motherload: a witch-and-the-wardrobe sized armoire of mind-bendingly bad jackets, blazers, sport coats, ties and cravates. It takes way too long to choose, as we keep on finding more and more synergetically terrible combinations. I'm in tears and basically holding my crotch not to pee my pants looking at us in the mirror. AT has found a thick blue velvet coat with jutting shoulder pads and sports a tie he's just purchased with the club's emblem on it. Barnaby has squeezed into a hounds tooth maroon number and short, wide tie in psychedelic paisley. I change about a dozen times, but settle on a slim, grey Pee Wee Herman suit jacket and long, slender red woolen tie. Barnaby is the Texas oil Baron on a world trip, AT a young and industrious tea plantation owner, and I'm a reclusive sci-fi author looking for peace in which to complete my next novel about moon travel. We saunter into the bar for cocktails where a career Bartender is more than pleased to whip us together every antiquated drink we can think of under the cross-eyed, demented growl of a mounted mountain lion head. A Rusty Nail please! Brandy Alexander for me! We try Russians black and white, whiskey sours, a martini, and more, none of the drinks costing more than a dollar. But let's not fill ourselves up; It's time for dinner.

The menu is awesome, in an old-world, Joy of Cooking fashion. We have shrimp toasts and a plate of paté extruded into repulsive rosettes. For mains, the boys elect for racks of New Zealand Lamb, but i gravitate to the steak and when it arrives, it's the size of a softball and perfectly cooked. Even the french fries are incredible! You can taste the stubborn pickiness of thousands of frumpy diners in these recipes, and we kill a couple of bottles of red wine to help them along, finishing 4 hours later with the giant room to ourselves. We can't leave without seeing the eccentric gift shop, where AT picks up a powder blue cravat for a friend, and I'm lured by a bone china tea set stained with the club's logo. Beautiful. We stumble back to the hotel laughing at the absurdity and perfection of the night, and pack it in. There is a jeep picking us up at 5am. A very uncomfortable jeep.