Oliver Benjamin
“I know. But does it have to?”
“It does if you want it to mean something.”
Her eyes briefly followed a small mouse that was making its way
slowly across the dark grass in front of us. She watched as the animal
came near to us, then spun around and darted back into the bushes
from whence it came.
“Can I have a hug?” she said.
I wrapped my arms around her tiny body and felt her lips
against my neck. That provided enough meaning for me for now.
CHAPTER 24
When I returned to the dingy hotel, it was fairly late and due to the
novel nature of the day’s events, I needed to reorganize my mental
shelves with another session of deep and undisturbed sleep. First
things did have a nasty habit of coming first, unfortunately, and I was
obliged to assist Oscar in getting Joe Fortune out of jail.
For what it was worth, Indian jails were generally not a whole
lot worse than Indian train compartments. Joe seemed to feel at
home, and to some extent I felt a little guilty for coming and
disrupting a bonus leg of his pursuit of unhappiness, but a prisoner
can’t sponge off the state for too long, especially when he would be
depriving others of the experience. He took up the space of four
Indians.
Luckily, after laying down a minor concession of rupees to the
police chief, we were allowed to take Joe home. Since badly banged-
up Joe was more interested in getting some grub than going back into
the cell-like rooms of our hotel, we indulged him with a mutton
burger and he presented us with his wonderful tale of woe, and what
happens when you try to beat some sense into India.
The previous night, Joe explained, he sauntered out into the
Bombay nightscape, intent on having a time, neither good nor bad
necessarily, but just some memorable series of events to catch in his
neural net. It was not long before he was accosted by a man named
Ashok who insisted that he have a cup of tea with him and some very
beautiful Indian women who happened to be seated at a table in a
very swank and very exclusive cafe. It was so exclusive that there
wasn’t anyone else there. Although Joe hadn’t dressed for the
occasion, sporting shorts and a T-shirt that read Shiva Happens, he
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