A night out

Elaine and I were on vacation, carpooling to an Indian restaurant with another couple. Their car, an old Volvo station wagon, came up a side street and turned onto an avenue to pick us up. An oncoming car stopped to let us cross the street.

I was puzzled. We could all have fit in one car, but Elaine and I had to split up, and she rode in a second car behind the Volvo. The Volvo had three rows of seats. I got into the rear row and said something about looking forward to the meal. Had they ever been to this restaurant before? No.

Sitting next to me was a woman who looked a little like a young Fran Drescher. “Calverta,” she said. “Michael,” said I. Her husband was driving. “What’s your name?” I shouted to him. “Philip,” he said, “but not if you’re going to call me that all night. Phil.” He looked like he might have been Indian.

All the car windows were open, and Calverta kept talking, mumbling and swallowing her words, which were only occasionally audible above the sound of traffic. But it didn’t seem that she was expecting any response from me. “Now you ask me a question,” she said. “How old are your kids?” I asked. There were two girls sitting side by side in the middle row of seats. “Which one?” Calverta asked. “The one with the puffy face?” “Both,” I said.

Then we were in the restaurant, which turned out to be in a Trump hotel. An enormous poster on a bathroom door said that delivery people could stay for very low rates, starting at $3.98 a night. On our table was a huge platter of plain spaghetti — an appetizer, served family-style — along with a container of Kraft Parmesan cheese. I put some spaghetti on my plate, shook out some cheese, and woke up.

Related reading
All OCA dream posts (Pinboard)

[“Only fools and children talk about their dreams”: Dr. Edward Jeffreys (Robert Douglas), in Thunder on the Hill (dir. Douglas Sirk, 1951).]