It turns out that Quichotte is a metafictional character, the creation of a New York-based, Indian-born author of second-rate spy novels. One day, during an outburst of favorable astrological omens, the “longed-for son, who looked to be about 15 years old, materialized in the Cruze’s passenger seat.” He appears in black and white, “his natural colors desaturated in the manner that has become fashionable in much modern cinema.” Quichotte names him Sancho. Unfortunately, he has never been able to maintain a relationship, but he is convinced that in this “Age of Anything-Can-Happen,” he will someday find and wed Miss Salma R., and she will bear him numerous children. While on the road in his old gunmetal grey Chevy Cruze, he ruminates on how much he would have liked to marry and become a father. Although he has seen her only on television, he writes her love letters, which he signs “Quichotte.” When Ismail loses his job, he takes off on a cross-country journey in search of his idol, Miss Salma R., an Indian talk-show hostess and former Bollywood star.
Ismail Smile, a traveling salesman for a pharmaceutical company, has spent endless hours in tawdry motel rooms watching mindless television “and suffered a peculiar form of brain damage as a result.” The principal manifestation of his lunacy is the inability to distinguish between truth and reality.
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