“And you think she’ll slum with a mortal like you?”
“That’s the best part. She’s not technically a goddess anymore. Taleju means ‘virgin.’ Once she, you know, bleeds, the gig is up—Durga’s got to find herself a new host. And Devi? One day she’s a goddess, the next she’s a woman with serious selfesteem issues. Or what I like to call my wheelhouse!”
“You’re kind of a fucked-up guy, Ray.”
“I know. But what can I do?” He grins evilly. “How’d we get started on Devi?”
“You were going to Korea…”
“Korea!”
“…to see a goddess from Nepal who… Why is she in Korea again?”
“She’s a model. Vicky’s hired her for the same campaign as K. Which is why we’re going to Korea. You can surprise her. Chicks love that shit. It overloads their brain so much that they can only think with their pussies.”
“As tempting as it might be to turn K. into a drooling sex zombie, I don’t exactly have the fundage for international jetsetting.”
“Nobody pays for travel. You can fly for free.”
“No, you fly for free. You’re a photographer. Drug dealers pay full fare.”
“You go as a courier. There are a bunch of places down-town that will hook you up. You find someone that needs something delivered to Korea, and they pay for the trip.”
“A courier? Doesn’t exactly sound like it’s on the up-and-up.”
Ray laughs. “Didn’t you just say you were a drug dealer?”
“The redistribution of certain herbal products is one thing. International smuggling, that’s an entirely different cup of tea. I take it you’ve never seen Midnight Express?”
“I’m talking about legitimate businessmen. A buddy of mine does it all the time. Important documents—contracts and shit. You take ten minutes to drop them off, the rest of the trip is free.”
“Isn’t it, like, a ten-hour flight?” I say. My resistance is starting to soften. “I can’t exactly ask for any more time off from work.”
“Ten hours? More like twenty.”
“I’ve got to be back on Monday. Unless I’m missing some-thing, a day there and a day back leaves me zero time there.”
“You’re missing something,” he says with a stupid grin. “The international date line.”
“Spell it out for a college dropout who’s never been farther than Canada?”
“You’ve got to fly across the date line, which, I don’t know exactly how, but it turns back time. You leave Korea at six o’clock Monday morning, you get back to New York at six o’clock Monday morning. Maybe even earlier.”
“That doesn’t sound possible.”
“Neither did you nailing K. But look what happened.” We both turn toward the dance floor. K. catches us looking at her and smiles back, rolling her eyes at her partner’s enthusiastic interpretation of MC Hammer.
A few minutes before midnight Roscoe throws open the windows. I’m finally in a room with balconies, à la Sid and Nancy. The cold air is bracing, but thick with anticipation rising from the millions of revelers in the streets. Good-bye, 1980s; the ’90s have got to be an improvement. K. finds my hand and holds on to it, and when the clock strikes twelve, we engage in a very public display of affection. A few minutes later, we return to my room and do a few more things in private.
14
NEW YEAR’S DAY TURNS OUT TO BE work as usual, or unusual, as the Motorola buzzes all day. Everyone in New York City has a hangover to nurse, and it’s on me to play Doctor Feelgood. I reluctantly leave K. in my bed and try to lose myself in the flow.
I probably would have forgotten all about Ray’s proposed adventure if chance hadn’t intervened.
A lot of artists take crap for their “creative temperament,” and probably rightly so. But in a city like New York, the cost of living requires its starving artists to be true pioneers: It takes real guts to settle the kinds of neighborhoods where most right-thinking folks would soil their pants if they were caught there past sundown. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway, as a delivery to a metal sculptor south of Houston leads me through what not too long ago must have felt like a combat zone. Only now I see trendy boutiques popping up like weeds through the cracks in the sidewalks. Maybe art really can change the world.
After the Meet-Up, I pass a travel agency that looks like it caters to the NYU crowd. An easel in front lists international fares to exotic cities that sound only vaguely familiar. Where the hell is Machu Picchu? Christchurch? I know from a music video that a night in Bangkok can “make a hard man humble,” but that doesn’t mean I could find it on a globe. Seoul, Korea, is about three-quarters of the way down the list and, at $599, well out of financial reach. But a sign in the window promises passport photos, immunization cards, and air courier jobs. Ten minutes, five missed pages, and ninety-nine dollars later, I leave the agency with instructions to pick up an expedited passport and to meet a Mr. Yi, this Friday night at eight P.M., in front of the Korean Air desk at Kennedy’s International Terminal. The agent warns me not to be late. “Mr. Yi is a stickler for schedule.”
The night before K. departs, we go out for a farewell dinner in the West Village. It’s a nook on Barrow Street, the kind of place that only last week I would have mocked without mercy, full of violins and suggestive artwork to serve up manufactured romance for moneyed stiffs lacking passion or originality. Instead, I feel myself smiling along with the rest of the suckers as two couples become engaged before we’ve had a chance to see the menu. After dinner, K. and I walk back to the hotel. She wraps her arm in mine and leans against my shoulder like an old lover. I feel like I’m floating in a warm bath of endorphins. Less cynically, I am falling in love.
“I can’t believe I’m leaving tomorrow,” she says later, from our postcoital cuddle. “I don’t want to leave you alone.” I want to tell her everything: about my surprise trip; about my feelings for her. But then she climbs on top of me for another round. “I’m just going to have to exhaust you before I go.”
When I wake the next morning, she’s already left for the airport. A funny and sentimental note promises more good times upon her return. Then my pager buzzes, another unfamiliar number from Long Island. It turns out to be Danny Carr.
“Welcome back, Danny. How was Florida?”
“Too much snow,” Danny replies, clearly not meaning precipitation. “A lot of fake tits. When did that happen? Not that I’m complaining. A lot of girls, it makes them fuckable, you know? I need double this week.”
“Double? I don’t know that I can even give you the regular. You didn’t exactly tell me when you were coming back.”
“You’ve got to think ahead, man. Look, I’ll pay you triple.”
“Even if I could, Danny, I don’t have that kind of money to lay out for you.”
“Quadruple. Come meet me in Bridgehampton and I’ll front you what you need.”
I call Billy and tell him that I can’t make it in to work, using my mother as an excuse. An hour later, I’m on the train to Long Island, continuing past Levittown to the Hamptons. I exit to weather cold and unbeachlike and take a taxi to the address Danny gave me. When I ring the doorbell, I’m greeted by a distinguished old man who might have been the butler, had he been wearing something more than a banana hammock.
“Yello!” I say, startled by the sight of so much wrinkled skin.
“Hallo!” says the old man. He speaks with a heavy accent, German I think. “You are him? You are older than I ask for.”