Room service at the Hôtel Georges V

Last night I dreamed I was going 225KPH in my Ferrari 599GTB (aka Oscar) on the Périphérique at four in the morning. I woke to find that I was only doing 215KPH but that I was about to miss my turn-off for Charles de Gaulle. A lightening response on my part put me onto the transition and all was well again. It isn't often I meet people at the airport and even less common that I do so in the early morning hours but this was a case of do or die. A fille sympa had been kicked off a G5 half way from London to Nice and mine was the only number in Paris she knew by heart. Mine must be an easy one to recall though I confess to having trouble remembering it from time to time.

I found her in the terminal sleeping on a bench with her pieds maquillés and chignon décoiffé using a large cotton sack--marked Ritz London laundry--full of Louboutins as a pillow. Her friend with the G5 had refused to open the luggage bay so she was obliged to leave her bags on the plane. The shoe sack was carry-on she said explaining that with the right shoes a woman can go anywhere and that's exactly where she wanted me to take her--the baisodromes of Paris.

Once in the car rolling back towards Paris at 220KPH, I advised her that anyone still looking for happiness at five in the morning faces a very low order of probability in finding it and that we might leave a tour of the baisodromes for another time. She nodded her acquiescence and fell asleep for the rest of the ride. I began to wonder if I'd given the right advice.

Entering my (junior) suite, she pounced on the phone and ordered oxygen from room service, which arrived quicker than usual as they assumed some kind of medical emergency was in progress. The very nice fellow waited patiently while she and I used the buddy system with the oxygen tank that he carried in a sort of emergency backpack. This boosted our energy as well as our appetites and, after handing a generous tip to the lad who now had to refill his oxygen tank for someone who might really need it, we ordered bacon & eggs, Champagne, carafes of orange juice, a basket of croissants, yogurt and a side order of lunch to obviate the need to call down again later.

I don't remember what time we finally got to sleep but it was after the owner of the G5 called her with a weeping apology and asking if he could come for her. "Tell him to land his plane on the Champs-Elysées. That would do Lelouch one better" but she wasn't into conversing with him.

At three in the afternoon, I was awakened by a call from the police telling me that my Ferrari was blocking traffic at Charles de Gaulle and had been towed. As I wondered if last night had been nothing but a bad dream, the caller wanted to know if the sack of women's shoes that were found in the car belonged to me. They do now, I told him.

It had been a bad dream after all.