Fat Charlie went back to his hotel room, the colour of underwater, where his lime sat, like a small green Buddha, on the countertop."You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it at all. It was doing the best it could.

The trail of lime trees outside our building is still a public loo. …where else are they supposed to go to the toilet in a city where public toilets are about as common as UFO sightings?” (pp.281-82)