Tales From A Broad by Fran Lebowitz

about his brother in America. Do we know him? We get some cold drinks and look at the menu. There are about four things on it. None of them will ever make it past the kids’ lips but I don’t want to disappoint the owner who, in his way, takes pride in his establishment. It dawns on me that Frasier’s Hill has seen better times and is simply tired and poor and ignored. I am still going to murder the person who had the nerve to recommend it as a vacation spot.
    Our nasi lemak and samosas come with a hot dog frankfurt on the side. The kids are in luck after all. Frank and I, on the other hand, are not so lucky. We are cursed with the problem of how not to insult the owner and still not eat. Whatever is slipping around on our plates, it is absurd to call it food. It’s fatty, oily, greasy, smelly and ugly, and I think even hairy, too. We cover the plates with a napkin. Then, a butterfly truly the size of an ample rear end comes through the window and alights on our table. I knew the area was world-renowned for its butterflies but I agreed to come anyway. In other words, I pretty much couldn’t give a shit about colourful moths. They are bugs to me. Still, this one is cool because it is so big. Obscenely so, actually.
    Off we canter back to the car to find the house we rented. The directions Frank received from the travel agent don’t seem to work. I ask some tourists with butterfly nets for help and that doesn’t work. (But Frank and I do feel so much better about everything after we laugh at them. ‘Just shoot me if I ever look like that,’ we say.) Then a helpful old codger motions for us to follow him and for some reason, we don’t take a moment to think ‘Why not?’ He leads us up and up and round and round to a gigantic flat house surrounded by a big iron fence. He climbs under the gate – a bit peculiar, that. He motions for us to wait and then disappears around the back. At last the gate opens and we go in. The remains of a recent party – smouldering butts, chip crumbs, dirty cups – decorate the living room. We are dumbfounded, but move through the hall to the bedrooms to put down our bags. The first one is occupied, or at least the lump in the bed seems pretty organic. We’re nudged along to another door leading to an unoccupied room. The old man nods his head.
    I didn’t know it was coming, but rage takes over and I start screaming at everyone. I am incredibly fed up with my intrepid husband who ‘planned’ this trip apparently during that one moment when he became an idiot. This is a backwards garbage dump of a place, not just the house, the past 50 million miles. Plus, I still have the smell of vomit in my olfactory memory. I wave my hand under the old man’s nose. ‘See?’ To top it off, I saw a butterfly that was too big to be pretty. I’m pinching my wrist in an effort to shut up, cap it there. You’ve said enough. Stop, stop. You are ruining the vacation and scaring the kids . That just isn’t reason enough to actually calm down. But when the man laughs his veiny little bald head off, I stop and laugh, too. It turns out he thought we needed a place to sleep; he thought he was rescuing us. He doesn’t know where the hell 6 Orchid Lane is. This is 2 Crescent Close. He is obliging enough to direct us back to the centre of town.
    â€˜We’re so stupid. Why don’t we just call the house and tell them to come get us?’ I say. Why in the world didn’t we think of this sooner?
    Well, according to a shrinking Frank, the place we are to stay with two small children in a foreign and strange land has no phone . I better pray a few times in the right direction that our cell phones work up here if we need them.
    I huff away and light a cigarette. I see a police station. ‘ Frank! ’ I shout. ‘They’ll know how to get there.’
    Frank gets all shy about this because it hits two large