FREDDY Pelu is a man who doesn‘t need to be told, before take-off, to secure his own oxygen mask before assisting others.
It was just a game they were playing, waiting for friendsto join them at the bar. One of those San Francisco bars thatis neither gay nor straight, just odd, and Freddy still worehis blue shirt and tie from teaching, and they were havingsome new kind of beer that tasted like aspirin and smelledlike magnolias and cost more than a hamburger. Less was in acable-knit sweater. They were trying to describe each otherin a single sentence. Less had gone first and said the sentencewritten above.
Freddy frowned. "Arthur," he said. Then he looked downat the table.


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ALONG with the other drugs Arthur Less bought at Mex-ico City‘s airport farmacia, Less has obtained a new varietyof sleeping pill. He recalls Freddy‘s advice from years before:
"It‘s a hypnotic instead of a narcotic. They serve you dinner,
you sleep seven hours, they serve you breakfast, you‘re there."
Thus armed, Less boards the Lufthansa aircraft (he will havea fairly rushed layover in Frankfurt), settles into his windowseat, chooses the Tuscan chicken (whose ravishing name re-veals itself, like an internet lover, to be mere chicken andmashed potatoes), and with his Thumbelina bottle of redwine takes a single white capsule. His remaining anxiety from
"Una Noche con Arthur Less" is working against his exhaus-tion; the sound of the Head‘s amplified voice loops in his


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Arthur Less, encircling the globe! It feels cosmonautical innature. The morning he left San Francisco, two days beforethe event with H. H. H. Mandern, Arthur Less marveled thathe would not be returning, as he had his entire life, from theeast but from the mysterious west. And during this odyssey,
he was certain he would not think about Freddy Pelu at all.


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SINGAPORE, 2004a
The first time Astrid laid eyes on Michael, he was in aageofcamouflage-print speedo. The sight of anyone over theten in one of these banana hammocks was usually repellant toAstrid‘s aesthetic sensibilities, but when Michael strutted downthe runway in his Custo Barcelona speedo, his arm around anAmazonian girl clad in a sheer black Rosa Cha bathing suitand emerald necklace, Astrid was transfixed.
She had been dragged to Churchill Club for a charity fash-ion show organized by one of her Leong cousins and had satbored stiff throughout the proceedings. For someone used to afront-row seat at Jean Paul Gaultier‘s elaborate flights of stage-craft, this hastily constructed catwalk lit with yellow gels, fakepalm fronds, and flashing strobe lights seemed like under-


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Rachel peered at the clock and figured that she‘d only sleptabout five hours, but it was dawn and she was too excited to goback to sleep. Nick was snoring softly beside her. She lookedaround at the room, wondering how much this hotel must becosting Nick per night. It was an elegant suite decorated inunderstated pale wood, the only burst of color coming fromthe fuchsia orchids on the console table against the mirroredwall. Rachel got out of bed, put on a plush pair of terryclothslippers, and padded quietly into the bathroom to splash somewater on her face. Then she walked over to the window and
peeked through the curtains.


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