At some point, Sancho thought, someone is going to come along and wrap him up in a straitjacket and take him away, and at that point I’ll find the path back to Beautiful, Kansas (pop. 135,473). This he did not say aloud. Instead, humoring the old man, he declared, “I’m ready. I’ll give up my desire for a new iPad and my attachment, which I think I must have got from you, to the music of U2.”
“It’s a start,” Quichotte said, and then the city was upon them. “Can’t you feel it? Reality, that sham, is already ceasing to exist.”
Sancho did not reply, but privately dissented. Reality was a white lady at Lake Capote, it was what came out of the angry mouths he’d seen at a diner in Oklahoma, it was gunshots in Kansas, two wounded, one dead, a community shaken and in mourning, a beautiful young woman slamming a door in his face. Was that reality likely to dissolve and disappear? Could it really be dismissed as a sham?
Chapter Eleven: Dr. Smile Meets Mr. Thayer; & a Grandfather Emerges from the Past to Haunt the Present

The Thayers were early Pilgrims, check. Thomas and Richard Thayer, brothers, classified among the Pilgrim Fathers, check. Their descendants married into the Mayflower family descended from John Alden, check.—Regarding the Mayflower itself, however? Were their names on that eminent list? They were aboard, right?—Um, not actually on the Mayflower, no .— Oh. How about on the Fortune, the second ship to make the crossing?—Ah…no, not on the Fortune, either. But they were early settlers. Early was good. Early was impressive. Words had a life of their own, Anderson Thayer believed, they developed meanings that only pedants would argue with, and Mayflower was—at least for him—by now pretty much synonymous with early . Little discrepancies did not make big differences. Small departures from the truth did not add up to lies. Therefore, Anderson Thayer saw no need to correct others when they believed his people to have come over on the fabled ship. He saw no need to correct himself.
Small was not big. It was a principle he carried over into other parts of his life. He was a small man, and understood that this was not the same as being a big one. (Big men lumbered. Small men were nimble. This could give them an edge. He had read something once, or maybe seen something on TV, about the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The Spanish galleons were big and slow. The British fleet was little, maneuverable, and fast. The British ships zipped in and out between the big Spanish lumberers, firing their cannons and then sailing away, zap, pow, punch and retreat. That was big versus small. It was David versus Goliath. It was Cassius Clay floating and stinging, Sonny Liston standing there like a big confused bear. His hands can’t touch / what his eyes can’t see. )
Small was not big. Small misdemeanors were not big crimes. Small thefts were not grand larceny. Small betrayals were not high treason. During the course of his relationship with Miss Salma R, he had often had recourse to this guiding principle, and it had served him well. He had stolen things from her, sure, but not the big things, the things she cared about. An earring here, a bracelet there. She noticed the losses and shrugged them off.
“I’m always losing things,” she rebuked herself, and the thief laughed along with her. He had stolen her likeness, too, filming her secretly on his smartphone in her low moments, her depressions, her out-of-it hours brought on by her abuse of prescription drugs. This was to give him cards to play, to safeguard him in case she turned against him, which he intuited she was considering doing; but he suspected they would not be of much use, because she was so open about her follies, her unwellnesses and overindulgences, that video evidence of their extent might not damage her much. Still, she probably would not like the studio bosses to see the footage; even though they had heard all her stories, in these sensitive times the evidence of their eyes might be too much for them to take, even if the evidence of their ears could be set aside; so the material was not without value. So he was disloyal in little things, but loyal in the big ones: for he was indeed her protector, her guardian, he would do anything for her, he would clean up her messes, and—again, at least in his own opinion—he truly loved her. She was the giant and he the pygmy and he looked up to her, and adored.
He was a student of the world of stardom, and of peripheral figures like himself who modestly played consort to the great. He paid particular attention to young men who were attracted, and attractive, to older women, fading beauties, falling stars. Demi and Ashton, of course, Madonna and that dancer guy, Cher and Tom Cruise, and the present-day gold medalist of this particular sport, the young nightclub king Omar Vitale. Omar and Demi, Omar and Heidi Klum, Omar and Elle “the Body” Macpherson. Respect, Anderson Thayer thought. However, his great role model, only recently deceased, was from the golden age. His name was Robert Wolders and he was a Dutch actor, mainly on TV although he had supporting roles in Beau Geste and Tobruk. His most substantial TV role had been in the cowboy series Laredo in the mid-sixties. But as the real-life leading man to a series of great stars, Wolders had no equal. He married Merle Oberon when she was sixty-four and he was twenty-five years younger, and gave up acting to be with her. She died four years later. The following year he started dating Audrey Hepburn when she was fifty-one and he was about seven years her junior, and he stayed with her for thirteen years, until her death. He was also subsequently the partner of Leslie Caron (five years older). This was a career which Anderson Thayer admired, to which he aspired. Robert Wolders had been tall and handsome and he, Anderson, was the Yosemite Sam/Rumpelstiltskin type, but he had started well in his chosen métier. If he could, he would stay at Miss Salma R’s side until her death. Then he would look for her successor. He already had a short list of possible successors in mind.
—
AT THE TIME OF WHICH we speak, Anderson Thayer made a brief personal visit to Atlanta. The American Association of Doctors of Indian Origin (AADIO), the Georgia Institute of Medical Practitioners of Indian Heritage (GIMPIH), the United States Pain Association (USPA), and the Smile Foundation had jointly organized an “Opioid Awareness Program” at the Atlanta branch of the consulate of India in the Atlantan suburb of Sandy Springs, Georgia. The closing address was to be delivered by the noted Indian-American pain management specialist Dr. R. K. Smile, founder and chief executive of Smile Pharmaceuticals Inc. (SPI). Anderson Thayer, introducing himself to consular staff as Conrad Chekhov, a Washington Post reporter on the “opioid beat,” was given permission to cover the conference. Anderson was proud of the “tradecraft”—a word he had learned from spy movies on TV—that had enabled him to acquire the fake Post ID. He had a selection of such identities available to him. It was often necessary, in his work, to make sure that no connection could be made between himself and what security people called “the principal.” Deniability was everything. He left no paper trails.
The conference was small and dull but when Dr. Smile stood up to speak everyone paid attention. This was the Little King, a respected figure who had donated generously to the community and to the cultural life of the city. His name was everywhere, raising the profile of Atlanta’s Indian community in ways that were beneficial to all Indian Americans and served to reduce interracial tensions. Today Dr. Smile seemed particularly passionate. To begin with, he blamed the media for not paying attention to the growing crisis. “As a country we are at the mercy of the media, which sets the agenda for all,” he said. “Even ten years ago there were maybe one hundred deaths a day caused by opioids but the media because of its liberal bias wanted only to talk about breastfeeding in public places and transgender restrooms. Also, on account of its obsession with the hole in the ozone layer, it foregrounded melanomas. And then came Ebola. How many Americans died from Ebola? I will tell you. Two persons precisely. One, two. But in the media it was Ebola wall to wall, 24/7. Plus it is a society fixated on body issues, on looking good, keeping fit, there is so much ‘body shaming,’ as they call it, if you have a ‘dad bod,’ as I think is possessed by many of the men in this room, myself included.” Here he was interrupted by laughter, which he allowed to die down. “Be comforted, however,” he continued. “Now there are counter-ideologies, ‘body neutrality,’ ‘fat acceptance,’ ‘body respect.’ So, it’s okay, gentlemen, you don’t have to go on a diet.” More comfortable laughter. Then Dr. Smile returned to his serious point. “So, on account of the American body-love, there was much attention paid to walking for fitness and obesity in schools. Meanwhile thirty thousand persons per annum dying from opioids, receiving almost zero coverage.”
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