Read Out of Order for Free Online Page B

laugh.
    “It’s not right? What’s not right is that a couple of healthy twenty-somethings are traveling around with a herd of retirees when there’s a really cool country to explore. Now come on,” she said, shrugging her shoulders to readjust her backpack, “we’ve got to get moving to get that train.”
    “Wait a second,” Jason said. “I can’t just….”
    “Yes, you can,” Rachel said. “And you sort of have to. Danny Boy’s already sold our spots to an Australian couple visiting India for their fiftieth anniversary. Pretty romantic, actually. Besides,” she added, her voice dropping as she turned to look at him, “he refused to let me out of the tour unless you went with me. They’re still really sexist here.” She waited a half-minute for Jason to make up his mind before saying, “Well? We going?”
    Jason sighed and stood up. “Do I have a choice?” He grabbed his backpack and followed her through the lobby and out the front door of the hotel.
    ***
    Five hours later, his jaw hanging slack, his arms too heavy to lift, Jason fought to keep his eyes closed.
    He’d been trying to fall asleep for hours but, just as he’d feel his muscles relax and his breathing deepen, every synapse in his brain would light up and with a frightened gasp he’d snap awake. In a moment of adrenaline-infused clarity he weighed the two possible causes.
    The first was jetlag. Yes, his internal clock was all screwed up and, yes, he’d drunk way too much coffee at the hotel, but as he felt his brain spasm and race he knew that this was not the reason.
    The second was India, and he knew that this was the cause.
    The moment they stepped out of the air-conditioned hotel into the early morning sun, Freedom Tours’ version of India ended and the real India began. Rachel waved off the doorman’s offer to hail a taxi as she led the way out past the gate to the main road where a swarm of three-wheeled, black and yellow cabs crowded the entranceway. When they spotted their bags, twenty men leapt out of the open sides of their cabs and raced towards them, each shouting offers in their own version of English, wading through a mob of young boys that flew in from the streets, some waving tourist maps, some fanning picture postcards, one holding up a classroom globe.
    Jason gripped his backpack with both arms, his eyes wide as a score of hands reached out to him. The cab drivers responded, snapping thin leather straps across the boys’ legs, and Jason watched as they jumped in pain or in sport, laughing and kicking out at the old men before sprinting away. Then the men were on him, each shouting that his was the best cab in all of Delhi and that the others were thieves and liars. At six feet even, he towered over most of the men, all dressed in button-down shirts and pants that were at one time black but now faded to gray, and all of them fighting to be heard. At the fringe of the crowd he spotted Rachel as she climbed into a cab. She gave an impatient wave and tapped her finger on an imaginary wristwatch.
    Jason turned back to see his former companions making their way onto the Freedom Tours bus, and he wondered who would room with Bob Froman.
    “Come on already.” Rachel’s high voice cut through the din and Jason turned back, the crowd parting as he walked to the cab, scanning the hotel entrance for other tourists willing to wander off on their own.
    “It’s not a cab per se,” Rachel said after the driver kick-started the engine and U-turned his way through four lanes of traffic. “It’s called an auto-rickshaw. They say they’re the best way to get around in the cities. Oh, and it’s not the wrong way,” she added, noticing the panic in his eyes. “They drive on the left here. It’s an old British thing.”
    Stuffed in behind the driver and sharing a narrow bench seat made for one, there was little chance they would be thrown out the open sides despite the jerky last-second turns. The overtaxed engine screamed its