"You're an idiot, Ike. Don't you see?"

Said Raj.

"Girls only like you as much as you like them. The moment you give up, she gave up on you too."


Behind them, searchlights scanned the ground around the prison yard, even as they walked, nay, strolled through (heading south, for there was freedom).

For the first time, possibly *ever*, gratitude flooded his body and mind like a stewed gravy over a freshly baked turkey carcass. And Ike was glad, finally, that he had friends in low places.

The watchlights washed over them, even as sirens screamed around them on all four quardrants. They must all have night-blindness or be geriatic, because not one of them seemed to notice Ike and Raj in their manical sweeps.

They walked right out of that final gate, like two spring chickens on a virgin lark across a clear blue open sky, except that one of them was about 252 months too old to be a Thanksgiving turkey and the other was too obviously hairy, and both could obviously neither fly nor had feathers worth a gobble.

Raj and Ike walked out of jail that night, one into an uncertain future, and the other sure-footedly into an even more uncertain one. But Raj had the Indian Mafia on his side, and Ike had a friend in Raj. Everything was possible, that one night in November.

Afterwards they lurched the lurch of the critically drunk and forgotten, uncaring, unnoticed, and un-encumberred by grace, humility, and proper underpants."

~ unpublished (heck, unedited) - chapter from Swipe.

There's really an Indian mafia in Singaporia, and also space tourism will be big.

I just got to figure out how to stay ahead of the Indian mafia.

I shall meet with Raj soon.