Swimming through a room of artists at a party last night I came upon one of my newspaper colleagues, in his cups. He was telling me a story - a challenge to follow over electronic music, talking everywhere and his thickening British accent. He told me about picking up novelist/theory guy Umberto Eco at the airport and how customs was giving him a hard time and he was growing angry and that he spotted Eco but thought it was a lookalike and I'm following along when suddenly I realize this is a piece of fiction he's working on not reality so I help him embellish with other essential details. Eco is going to be kidnapped and driven to San Diego via Chicago by the tipsy Brit who has been wantonly post-flight drinking at the airport. And he's also trying to screw over the woman who is really supposed to be picking up Eco for a talk at the universtiy. So she's in hot cross-country pursuit after the kidnapping. Or not. My embellishment: the car picks up a troubled teen girl who asks for a ride. His embellishment: she is carrying a small handbag and is always changing her clothes at rest stops. My embellishment: Eco secretly realizes what is happening but is digging being in this chaotic moment with the Brit thinking he's pulling a fast one on him. His embelllishment: Eco is carrying a duck-billed platypus in a pet carrier and suddenly realizes it's the wrong platypus. My embellishment: suddenly Eco is obsessed with the idea of going to a dude ranch that he's read about in Oklahoma where they custom-style your cowboy hats (bending them to and fro) to fit your personality. The person at the dude ranch has a helluva time figuring him out and the brim is steamed and resteamed and bent and rebent. For hours. His embellishment: suddenly you realize that the teen girl has an acoustic guitar and then a double bass. My embellishment: Eco has been furtively calling in details to his assistant in Italy because this will become his next novel, thanks to the tipsy Brit. I told the ex-pat that this could be a screenplay and the last scene would be a black screen for a while and then the voiceover of Eco stating that this was all his story.
Best part of the party: the Brit, growing ever-increasingly difficult to understand à la Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (or whatever the hell it was called), stating that the nearby Portuguese guy who speaks 4 languages speaks none of them very well.