Teaching in Oman - 5

     As the weeks went on I hung out more with Teri. And drank more. Every other night Teri knocked on my door with a bottle of vodka in her hands or invited me up to her apartment for a drink. Sometimes I wanted to hide but there was nowhere to go. "The interest on my debt is piling up," she said, sipping her screwdriver amongst a pile of envelopes she'd been opening. "More bills. I'm never gonna be able to go back to the States." Her dining table was piled with bills and papers as she mulled over her $70,000 in debt. But on top of all that, she was paying someone another small fortune to PAY her bills, which didn't make sense to me. It was easy to see how she accumulated so much debt when every time we went out she spent money like a drunken Las Vegas gambler, filling our rented car with clothes and junk. And yet she had so much more to pay for - her bunions that had to be lopped off, her breast implants that needed replacing and her false teeth that needed work. She also wanted to get filler in her chin and round it out where a surgeon had shaved it into a witch's point during a botched surgery for her jaw. Unfortunately, her salary in Oman wasn't going to cover it and as the months went by, she sank further into debt with the interest. 

     We sometimes rented a little car from town and drove to Muscat, but where I drew the line with Teri was driving with her while she was on her phone. Once she continued to text while driving and I insisted she put her phone away or I'd get out. She paid attention to everything but the road and with the fast Omani drivers and the number of car wrecks, it was too dangerous. She got with away with two fender benders but in the end, had a head on collision that totaled her car. She phoned me in a state of shock while at the police station, but she was lucky she lived.