The waiters were accustomed to wiping up spills and Lester was awkwardly helpful. While they were getting everything set to rights again, Perry looked at Eva and saw her lips tightly pursed as she considered her husband. He followed Kettlebelly's gaze and saw that he was watching Suzanne (who was laughingly restraining Lester from doing any more "cleaning") intently. In a flash, Perry thought he had come to understanding. Oh dear, he thought. The kids loved the shantytown. The little girl -- Ada, "like the programming language," Eva said -- insisted on being set down so she could tread the cracked cement walkways herself, head whipping back and forth to take the crazy-leaning buildings in, eyes following the zipping motor-bikes and bicycles as they wove in and out of the busy streets. The shantytowners were used to tourists in their midst. A few yardies gave them the hairy eyeball, but then they saw Perry was along and they found something else to pay attention to. That made Perry feel obscurely proud. He'd been absent for months, but even the corner boys knew who he was and didn't want to screw with him. The guesthouse's landlady greeted them at the door, alerted to their coming by the jungle telegraph. She shook Perry's hand warmly, gave Ada a lollipop, and chucked the little boy (Pascal, "like the programming language," said Eva, with an eye-roll) under the chin. Check-in was a lot simpler than at a coffin-hotel or a Hilton: just a brief discussion of the available rooms and a quick tour. The Kettlewells opted for the lofty attic, which could fit two three-quarter width beds and a crib, and overlooked the curving streets from a high vantage; Suzanne took a more quotidian room just below, with lovely tile mosaics made from snipped-out sections of plastic fruit and smashed novelty soda bottles. (The landlady privately assured Perry that her euphemistic "hourly trade" was in a different part of the guesthouse altogether, with its own staircase). A few hours later, Perry was alone again, working his ticket counter. The Kettlewells were having naps, Lester and Suzanne had gone off to see some sights, and the crowd for the ride was already large, snaking through the market, thick with vendors and hustling kids trying to pry the visitors loose of their bankrolls. He felt like doing a carny barker spiel, *Step right up, step right up, this way to the great egress!* But the morning's visitors didn't seem all that frivolous -- they were serious-faced and sober. "Everything OK?" he asked a girl who was riding for at least the second time. She was a midwestern-looking giantess in her early twenties with big white front teeth and broad shoulders, wearing a faded Hoosiers ball-cap and a lot of coral jewelry. "I mean, you don't look like you're having a fun time." "It's the story," she said. "I read about it online and I didn't really believe it, but now I totally see it. But you made it, right? It didn't just... *happen*, did it?"