The day we arrived at the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, there was a big ornate plywood sign outside that said ALL ELDERLY ARE WELCOME and we were like, What the fuck, now this? But they remembered Kathy from a previous stay, the two young guys who ran it, and they loved her, and she walked with her canes while Emma carried her satchel and they showed us to our rooms, and I went into mine, where the guy had put the suitcase on the bed, and as I unzipped and opened it, a little gray mouse came from nowhere and jumped in. When I went to turn around and leave, I noticed on the floor—which was beautiful old cracked tile with a thick Moroccan-style rug, just like here in the Arizona desert—that there was a little toad I could have stepped on. I picked it up and carried it out to the patio. Then I went over to Kathy’s room and told her about the mouse but not the toad. I said, “Do you think I should tell Emma?” and she said, “No! You shouldn’t have told me!” and we fell into hysterical fits on her big lumpy bed, which probably had its own resident mouse.

She was adamant that we had to eat the hotel’s food because the two young guys—both married, both with children, both in graduate school—were really excited about making dinner for us, telling us all about the movie that had just filmed there and about how they were having townspeople come to entertain us, their only guests, with music. So all along I had been drinking Cokes out of the can and eating hotel food from room service—frozen egg rolls and pizzas that they microwaved for me—but now I had to really give in and let go. The meal they made was the best I’ve ever had in my life, little bowl after little bowl of delicious vegetarian dishes that we didn’t even try to identify, and they made it all, so varied and filled with fragrant spices, in a kitchen off the patio. Afterward some men from the town came and played music for us—Emma, the good sport, danced—and then they put us to bed.

I huddled under a bunch of exotic-marigold blankets that smelled like mice and incense, still reading Franzen, my imaginary friend, and suddenly blam, terrifying me, and then blam, terrifying me again and again. All night. A horse and I shared an ancient wall and every time he had a bad thought or noticed for the millionth time how small his stall was compared to how large the world was, he would send a hoof out and punish our wall.