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In this dream Havelock and Paulette were sitting in Smuckley's Bar on Second Avenue, having their usual fight. Every time she got drunk, she would accuse him of being high on drugs, which he always was — if you consider pot to be a drug, which he didn't. But this accusation drove him mad with rage. He was a Canadian, and pot was legal in Canada. Everybody from the Prime Minister on down smoked it, and he didn't feature being preached to by a moralistic American Republican twit about doing what was his absolute right.
Paulette knew this, and she wouldn't let herself get trapped in that reasoning, so she had invented another rationale which put her in the right: it wasn't the reefer she was enraged about, it was the other stuff, the secret stuff that he took on the side, the secret little pills he was always scoring in the bathrooms of bars from seedy-looking guys and secreting into his mouth when he thought she wasn't watching. She didn't know what these pills contained, but they were the things responsible for his mood swings and his frowning and becoming cross at her when she would recount to him the normal occurrences of her life in their conversations. She never considered the concept that he might think she was being a boring, spoiled reactionary overweening twit. It was the drugs.
"You're on something and I know it!"
"Every time you get sloshed on wine, I get turned into a drug addict! Why don't you go soak your head?"
"I'm going to tell Pops and he's going to fire you!"
"Tell Pops anything you want. He knows what an idiot you are!"
"I am not and idiot," she said, adopting an attitude of arch self-righteousness, "I'm a very intelligent woman!" Paulette had a gift for accepting the middle-brow clichés of the day as unassailable verities.
"There's a contradiction in terms!"
"I'm going to tell immigration and get you deported back to Canada, you drug addict!"
"That's your typical New Yorker for you. All you do is spend your time on your fucking cell phones calling the cops and ratting each other out. Go ahead, you'd be doing me a favor. I can't stand you, and I can't stand your fucking friends and I can't stand your fucking people!"
"I won't let you talk about America like that," Paulette screamed. She made a fist and threw a perfect punch like she had learned at the gym, smashing Havelock square in the face.
Havelock just laughed.
Beside herself with fury, Paulette collected her possessions and made her way unsurely out of the bar.
Havelock turned to the blonde at his right. She was a petite, slender German with short , curly hair and green eyes. She was chic, amusing and effervescent - everything that Paulette, with her elephantine nature was not. Her name was Rita, and there was a maddening physical magnetism between herself and Havelock.
They were in Germany now. Havelock was wearing black leather pants, a soft leather pullover with a silver gray fleur-de-lys stitched onto its front and a black leather motorcycle jacket covered with nailheads. He said to Rita, "Let's go somewhere else and drink a bottle of wine."
They went out into the frigid night air and across a deserted town square into an inn which, due to the disagreeable weather, was mostly empty. The staff, which was extremely gay, seemed to be very busy and bustled around them, rushing through this door and that. Havelock and Rita stared across the table into each other's eyes, and he kissed her hand. At length, a waiter came and uncorked a bottle of red wine.
The place was badly heated, and they were still wearing their coats. Havelock suggested that they move to a small table which was free in front of the fireplace. Once there, they became unbearably warm and removed their coats.
They drank the bottle of wine and became very hungry. Havelock stopped a waiter and asked if he could order some food. The waiter, whom he had not seen before, snapped at him in an effeminate voice, "You should have asked me before. Now I'm tired, and I'm going to sit down!" The kindly waiter who had served them the wine came by, and Havelock asked him if he would serve them.
"The kitchen's closed now."
"Well, where can we get something to eat?" asked Havelock. By now, he and Rita were ravenous.
The waiter said, "At this hour everything's closed. You can go to the Pleasantine Motel. It's about fifteen kilometers outside of town on the autobahn to Hanover. You have to take a taxi."
"Let's go to the motel," said Rita.
The prospect of going to the motel with Rita exhilarated Havelock. He asked the waiter, "Is the taxi ride expensive?"
"You have to buy a ticket. Elvis Kreuzfeld will sell you a ticket."
Rita said, "Let's get out of here." They put on their coats and went out through a wrought-iron glass door onto a darkened patio with steps that led down to a barren garden. A frigid night wind was blowing.
A man ran up the stairs toward them. He was wearing glasses, a black cotton sports jacket with pins and buttons all over it and a black peaked cap, like a tour operator. In his hand he clutched a sheath of tickets. "Are you desiring tickets to the Pleasantine Motel?" he asked politely.
"How much do they cost?" asked Havelock.
"Quinze ans."
"Quinze ans de vie?"
"Oui, monsieur."
"Take the tickets and let's go!" insisted Rita.
"Et vous êtes…..le diable?"
"Oui, monsieur," said the inoffensive-looking tour operator.
Havelock turned to Rita and despairingly told her, "We can't go."
"Why not?"
"Because it's the devil, and he's asking for fifteen years of our lives as the price."
Rita pleaded, "Please, I'm cold and I want to go to the motel!"
Havelock was in despair. More than anything else, he wanted to get out of the cold and go to the motel with this delightful woman. But the price, fifteen years cut off their lives by the devil, was too high. Havelock turned to the patiently waiting devil and informed him politely, "Ce n'est pas possible."
"Très bien, monsieur," responded Satan with equal civility, and he let himself through the glass door, disappearing into the building.
As Havelock's dream faded, the last thing he saw was she, her arms outstretched to him, imploring, "I want to go…"
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Posted on 3/17/2006
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