“I’d like to meet this woman.”

“Are you upset with me?”

“Curious, curious, curious,” Mimi says. “What’s wrong with being curious? What was her last name? Tomaguchi. Right?”

There is no one registered under Kalea Tomaguchi.

“She’s registered under Bryce’s name,” says Mimi. “That’s disappointing.”

“Yes, there’s a Bryce Osbourne staying at the hotel,” the desk clerk tells us. “Would you like me to ring the room?”

“What do you think?” Mimi turns to me. “Maybe she’d like to meet me.”

I say, sure, why not, we have nothing better to do. Here we are in Prague looking for a dead Indian and a lost bundle, without a hope in the world of finding either. Bothering a young couple in the middle of a crisis is certainly more interesting than touring another church.

Mimi doesn’t appreciate the sarcasm. “I think it would be nice to meet her. Then we’d have a story to tell, and so would they.”

The desk clerk tries the room.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “but there is no answer. Do you wish to leave a message?”

We wander around for a while. The evening is pleasant. The cloud cover has moved on, and the stars have come out to glisten in the night sky. Every time we pass a couple in the street or we see a man and a woman in a café, Mimi asks if it’s Kalea and Bryce. I make the effort, but the truth is their faces have already faded away, and all I see, as we make our way back to the hotel, is a city of strangers.

X

When I wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, Eugene and the Other Demons are waiting for me. I stand by the toilet and ignore them.

And then the first cramp hits, and we all start screaming.

THE YEAR I GRADUATED from high school, I hitchhiked to Oklahoma to try to find my father. I didn’t tell my mother, wasn’t sure how she would feel about my chasing after a man who had left her hanging like laundry on a line. I didn’t think she would be angry, but I was pretty sure she’d be hurt. So I told her that I had a job roofing A-frame chalets at South Shore, Lake Tahoe.

It wasn’t a lie. I did have a job roofing chalets. It lasted two weeks, and by then I had enough money to get me to Oklahoma and back.

I had hitchhiked before. It was no big deal. Those days, everyone was on the move. Hobos, hippies, the unemployed, kids looking for an adventure. The on-ramps to the major highways looked like commuter bus stops.

My first ride was from Truckee to Reno. The guy who picked me up was on his way to a poker tournament in the Biggest Little City in the World.