AD MAGIC had one of his epileptic premonitions a split second before the collision, and managed to approximate a tuck-and-roll position just as the truck smashed into the back of the mini tour bus. He was seated in the center of the back row enduring the most horrendous hangover of his life when the crash projected him halfway down the center aisle like a human cannonball. There was a moment of stillness after the accident, and then the bus lurched over to the side of the road. A group of five men and a woman from Bahrain sitting in the center of the bus, themselves somewhat discombobulated but unhurt, got out of their seats to help the peculiar American to his feet.
Ad Magic had a jawbreaker-size horehound lozenge in his cheek when the wreck occurred, and now it was caught at the back of his throat. He attempted to swallow the candy discreetly, lodging it farther into his throat, and when he realized it was too large to swallow he tried to cough it up. He panicked as he began to run out of air, however, and dropped to one knee and choked out a cartoonish series of coughs—“Kaff, kaff, kaff.”
He could feel a heat wave beneath his breastbone which radiated up to his face and ears, burning like wildfire as he turned to the Bahrainis with furious gesticulations, indicating that he needed someone to perform the Heimlich maneuver on him. The Bahrainis soon got the gist of his problem and began slapping Ad Magic’s back, while he clutched his throat like a man being hanged.
At last one of the Bahrainis socked him mightily on the spine with the side of his fist, and, ka-zeem!, the lozenge shot out of Ad Magic’s mouth, bounced off the windshield of the bus, and fell into the driver’s lap. As Ad Magic began to breathe again, a great laugh exploded among the Bahrainis, who were at once relieved and amused by the absurdity of the entire scene. Ad Magic had spent the better part of a day with these people, and while he was grateful to be breathing, he felt that their laughter was tinged with ridicule and hostility, as had been their whole repertoire of Jerry Lewis hilarity. When they cried mocking insults at the enormous statue of a serene, meditating Buddha in the caves of Elephanta, for instance, they stirred up a thousand and one bats, which came screeching past Ad Magic in such profusion that he was buffeted by their wings and their surprisingly hefty bodies. He slipped in bat guano in an attempt to duck under the flock, falling on his knee and hand. The guano was an inch deep and felt like a cold pudding. Fortunately, one of the Bahrainis had a package of Handi Wipes, and he was able to clean the worst of it off, although the stench persisted, and he could still smell it whenever his hand was in proximity to his face.
The bus, with a blown tire, wheeled onto the shoulder of Marine Drive, one of Bombay’s busiest streets. Ad Magic straight-armed the side emergency-exit door and staggered outside. He could breathe well enough, but his throat felt bruised. He shucked off his teal-green cashmere V-neck sweater. It had been madness wearing that. The air outside the bus was humid and suffocating. Ad Magic recognized Chow-patty Beach and realized he was on a peninsula that extended into the Arabian Sea like a finger. He knew that Bombay consisted of a series of islands off the coast of India, and that from this point he was less than a few miles from the Gateway of India, where the tour had originated.
A small boy, about eight or ten—it was hard to tell, partly because he had a shaved head—approached Ad Magic, carrying a rhesus monkey on his shoulder. The monkey, dressed in a dirty red uniform with epaulets, gold piping, and a tiny bellman’s cap, began an incomprehensible performance in the art of mime. When it was over, the monkey approached the American and presented its upturned hat to him as a collection cup. Ad Magic began to cough again as he fished in his pockets. He placed a half-dozen rupees in the monkey’s cap and tossed his expensive sweater to the boy. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take it. It’s all yours.”
The Bahraini woman had seen the monkey’s performance and emitted a shrill, trilling cry. One of the men, who could speak a little English, said facetiously, “Bravo. Excellent monkey.”
The tour guide climbed out of the bus and callously questioned the American about his condition. Ad Magic said he was all right, and then she chastised him for giving so much money to the boy. “Not is good,” she said with a sneer. Ad Magic walked away from the guide and the Bahrainis, wanting nothing more to do with them. He moved from the road onto the sand of Chowpatty Beach, and when he felt sufficiently separated from them he turned and watched as the guide skillfully led the party of Bahrainis across the whizzing four-lane traffic of Marine Drive and into a decrepit establishment called the New Zealand Café.
There were billboards on either side of the grimy, stuccoed building. One, in English, advertised Gabriel shock absorbers. The other, featuring an apparently famous Indian leading man, who had sort of a Rudolph Valentino look, was in Hindi. It was an advertisement for men’s hairdressing. Beyond the café, through the filter of buzzing traffic and the haze of diesel fuel, Ad Magic spotted a cardboard shantytown. The settlement was centered around a crescent-shaped drainage ditch, and people could be seen squatting there, shamelessly relieving themselves, while at the other end of the obscene ditch, women were washing laundry.
Looking into the restaurant, Ad Magic could see one of the Bahrainis clutching his throat and pretending to choke while the rest of the party laughed. Their mouths were opened wide, revealing an abundance of golden inlays. They waved to him and cheered heartily. He wondered why they were so jolly. Why couldn’t he be like that?
Out front, the bus driver was quarreling with the driver of the truck that had rear-ended the tour bus. Ad Magic turned away again and walked toward the Arabian Sea, out of the envelope of diesel exhaust into a small, pleasantly pungent pocket of gardenia, and then back into a zone of a truly ghastly odor. The tuna cannery in American Samoa had been bad, but it was nothing compared with these little pockets of smell that were all over Bombay, and what was worse was that you had to be nonchalant about it with your fellow-travelers and not complain, for no one else seemed to notice it. Ad Magic was suddenly overcome by a sense of unreality—he wondered if he had been to American Samoa at all, or if it had been a dream, and, indeed, if the Bombay of the here and now was a dream.
He surveyed the long, deserted stretch of beach, and spotted a small white horse standing forlornly in the surf. As he moved closer to the horse he saw that it was old and swaybacked, covered with oozing sores, and so shrunken that its ribs protruded and its teeth seemed overly large. The horse was having a hard time staying on its feet, and Ad Magic watched it reel. There were plenty of scenes of poverty and desolation in India, but this was the most abject and miserable sight he had ever laid eyes on. Clearly, the horse was going to die—possibly within the hour. Had it been meant to die so completely alone—abandoned? It occurred to Ad Magic that it was the suffering of a horse that had finally driven Friedrich Nietzsche into an irretrievable insanity in the month of January 1889.
Good God! He had done it again. He had abandoned his seizure meds, flipped out, and somehow gotten on a plane, this time bound for India. He frantically searched his pockets for a passport. There was none. He had no wallet, either—only an enormously fat roll of American hundred-dollar bills, some loose smaller bills mixed with Indian currency, and a ball of heavy change that caused his pocket to bulge. He didn’t even know his own name; he knew only “Ad Magic,” but as he sorted out the loose cash he discovered a room key from the Taj Inter-Continental. “Suite 7” was imprinted on the tag, and Ad Magic knew that the secret to his identity would be found there, although he was in no particular hurry to return to the hotel. Somehow he felt that it would be better not to know, at least not yet.
His throat continued to bother him. As he rifled through his pockets, he found a pack of Marlboro cigarettes and a beautiful gold lighter. He extracted a cigarette and lit it. The boy with the monkey appeared at his side and bummed a smoke. Ad Magic lit it for him, and watched the boy pass the cigarette to the monkey, who held it in the fashion of an aristocratic S.S. officer in an old black-and-white Second World War movie. The monkey smoked as though he had a real yen for nicotine, and after this demonstration he presented his little bellman’s cap for another tip. Ad Magic gave him a five-dollar bill and then sat down on a small, rusting Ferris wheel, looking out at the horse again. He took a drag off his cigarette, and on his wrist he noticed a stainless-steel Med-Alert bracelet and a solid-gold Rolex. He examined them both with curiosity, as if he had never seen them before. The little bracelet was inscribed with the word “Epilepsy.”
Epilepsy. Ad Magic did not have epilepsy in the classic sense, with full-blown, convulsive seizures. He was a temporal-lobe epileptic. He remembered this now. He had suffered an epileptic fugue. He still wasn’t sure what his name was, where he lived, whether he was married, whether he had children, or much else, but he did know himself to be an advertising man. That, and an epileptic. He quite clearly remembered the voice of his doctor, the large, high-ceilinged consulting room trimmed in dark oak, a door with a frosted-glass window, and a hands-clasped-in-prayer statue on the doctor’s desk. Ad Magic remembered spending hours from early adolescence into maturity in that room. He remembered majestic oak trees, crisp autumn afternoons, the smell of burning leaves, and the palatial brownstone estates of a Midwestern city, but he could not identify the city, could not picture the doctor or remember his name. He did know the man had been more than a doctor to him—he had been a good friend as well, a man whom Ad Magic loved very much. He suspected that the doctor was now dead, but he distinctly remembered something the doctor had told him about his condition. “These spells you have, where you go gadding about the world—they could be a form of epileptic fugue, or you could be suffering from the classical form of global amnesia, which is so often depicted on television soap operas. They are very common in television melodrama but almost unheard of in real life. But so, too, are psychomotor fugues, which are a kind of status epilepticus of the left temporal lobe.”
Ad Magic didn’t know who he was or how he had come to India. He only knew that there were times when he became so depressed and irritable and finally so raving mad that he had to throw his medication away, bolt out, and intoxicate himself or in some way extinguish his consciousness. He felt this way now. He felt a loathing for everything on the face of the earth, including himself—but the suffering of this white horse was something he could not abide. It was a relief, suddenly, to have something other than himself and his hangover on which to fix his attention.
He summoned the boy, who was now proudly wearing the cashmere sweater, and took him and the monkey across the road to the New Zealand Café. The air inside was laden with cooking grease and cigarette smoke, but a pair of ceiling fans beat through the haze like inverted helicopters. A waiter in a dingy white jacket was serving tea and a plate of sticky cookies to the Bahrainis. From the kitchen, a radio blared a tinny version of “Limehouse Blues.” Ad Magic pulled a chair up next to the tour guide and said, “Ask the boy who that horse on the beach belongs to.”
The guide was a good-looking woman in her late thirties, who fluctuated mercurially between obsequiousness and sullen aggression. She wore an orange sari that seemed immaculately clean. Ad Magic wondered how she managed that, after the boat trip to Elephanta and the long Bombay city tour. He watched her interrogate the boy. Then she turned to Ad Magic and said, “Horse belongs to circus man, and cannot work anymore. Wandering horse now. Free to come and go.”
Ad Magic asked the guide whether she could make a phone call and summon a veterinarian.
“Veterinarian?” she said, reacting to the word bitterly, as if he had made an indecent request.
“You’re right. That’s silly, isn’t it. There must not be any veterinarians, or, if any, relatively few on call, even in such a sophisticated city as Bombay—and you’ve been through a long day, and now the bus has been wrecked. Forgive me. I’m not feeling very well today. Let me ask you. Can you tell me at which hotel I am staying?”
“The Taj,” she said.
“Right, the Taj. That’s what I thought.” Ad Magic placed a half-dozen American ten-dollar bills on the table. “Please accept this little gratuity. You’ve been marvelous. Now, I wonder if you can call a real doctor. Tell him I will make it truly worth his while. The boy and I will wait for him across the road, on the beach. I’ll get back to the hotel on my own. It is the Taj, isn’t it?” The woman nodded.
Ad Magic and the boy, with the monkey on his shoulder, crossed the road again and sat on a pair of broken merry-go-round horses that were detached from an abandoned carousel. Next to the carousel was the small Ferris wheel, contrived to be powered by a horse or mule rather than a motor. Nearby was a ticket kiosk decorated with elephant-men and monkey-men painted in brilliant, bubblegum colors. The carnival was defunct and depressing. Ad Magic remembered bright lights—a carnival of his childhood, before he had picked up on the tawdriness of carnivals and saw only the enchanting splendor of them. He couldn’t have been more than four. He was sitting in a red miniature car when he saw one of a different color—yellow—that he liked better. Impulsively, he scrambled for the better car. Just as he unbuckled his seat belt and was halfway out of the red one, the ride began and he fell, catching his arm under the car, wrenching and skinning his elbow, and bashing his face against the little vehicle’s fake door. Suddenly he was plucked free by a man in a felt hat and a raincoat, who smelled pleasantly of after-shave. His father? A stranger? He wasn’t sure; there was no face, as there had been no face on the doctor.
He searched his pockets for his cigarettes and discovered a small, flat, green-and-black tin of Powell’s Headache Tablets. He took two of these, dry-swallowed them, and then lit up another cigarette. He spotted an empty tour bus pulling up alongside the damaged bus he had arrived in, and from his seat on the rusting pony Ad Magic watched his party emerge from the New Zealand Café, board the new bus, and take off. There was no goodbye wave, even from the friendly Bahrainis. Again he tried to recover his name and city of origin, but it was hopeless. At least he had come to Bombay rather than Lusaka, or Lima, or Rangoon, or Zanzibar. He remembered coming into Zanzibar on a steamer, seasick—the odor of the spices was so powerful he could smell it twenty miles offshore. He remembered feeling instantly well when the boat reached the harbor, and how the inhabitants of the city were outside—it was midnight—marveling at the recently installed street-lights. An Australian tourist told him that Zanzibar was the last place in the world to get streetlights and that when the bulbs burned out the streetlights would never glow again unless Swiss workers were imported to come in and change them. “The bloody buggers can’t even change a light bulb,” the Australian said. “It isn’t in their makeup.” Ad Magic’s recollection of Zanzibar was like an Alice-in-Wonderland hallucination. It seemed that he had remained stranded there for weeks, almost penniless, living on bread and oranges.
A faded, light-green Mercedes with a broken rear spring came bouncing too fast across the beach and skidded, sliding sideways as it stopped near the carousel. An elderly European man wearing a white coat over a dirty tropical suit stepped out of the car and stretched. He had a head of unkempt, wiry white hair in the style of Albert Einstein. He brushed it back with his hand and opened the back door of the car. A magnificent boxer dog hopped out and followed the old man over to Ad Magic and the boy.
“Are you a doctor?”
“I am a doctor, yes. You were in a car accident, jah?”
“I was, but it’s nothing. I called about the horse. I wondered if you could do something about the horse. What is wrong with that animal?”
The doctor looked out at the sea, lifting his hands to shield his eyes from the afternoon sun. “Probably he has been drinking salt water in desperation. He will die, very soon.”
Ad Magic said, “I will give you five hundred American dollars if you can save the horse.”
The doctor said, “I can send him to seventh heaven with one shot. Haff him dragged away. Fifty dollars for the whole shebang.”
“Look, I don’t want to wrangle. If you can save the horse, I will pay you a thousand dollars.”
The doctor opened the trunk of the Mercedes and removed a piece of rope. He sent the boy down to the edge of the water and had him lead the horse up onto the dry sand while he backed the car another fifty feet down the beach, where the sand became too loose and he had to stop. Then he got out of the car and removed his medical bag from the back, setting it on the hood. He quickly looked the horse over. “Malnutrition, dehydration, fever.” He opened the horse’s lips. “Ah! He has infected tooth. This is very bad.…”
“What about all the sores? Why does he have so many sores?”
“Quick,” the doctor said. “In my trunk I have glucose und water. We haff to getting in fluids.”
Ad Magic carried two pint-size bottles of glucose and sterile-water solution over to the horse and then stood holding them as the doctor ran drip lines into large veins in the horse’s neck. Ad Magic watched the bottles slowly begin to drain as the doctor put on a pair of rubber gloves and began to scrub the sores on the horse’s body with a stiff brush and a kind of iodine solution, making a rough, sandpaper sound.
“Doesn’t that hurt?”
“Animals don’t experience pain in the same fashion humans,” the doctor said, with some irritation. “Pain for humans is memories, anticipation, imagination —”
“I don’t care about that. What you’re doing has got to hurt.”
The doctor came around from behind the horse. “How much does he weigh? Unless the liver is bad, I will give him morphine. I am not Superman. I haff not got X-ray vision. Maybe the liver is bad. Parasites. Who knows?” The doctor dug in his bag and removed a large hypodermic syringe. He filled it with morphine and injected it into the horse’s shoulder. Then he took the same syringe and filled it with antibiotics and injected these into the horse. After this, he picked up the brush and again began working on the large, putrescent sores on the horse’s skin. Ad Magic’s arms began to hurt from holding the bottles of liquid.
The doctor looked at him. “You are an American? Jah? Who was scratched your face und black eye?”
“Huh? Oh, that,” Ad Magic said. “I forgot that. Last night, I gave some money to this street person. A woman with eleven kids. I gave her some money as they were laying down a cloth to sleep on the street —”
“Yes?”
“Well, after I gave her the money—these men had seen me pass it to her, and they took it away from her. Slapped her around. I hit one of them, knocked him down, but there were so many of them. I just couldn’t fight them all. They tried to steal my watch. I got drunk—or I was drunk. I can’t remember exactly.” Ad Magic leaned over and looked at his face in the side mirror of the Mercedes. He did have an incredible black eye. No wonder the tour party found him peculiar.
The doctor took the glucose bottles from Ad Magic and propped them on the inside of the rear door, rolling up the window until they were upright and secure. “In my bag is green bottle. Take two und lie down in the back seat.” As Ad Magic rummaged in the bag, the doctor came up alongside him and grabbed his wrist. He examined the little stainless-steel bracelet.
“Epilepsy,” the doctor said. “Mmm.” He presented Ad Magic with a little flask of gin. “Swallow this und lie down,” he said. “Horse will take time.”
It was dark when Ad Magic came to. The boxer dog was standing over him, sniffing his face. Ad Magic rolled over and abruptly jerked himself upright. A number of oily torches had been lit, and there were fires in metal barrels as well as drift-wood fires burning all up and down the shore, which was now teeming with activity. There were hundreds of people roaming the beach, and a brisk breeze blowing off the water offered a variety of smells: the smell of sewage was replaced by the pleasant aroma of gardenia, followed by the odor of bitter orange, of vanilla, of cooked curry, of charcoal, of diesel, and then again of sewage or salt water, or of the ancient leather seats of the Mercedes. The boxer, openmouthed, panted in Ad Magic’s face, and from her mouth there was no odor at all.
Ad Magic pulled himself out of the car and took in the scene. The sights and smells and noises were uncommonly rich. There were roving bands of musicians, dancers, acrobats, food vendors, boys selling hashish. There were holy people, fakirs, snake charmers, more boys with trained monkeys. Ad Magic’s own monkey boy watched him leaning against the Mercedes, his eyes roving back and forth between the Rolex and the doctor.
“I can’t believe how wonderful I feel,” Ad Magic said. “What was that pill you gave me?”
“Just a little something,” the doctor said, crouching in the sand as he looked through his black doctor’s bag. Lined up by the horse’s feet there were a dozen empty glucose bottles and an enormous black tooth—a molar—in addition to several lesser teeth, long yellow ones.
“Abscess tooth. Very bad,” the doctor said. “Pus all over everything when I pull it. Horse falling down, goes into shock. I’m having to give him epinephrine. All better now. Then sand in the sores. Clean them all over twice times.”
“Is the horse going to be okay?”
“He is looking much better, don’t you think? Almost frisky, don’t you think?”
“Yes, much better. Much, much better.”
“Maybe he will live. It’s touch and go.”
The boxer dog presented Ad Magic with a piece of drift-wood and began a game of tug-of-war. Soon the two were running around the beach and down to the sea. As the small breakers washed over Ad Magic’s feet, he noticed human excrement in the water and quickly backed away. He looked out at the sea and took in the sight of fishing dhows, backlit by the moon and glowing with tiny amber lights of their own. The boats were making their way—where? The dog tugged at his pant leg, ragging him, and soon she and Ad Magic were rough-housing—chasing each other, rolling in the sand, wrestling. Then Ad Magic was on his feet, jogging down the beach with the dog beside him. Faster and faster they ran until he was running as fast as he could for the sheer joy of it; he had never felt so good—he ran without getting tired, and it seemed that he never would get tired. Wait a minute. He was a smoker. Or was he? He was running effortlessly, like a trained runner, until at last he did begin to tire a little and sweat. So he and the dog plunged into the sea; he disregarded the filth of it and began to swim out into the surf, and the dog swam with him until they were very far out in the warm water. Then they let the waves carry them back in. Ad Magic walked easily in the sand back to the car and the horse, and when he got to the horse he embraced it and rubbed his face against its neck. “Oh, God, thank you,” he said.
“You are okay now?” the doctor said.
“Yes,” Ad Magic said. “I think so.”
“What is ‘ad magic’? You were saying, ‘ad magic.’ What is that?”
“Oh, that. I am an ad writer, and sometimes I feel magic. I tap into a kind of magic. It’s hard to explain.”
Ad Magic reached into his pocket and peeled off ten hundred-dollar bills. The roll was so tight that only the outer bills were wet. He handed the money to the doctor. He felt for his cigarettes and found them ruined. His tin of Powell’s Headache Tablets was also contaminated with seawater. Ad Magic studied the container for a moment. He said, “Listen to this—ad magic. ‘It was a hot day in tough California traffic when a Los Angeles red light made time stand still and gave me a headache like there was no tomorrow. I took a couple of Powell’s Headache Tablets and just like that—beep, beep, toot toot—I was ready to roll again.’ Fifty words. That’s my magic. It’s not that good right now. I’m just getting a little. Just a little is getting through —”
“I see, advertising writer.”
“How’s this? ‘Second-class passage in a Third World rail-road car, hotter than the Black Hole of Calcutta, gave me a first-class headache. I traded my Swiss Army knife for two of Powell’s Headache Tablets. Home or halfway around the globe, Powell’s Headache Tablets. Home or halfway around the globe, Powell’s is my first choice for headache relief.’ It’s not that hot, but that’s how they come, from out of nowhere.”
“H’okay; you are a hausfrau shopping at Christmas und very busy und a bik hurry—Powell’s Tablets. Fifty words.”
“ ‘The day, Christmas Eve; the time, fifteen minutes to midnight; the place, Fox Valley Shopping Center, Aurora, Illinois; the headache, a procrastination special—on a scale of ten, ten. The solution: Powell’s Tablets. The happy ending, gaily wrapped presents under a festive tree, a jolly ho ho, and a merry Christmas to all.’ ”
“Ad magic. Making money for this?”
“Yes. Making money. I think so. Will the horse live? You see, if the horse lives, then I have my magic. That is God’s promise to me. I can do even better for Powell’s Tablets. I can do much better, and if the horse lives I will have my magic. How old is the horse?”
“At first I am thinking he is older. Maybe he is twenty years —”
“How long can this horse live? Given the best care?”
“With good care, a long life. Thirty-five years.”
Ad Magic peeled five hundred-dollar bills off his roll. “I want you to send this horse on a vacation. I want him to have the best food. If he wants other horses to play with, get them for him. I want this horse to have a grassy field. Do horses like music? I heard that once. Get a radio that plays music. I want the horse to have good accommodations. I want you to be the doctor for this horse and get the best people to take care of this horse. What were those pills you gave me? I feel fantastic! Is there some way we can ship this horse back to the States? I’ll look into it. Can you drive me to the Taj? This is so crazy—I don’t even know my name, but I’ve got a room key. Tell the boy to watch the horse until I get back. Do you have a business card? Here’s what we’ll do. I’ve got it. I’ve got it now. You stay with the horse. I’ll take your car. I’ve been here before. I know Bombay. I’ll take the car back. I don’t want you to leave the horse. I don’t want anything to happen to this horse. When I get home, you send me a picture of the horse. Stand next to the horse with a copy of the International Herald Tribune. When I see that the horse is okay, that his health is flourishing, and I see that the date on the paper is current, I will send you six hundred dollars every month. Will that be enough? Like if this horse needs an air-conditioned stall, I want him to have it. Whatever—TV, rock videos, a pool, anything his little horsy heart desires.”
“Excellent. Look, where did you get this great dog? Will you sell me this dog?”
“For no money,” the doctor said.
“C’mon, doctor, I love this dog.”
“Anyhow, you cannot take her to America.”
“Okay,” Ad Magic said. “It was just a thought. You’re looking at me funny. I know what you’re thinking. You don’t trust me with the car. Send the boy to flag a cab. I’ve got to get back to the States. You know those harnesses those Seeing Eye dogs wear? I could wear sunglasses and take the dog back. A white cane. Just let me borrow the dog for a while.”
“Mr. Man. She is my best friend. I’m not selling. Not borrowing.”
“Okay, okay then. But take care of the horse. I’ll send the money. It’s a generous amount.” Ad Magic reached into his pocket and withdrew his wad of cash, peeling off a few more bills. “See that this kid gets taken care of, okay? Send him to school. C’mon, doctor, don’t look at me like that—it’s only advertising money. I don’t have to work for it. Now I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say, as with a voice of thunder, Come! And I saw and behold, a white horse, and its rider had a bow; and a crown was given to him, and he went out conquering and to conquer.”
When a black-and-yellow Ambassador taxi honked from Marine Drive, Ad Magic gave the horse a final embrace. “Heigh-o, Silver, and adios amigos,” he said as he hopped into the cab, brandishing a handful of cash, telling the driver to step on it.
Ad Magic gave the driver a hundred dollars for an eighty-cent cab ride and rushed through the lobby of the Taj Inter-Continental, up to his grand suite in the old part of the hotel. He showered, and after toweling himself off he saw his wallet and passport on the bureau. He cautiously opened the wallet, assiduously avoiding his driver’s license. The wallet was heavy with credit cards and cash. In it he saw a picture of an attractive blond woman and two children. At that moment he knew his name, knew his wife of fifteen years, knew his children, and knew himself. He threw the wallet down, and began scribbling on a yellow legal pad. There was so much to get down and his mind was racing out of control. The magic was getting through. He was developing advertising concepts, enough for a year. He phoned the desk and had a porter send up a bottle of scotch and a plate of rice curry.
The scotch calmed him some and by dawn he had most of it written down. He dialed the switchboard and placed a call to his wife in Los Angeles.