And one morning he woke in a strange bed, the Dutchman standing beside a window spilling tropical green and a sun-light that hurt his eyes. “You can go home now, Turner We’re done with you You’re good as new.

He was good as new. How good was that? He didn’t know. He took the things the Dutchman gave him and flew out of Singapore Home was the next airport Hyatt.

And the next. And ever was.

He flew on. His credit chip was a rectangle of black mirror, edged with gold. People behind counters smiled when they saw it, nodded. Doors opened, closed behind him. Wheels left ferroconcrete, drinks arrived, dinner was served.

In Heathrow a vast chunk of memory detached itself from a blank bowl of airport sky and fell on him. He vomited into a blue plastic canister without breaking stride. When he arrived at the counter at the end of the corridor, he changed his ticket.

He flew to Mexico. And woke to the rattle of steel buckets on tile, wet swish of brooms, a woman’s body warm against his own.

The room was a tall cave. Bare white plaster reflected sound with too much clarity; somewhere beyond the clatter of the maids in the morning courtyard was the pounding of surf. The sheets bunched between his fingers were coarse chambray, softened by countless washings.

He remembered sunlight through a broad expanse of tinted window. An airport bar, Puerto Vallarta. He’d had to walk twenty meters from the plane, eyes screwed shut against the sun. He remembered a dead bat pressed flat as a dry leaf on runway concrete.

He remembered riding a bus, a mountain road, and the reek of internal combustion, the borders of the windshield plastered with postcard holograms of blue and pink saints.