“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, a 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.
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 rightthinking 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.”
“Uh, I think I might have the wrong house.” “Take it easy, Hans,” says Danny, who appears behind him wearing, I’m thankful to see, a much more modest bathing suit. “Go back to the sauna. I’ll let you know when the entertainment arrives.”
Hans frowns and disappears into the back of the house, but not quickly enough for me to save my eyes from confirming that, yes, his swimsuit is a thong. “Fucking Germans,” Danny says. “You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve got to do to keep them happy. Thanks for coming all the way out here.
Normally I’d make Rick do it, but dickweed has the week off. You want a drink or a bump? I’ve got the Bolivian.”
I point over my shoulder. “The cab’s waiting for me.”
“Right, right, right, right,” says Danny. He disappears into the back of the house, returning a moment later with three thousand dollars in cash.
The rest of the week is a blur. My imaginary smokers are inhaling like chimneys as I scramble to put together ten extra bags for Danny. There’s a return trip to the agency to pick up my passport. A guilty phone call to my mother, although her mood brightens considerably when I hint at a female presence in my life.
By Friday afternoon, just a few hours before my flight to Korea, I’ve managed to pull together the package for Danny. I load my jacket with more than two pounds of weed and take the train downtown.
When I reach Danny’s building, the security guard is away from the desk. Smirking, I sign myself in as
“Mr. Green” and board the elevator.
When the doors open again, I’m looking at two policemen.
Every instinct I have tells me to run. But the simple geometry of the elevator box dictates otherwise. Besides, they’re looking right at me.
“It’s okay,” one of them says. “It ain’t a bomb or nothing.”
