there among the businessmen waiting on the tarmac, Bram noticed an unfamiliar face: “a typical urbane tourist type,” he said, who had somehow wound up on the last leg of their flight—slipping in like an apparition from the ordinary world. The man was complaining, obliviously and loudly enough for everyone around him to hear. He was griping about the lack of service. Bram couldn’t believe it. He watched the man flail, confronting the unimaginable: this upended, amenity-free reality into which he’d suddenly been dropped. Whatever was happening right now, Bram heard the man insisting, was the
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