When a whisper reached him, the faintest murmur from one of his top, inner-circle speakers’-bureau doctors, that a certain Indian movie actress turned American daytime-TV superstar might appreciate a house call, Dr. R. K. Smile actually laughed out loud and clapped his hands. “Arré, kya baat! ” he cried out in the privacy of his home office. “Whoa, what a thing!” Because now, if it all worked out as he hoped, he just might be able to make his poor relation’s impossible dream come true, if only for a moment, before the tragic inevitable occurred. He might find it in his power, and in his heart, to bring fantasy-besotted old Quichotte face to face with his lady love.

Quichotte, arriving in Manhattan at the end of a long journey—his quest toward Miss Salma R. had led him through Tulsa, Oklahoma; Beautiful, Kansas; Cleveland, Ohio; Bunyan, Pennsylvania; Chaucer, New Jersey; and Huckleberry, New York—felt like a snail coming out of its shell. Here was bustle and thrum, hustle and flow, everything he had spent the better part of his life recoiling from, concealing himself instead in the heart of the country, leading a small life among other small lives. Now he was back in the big room, at the high rollers’ table, betting the farm on love.

He found accommodation in the Blue Yorker hotel, which stood conveniently just a couple of blocks from the tunnel exit, a hundred and three dollars a night, including parking, excellent value, no I.D. demanded, no questions asked, cash money required in advance, and only when he entered his Oriental Delights-themed room did he understand that he was in one of the city’s numerous no-tell motels, with six free porno channels on the TV. There was adjustable mood lighting. There were strategically placed mirrors. The night was full of noises, of pleasure, pain, and painful pleasure. It was hard to sleep soundly.

But, in the days that followed, Quichotte was pensive and sad. He stayed in his room watching TV (not the porno channels). He did not go to stand outside Miss Salma R.’s apartment building, or outside her office slash studio, in the hope of glimpsing the woman whose heart he had come to the city to win. “There is still much to be done before I am worthy of her presence,” he told himself, and then, seemingly, did nothing. The path to the Beloved was closed, even when he was so near to her, and he did not know how to open it.

Then, unexpectedly, he received a mysterious series of texts from his cousin and erstwhile employer, asking where he was, seeming unsurprised when he confirmed that he was in New York, and requesting an immediate meeting by an old red-oak tree near the Hans Christian Andersen statue in Central Park.

He went to the Park and Dr. Smile was waiting for him. Hat, coat, small leather attaché case, like an Old World medico doing his rounds. But there had been a transformation in his state of mind. He was no longer the warm and gleeful man Quichotte remembered.

“Best of cousins!” Quichotte cried. “I’m happy to see you.”

“Let’s walk a little,” Dr. Smile said. His mood, Quichotte noted with regret, was foul.

“There has been an event today in Atlanta,” Dr. Smile said as they walked in the general direction of the boathouse. “A shocking event, may I say. An offensive event concerning my good wife.”

“Mrs. Happy?” Quichotte cried. “That is indeed unexpected and woeful news! I hope she has not met with a misfortune?”

“ ‘Misfortune’ is too mild a word,” Dr. Smile said grimly. “I will tell you what has happened. I have a need to tell someone, and I believe I can talk to you—because, to put it bluntly, you are nobody, you know nobody, so you can tell nobody who is anybody, and, plus, you are borderline simple as well.”

This remark—its tone very unlike the kind manner with which his cousin had always spoken to him—struck Quichotte as harsh and, in part, incorrect. “But everybody is somebody,” he replied mildly. “Although the language can be confusing. When we say that ‘nobody is here,’ we mean in fact that ‘somebody’ is ‘not here.’ If I am here, I can’t be nobody. Look,” he said, pointing. “There, there, there. Somebody, somebody, somebody.” He pointed at himself. “Somebody,” he concluded with pride.

Dr. Smile heard him out with growing impatience. “I repeat,” he said, “borderline simple. And I don’t have time for small talk. I have something to say today about the injustice of the world toward a man who is only trying to do his best. And also toward his lady wife, an innocent bystander, Happy by name, happy by nature. She was with her lady friends,” Dr. Smile continued. “A circle of like-minded philanthropical ladies, meeting, as was their habit, at Dr. Bombay’s Underwater Tea Party in Candler Park.”

“Underwater?” Quichotte was lost now.

“This is a name only,” Dr. Smile said sharply. “This is a tea place, not a submarine.”

Quichotte inclined his head.

“Then they came in, how do they say in America? Like gangbusters.”

“The like-minded philanthropical ladies?”

“The forces of the law,” Dr. Smile said. “Bulletproof vests, dogs, assault weapons, as if it were a terrorist gang, not a social occasion. And why?”

“Why?”

“Because of me,” Dr. Smile said. “Because I am accused of crimes, and in my absence they went for her. Bastards.”

“The law-enforcement officers?”

“The people who betrayed me. Treacherous bastards. Who else could have informed the police? Only the people I made rich. Yes, I made myself more rich, but I was the one who made it happen. Little doctors here, there, turning into rich fellows. Then they turn me in. Bastards. How do they think you become a billionaire in America? Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Rockefeller? At Underwater Tea Parties? I have done what had to be done. It’s the American way, correct? Corruption, they accuse me of today. Corruption! Me! Myself! Dr. R. K. Smile! Everyone knows that what I have done is not corruption. It is our culture from the old country. You are at a railway station—let’s say, Sawai Madhopur—and the lines at the ticket windows are long. You get to the front and the clerk says, ‘Wrong line, go and queue over there.’ This is frustrating, am I right? It would frustrate anybody. Then here is a little boy, maybe ten years old, tugging at your sleeve. ‘SSSS,’ he says. ‘SSSS. You want ticket? I have an uncle.’ And of course he wants a little something for his trouble. You can be smart and give it to him or you can be stupid and refuse. If you are smart, you find he really does have an uncle, and he can take you to this uncle in the office behind the ticket window, and in two shakes your ticket is in your hand. If you are stupid, you move from line to line for hours. We are like this only. You are in a yard, let us say in Thiruvananthapuram, and here is an antique dealer offering you fine objects of value, and you want to bring them home, maybe to Atlanta, Georgia, to share with your loving family. But there are laws, isn’t it, that say it can’t be done. So you can be stupid and say, The law is the law, or you can be smart and say, The law is an ass. If you say ass, the antique dealer will take you to the person who has the government stamp, the person who needs to be convinced, the amount it takes to convince him being specified in advance, and in five minutes your treasure is on the way to Buckhead. The law is useful, in fact. It tells you who is the correct person you need to convince. Otherwise, you can waste money convincing people who don’t have the stamp. Waste not, want not. We are like this only. We know what is the oil that greases the wheels.”