They seemed to come from all over the world. Having flown to Montreal from Europe and Central America, they had escaped another slide show and were now, like Anil, ready for bowling. Bad red wine from a machine dribbled into small paper cups like the ones dentists offered and was being consumed by them at great speed, along with chips and vinegar and canned hummus. A paleontologist organized the computer-scoring panels, and within ten minutes these forensic celebrities, probably the only non-French-speakers in the Bowlerama, were goblinlike in their bowling shoes, and indeed raucous. There was competitive cheating. There was the dropping of bowling balls onto the parquet lanes. Cullis did not wish for his dead body ever to be touched by such incompetents, who committed so many foot faults. More and more, as the contest progressed, he and Anil rushed to each other to give hugs of congratulations. He felt light in his speckled shoes, he flung the ball without aiming and knocked over what sounded like a bucketful of nails. She came over and kissed him, tentatively but precisely on the back of the neck. They left the arcade in each other’s arms.

‘Must be something in the hummus. Was that real hummus?’

‘Yes.’ She laughed.

‘A known aphrodisiac…’

‘I’ll never sleep with you if you say you don’t like The Artist Formerly Known As… Kiss me here. Do you have a difficult middle name I have to learn?’

‘Biggles.’

‘Biggles? As in Biggles Flies East and Biggles Wets His Bed?’

‘Yes, that Biggles. My dad grew up on his books.’

‘I never wanted to marry a Biggles. I always wanted to marry a tinker. I love that word…’

‘Tinkers don’t have wives. Not if they are true tinkers.’

‘You’ve got a wife, don’t you?’

***

In the ship’s lab in the harbour, one night, working alone, she cut herself badly with a surgical blade, slicing the flesh along her thumb. She poured Dettol over it and taped it, then decided to go to the hospital on the way home; she didn’t want it infected-there were those rats always in the hold, scurrying perhaps over the instruments when she and Sarath were not there. She was tired and hailed a late-night bajaj that dropped her off at Emergency Services.