When he returned it was time for Chapter 4.

Midge was conducting the finals. Somebody won. Three others lost. Midge celebrated. Midge got out of her costume. Midge came back home. It was two long days since Sam had disappeared. Bet you got the impression it had been much longer than that. But then that is the general idea: to misguide whenever possible and as much as possible. Imagine a world full of road signs that you could never be sure of. Sometimes they would be bang on. Sometimes they would end up bang in the middle of a huge wall, past which there was no way. It would make for an interesting journey even to a post office. Imagine you end up in a giant game park instead, or a home for the aged.

Midge reached home uneventfully. She inserted her key into the keyhole and turned but the door didn’t open. It was the twist that did not twist. It was her office locker key.

Midge entered, changed and crashed. In the movies the camera would have told you a lot about her just by zooming into the clothes on the floor. It would have revealed her expensive taste in clothes. Midge got into her nightclothes and was snoring in no time flat.

Sam on the other hand was finding it difficult to share his bedroom with rats. Eventually he struck upon a good idea. He opened the back door of one of the limousines and slept the remainder of the night there. It was a lucky chance that one of the limousines had been sent over for a routine service to the garage. Mostly all the other cars that were parked overnight were economical, efficient Japanese cars. Even those suited him fine. Sam had found a pillow that nobody belonged to and slummed it out in a different, beat up car every night. The temptation to return home was overwhelming. But the only thing that prevented him was Midge.

Midge too was finding the double bed extremely uncomfortable. At least four times in 3 nights she had nearly rolled off the bed. She was weighing the options between letting someone else into her life and exchanging her double bed for something smaller. The finalist who had one a million was eager to see more of her, preferably all of her. The dilemma lay in the balance, patiently. The only thing dilemmas dread are decisions. Midge loved the idea of shopping just a little more. That decided it. She would exchange her bed for something smaller. The next day she promptly vacillated. Midge considered. Midge reconsidered.

She made up her mind not to make up her mind. Whim had won the first round.

Midge went furniture shopping nevertheless. She looked at the bedside tables. Ok, fine, admit it she took an active interest in each of the beds on display. She bought another double bed to replace her current double bed. Her fears of falling off temporarily vanished. The bed had no edges. It was perfectly round.

How can you fall over the edge of a round bed?

Midge demonstrated it with a soft thud that night. The rhetoric, apparently in words, was not rhetoric, in reality. It had lulled Midge into a false sense of comfort. But the thud was not all that bad. Midge woke up in the morning with a faint recollection of the fall but she attributed it to a dream. The dream protested vehemently to no avail. In fact, the dream had stayed away from Midge all that night just like Sam had. The dream sympathized with Sam. Especially because Sam had to squeeze himself into a Mini that night. Sam had hardly slept a wink all night. It was not that he felt cramped in the backseat but the odour of the alligator skin upholstery just didn’t agree with him. The dream couldn’t send Sam any cryptic reassurances that all would be fine very soon. So it decided that it would let Midge suffer. It didn’t account for Midge drawing solace from it in its absence.

Calling the house dream analyst for help. This time it was the dream's turn to take its place on the proverbial couch.

3 nights without proper sleep however, did not have the effect on Sam that Midge so desired. The thought of returning home never crossed Sam’s groggy mind even once. He thought about everything under the sun including hexachlorophene liquid soap, which surgeons use to scrub their hands. But not even one itsy, bitsy microsecond did he spare Midge. Actually he did but it wasn’t too manful to admit that he actually missed her. And actually the real reason he didn’t want to return to Midge was in the same murky mindfield. Men leave, for good. Never to return. Pretension was the roadblock, the no entry sign that barred Sam’s way home, and delayed the much anticipated reunion with Midge. Cross the boundary and self-esteem would blow the whistle. Heavy price to pay for someone who was eking out an existence in a two-dime garage. Embarrassing for someone who had millions working for him in some offshore bank account. However none of these really irked Sam. It was the fact that Sam was short that made him feel inadequate in the macho department. Stilts were not the answer. Sam had even tried it when in school. The less said about that episode the better. Suffices to say that, instead of covering himself with the glory he returned home with mud in his mouth.

In the meanwhile Sam was covered with some more mud, and some more grease. Midge would never have recognized him if she had seen him. Chances are she wouldn’t have since Sam had been examining the underbelly of a motorcar for a couple of hours. He wasn’t looking to fix an oil leak or anything like that. It was just his way of getting better acquainted with cars. The diagram on the wall of the car’s anatomy gave him a pretty good idea, but it was nothing like how a beat-up car looks, especially down under, when it is admitted into a garage. Strange choice of verb indeed, but completely justified when your mechanic’s hands smell very much like a surgeon’s hands before he cloaks them in surgical gloves. Yes, somewhere between Midge and reminiscing about the past, Sam had found the time to purchase some surgical liquid soap from the pharmacist for all the mechanics in the garage. Generous Sam. He hadn’t really sneaked out or anything like that but somehow he managed to get past unnoticed.

A lone lady at the garage did notice however. She also happened to be Midge’s friend. It isn’t anything earth shattering but it just gives you that sinking feeling you get when you are sneaking out of home and the door clicks shut louder than you would have liked. All the while you’re out you are wondering whether your absence has been found out. Sam however was completely unaware of what had transpired. To begin with he hadn’t looked over his shoulder when he was leaving because it never occurred to him. Then again, if he had seen her, he wouldn’t have known her. They had never met. So the problem of Midge’s friend was never even half the menace it seemed to be.

The lady wasn’t there when Sam returned. Sam decided to brave another night in the Mini. He purchased some incense sticks in the hope that the heady jasmine would adequately blunt the hideous odour of the alligator skin upholstery in the Mini. It was a clash of aromas that night.

Midge twisted and turned all that night. Everything is connected is the cosmic mantra. Om tat sat, or Vedic abracadabra for those who have never ventured past Sunday sermons. Midge breathed heavily. She felt strangeness in the air. She woke up twice to check if she had left a cigarette burning and it had started a fire.

The second time she woke because she didn’t realize she had already checked before. She stayed awake the whole night after that. She thought about everything: sheep to the second law of thermodynamics. Everything is interconnected, Hari Om. The Vedic mumblings at this hour added a layer of eeriness to the entire happenings. Midge stumbled into sleep. Yes, she fell headlong into a slumber. Fortunately for her she crash-landed on the bed.

She slept for a hundred and one years. The Guinness Book of World Records went to town with the news. Midge was the flavour of the day. But that wasn’t because she woke up to be a 127. It was just a convoluted way of revealing her age to you. It was her birthday. You are welcome to send Midge a greeting card or a birthday present. Midge could do with all the cheerleaders in the world.

Sam was not going to be there. Sam was not to blame. His forgetfulness however needed to do some quick explaining.

The keyboard is happy to cooperate this time around. Not all the stutters and stammers could save forgetfulness from a mighty big blush. Dark complexioned forgetfulness turned a deep shade of purple.

Meanwhile Sam, the multi-millionaire’s son, is stuck deep inside of Mobil or then replace that with whatever brand of lubricant you prefer. Like it or not Sam, dearest Midge, is deeply in love. The proverbial other woman in this case is a car named Betsy. Midge would have been overjoyed to share Sam’s newfound love. Midge would have hugged Betsy. Midge would even have found something to appreciate about the broken headlamp and the missing viper. But Sam wasn’t about to tell her. Not till he could drive over.

Sam did not know how to drive. (Forget that the car was in no condition to be driven. It needed nine to twelve months of tender loving repair.)

Understandably. When your dad is a taxi-driver neither do you eulogise the ability to drive nor do you feel the necessity. Navigation is an art you master. Sam could give a blind man direction on how to go from one place to another.

Sam missed Blind man Joe. He decided to walk over to Joe’s and purchase a paper. Did you get the impression Sam was hiding from Midge? He wasn’t. He was just staying away from Midge. If he met her on the road he would have stopped and spoken to her. He didn’t meet her. He took a paper from Joe and walked away. Joe didn’t recognise his voice. Sam had a sore throat. Sam was disappointed. Sam didn’t tell Joe who he was. He just walked away. He could hear the nephew playing the saxophone in the background. If the world had been black and white this could have been a sweet sad scene from a yet to be screened Chaplin movie.

Joe did stir a bit. But the temporary uneasiness passed.

Sam returned to Betsy. Betsy was black. But Sam had ambitions. Sam was at work. Miracles do not happen on their own. Even they need ignition. Sam beneath his greasy boiler suit was actively combusting calories. But not all the grease on the uniform was Sam’s clumsiness. The patchy, more black than blue, overall was borrowed and some parts of it still bore evidence of the garage owner, James.

Sam was the quiet guy in the garage. He didn’t have much in common with the other mechanics. Not their passion for pin-up girls, their pointed sense of humour or their abundant understanding of automobiles. Not necessarily in that order. But Sam did have to exercise inordinate restraint when their mild mannered derision was directed at short people.

So what if it wasn’t him they referred to. James, the garage owner was the shortest in the garage, even after Sam had joined the spanner-wielding roster. But even Sam would have to confess that he stole a smile. When he heard of how Adam would not have not have been expelled from paradise if the forbidden apple had been a more proverbially sour grape. Oh lord god! How they rue that Adam had not been short. Had Adam only been made in the image of James in the garage, the world would have been saved. James laughed heartily at the facetious attempt at flattery. No, his sensitivities were not so heightened, unlike Sam our vertically and emotionally challenged protagonist.

Lucky James had even found himself an Eve who was short. Paradise regained.

Pause.

The short lady in the bank often wondered what happened to Sam. She wondered whether the cushion had returned to its rightful owner. But she didn’t lose sleep over it. Had she it would have been another chest thump for cushions all over the world. But the curtains didn't rise to the occasion.

The mechanics couldn’t be bothered. Cushions could give them a crick in the neck but even that could wait. James had cried Sesame and the garage doors were to creak shut with or without their hinges being oiled. The mechanics were to leave their dear darling pin-up girls alone for a whole week. They feigned their farewells. Grease stains smothered the glossy beauties. They bore it with a smile outwardly. The spanners arched their spines in anticipation of their well-deserved rest. The customers would wait. James was king and not her royal highness Mrs. Albuquerque though she certainly had the swagger of Portuguese royalty. The mechanics unmindful of the narrative blew asynchronised kisses in the direction of James. He was minorly amused at the response to his much-delayed honeymoon.

It was a double-faced moment. It made Sam happy and it distracted him. Both feelings breasted the tape in a photo finish. It struck him even as he cheered for James that he had reason to be sad. A week without Betsy would occur to him later. But at first the frown publicized the concern of a week with no garage to spend the night. Homeless part two was hardly a scenario that Sam relished. He wanted no part to play in this bed buster. He wanted no seats in the house. He wanted a bed right now. With a ceiling above it.

The irony of all this was lost on Sam.

Sam to begin with had no city, let alone a home. He was living in a world that was as yet unfinished. It had a few streets, a bank, a blind newspaper vendor, a 14 year- old saxophonist, a few mechanics, a garage owner and his wife, Midge and her furnished home with a garden full of creatures, a park bench and a swing, some cars and a few posters. Almost forgot the janitor and his broomstick and the spider that spun a cobweb decorating Midge’s doorbell. Sam needed a city as much as he needed a home. A large spill of royal blue ink on paper was called for. A city needed to be born urgently. The need of the hour was not a cartographer as much as an author. How do you think Utopia was born? It just came to be. A thought blurb that instantly magnified into a city. Sam needed intervention.

Granted.

Out of need for a city a chapter was appended.