Where the hell was he? He went back to the room, dressed and headed downstairs to see if he could identify his surroundings. On the stairs, he passed a man coming up with a tray.

“Bit o’ breakfast, gov’nah?” the man asked. “Bloomin’ lovely day. ”

Allen ran down the steps, out the front door, into the street, and looked around. He saw the black taxicabs with the big license plates, the pub sign, the traffic on the wrong side of the street.

“Holy shit! What the hells going on? What the hell’s the matter with me?” He ran up and back, shouting, terrified and angry at the same time. People turned to look at him, but he didn’t care. He hated himself for waking up in different places all the time, for not being able to control himself. He just couldn’t take this anymore. He wanted to die. He dropped to his knees and beat his fists into the curb, tears rolling down his cheeks.

Then, realizing that if a policeman came by, he’d be hauled off to the nut house, Allen jumped to his feet. He dashed back to his room, where he found in his suitcase a passport with the name “Arthur Smith.” Inside it was the receipt of a one-way plane ticket to London. Allen slumped on the bed. What had Arthur had in mind? Crazy bastard!

Searching through his pockets, he found seventy-five dollars. Where was he going to get the money to get home? A return ticket would probably cost three or four hundred bucks. “Goddamn! Jesus Christ! Holy hell!”

He started to pack Arthur’s clothes to check out, and then he stopped. “The hell with it. It’ll serve him right.” He left the luggage and clothes.

He took the passport, walked out of the hotel without paying and hailed a cab. “Take me to the international airport.”

“Heathrow or Gatwick?”

He rummaged through the passport and looked at the oneway ticket. “Heathrow,” he said.

All the way there, he worked out how he was going to handle it. Seventy-five dollars wouldn’t get him very far, but if he used his wits and put up a good front, there had to be a way to get on a plane back home. At the airport he paid the driver and ran into the terminal.

“Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “I don’t know what happened! I got off the plane at the wrong time! I was drugged. I left my ticket, my luggage, everything on the plane. Nobody told me I wasn’t supposed to get off. There must’ve been something in my food or drink. I fell asleep, and when I woke up, I got out to stretch my legs. Nobody told me I wasn’t supposed to get off the plane. My tickets, my traveler’s checks, everything’s gone.”

A guard tried to calm him down and led him to the passport-control office.

“I got off the plane at the wrong time!” he shouted. “I was coming over. I was supposed to go to Paris. But I got off the plane at the wrong time. I’ve been wandering dazed. There was something in my drink. It’s the airline’s fault. Everything’s on the plane. I’ve only got a few dollars in my pocket. How’m I gonna get back to the United States? Ohmigod, I’m stranded. I can’t afford a ticket home! I’m no deadbeat. Look, I wouldn’t pull something to come over here and spend one day in London. You gotta help me get home.”