From an early age I knew my ambition was to be in a plot. Or several plots—I thought of it as a career. But no plots came my way. You have to apply for them, a friend of mine told me. He’d been around, though he hadn’t been in any plots himself, so I took his advice and went down to the plot factory. As for everything else, there was an interview. So, said the youngish bored man behind the desk, you think you’ve got what it takes to be in a plot. What sort of character did you have in mind? He was fiddling with a list, running his felt-tip pen down it. Character? I said. Yes, that’s what we do here. Plots and characters. You can’t have one without the other. Well, I said, I might as well try out for the main character. Or one of them—I suppose every plot needs more than one. You can’t be a main character, he said bluntly. Why not? I said. Look in the mirror, he said. You’re an exotic. What do you mean, an exotic? I said. I’m a respectable person. I don’t do kinky dancing. Exotic, he said in his bored voice. Consult the dictionary. Alien, foreign, coming in from the outside. Not from here. But I am from here, I said. Do I have a funny accent or something? I don’t make the rules, he said. Maybe you are, I’m not denying it, but your appearance is against it. If we were in some other place you wouldn’t look as if you’d come in from the outside, because you’d already be outside, and so would everyone else there.