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We spent so long repairing the boiler in the wild sun; thrashing it with willow branches, knocking it with our spanners, raising clouds; had we not earned a four-martini-afternoon in a hotel whose theme was oranges? Chairs shaped like an orange with a quarter-wedge cut out, orange crate staircases, orange light shades, and so on. Someone around here sure must love oranges and I’ll wager it’s the proprietor or the owner of the syndicate: for once there was one Oranges Hotel called The Oranges Hotel, but soon there were four in very different areas of the city and now, as far as I know, there is at least one in every town worth its civic centre. But why did the two-seater aeroplane need a boiler? It needed an engine, I said, mouth half full of smoked almonds from a crystal bowl, but not a boiler, and we were – how to put it? – how to put it delicately for you were unpredictable and I never knew what might break the mood irreparably? – we were investigating a detective, we were of the Gileadites, we were taking a kid’s marbles but we were the kid and we were the marbles. We’d live in the plane, the static plane, you said, blotting a little ice cube on the knee of your dress, it was never meant to fly, we were never meant to get out of here, to flip it off forever and write something valedictory and obscene in the sky everyone we’d abandoned would be too slow-witted to even be very insulted by – they’d move onto the next scandal soon enough and we’d land once again, somewhere else, somewhere with an Oranges Hotel, with a busted boiler, with you trying to compliment the cake I’d made on the radiator, with lust our only bellwether – and did you know that bellwether meant the leading sheep of the flock? – with lust our only northern lights with lust our only solemn duty? Now get the bill – I don’t believe they give the tips to the employees, it’s what I heard, so I will leave it up to you whether you tip ten, fifteen or twenty percent or not at all, then take me to our very garish room.