Funny dream last night. I'm visiting Michael Caine's house for some reason. He's an exceptional host, urbane, funny, witty, generous with his time, you know, exactly what you'd expect Michael Caine to be. I'm there with several other visitors but I don't remember who they were. I'm wearing a white terrycloth bathrobe. Perhaps we've been swimming or hot-tubbing.
At some point I have to go to the bathroom. Not wanting to interrupt Michael's story, I start snooping around for the john. I hear the sound of flushing from behind a closed door. I'm standing right next to it when it starts to open. Not wanting to seem like I'm eavesdropping on someone doing their business, I leap away from the door, but it's too late. I've been spotted.
An extremely elderly lady totters out of the room, looking at me as if I've just gone crazy. "Whatever are you doing there?" she said querulously.
"Sorry, just looking for the bathroom," I say, flushing bright red. (Not too hard for me with my ruddy farmer's-tan complexion.)
She makes her way down the hallway with the aid of two canes, shaking her head in consternation.
I look into the room. It's not a bathroom at all. It's filled with costumes. Wildly ornate costumes made of brightly colored fabrics. I see an immaculate pirate's outfit, complete with pre-attached shoulder parrot, draped over a peg on the wall. The floor is festooned with dozens of other costumes: harlequin, policeman, doctor, soldier, Renaissance fop, you name it.
The room reminds me of the contents of the wardrobe box in one of Michael's best movies, "Sleuth," in which he starred opposite Laurence Olivier. Thinking that there must be a bathroom in here somewhere, I venture into the room. I don't find it, but I do see that one side of the costume room is open, and beyond it are bookshelves, children's toys, model airplanes, and short tables surrounded by tiny chairs.
Oh, super, I think, understanding at last.
He made this room for his grand-children. It's a playroom. A frickin' huge playroom. It goes on for at least fifty feet. One wall is taken up with a floor-to-ceiling picture window overlooking a beautifully manicured garden.
The very rich are not like you and me, I think. I walk into the playroom. Surely there must be a bathroom in here somewhere.
That's when I see them. A handful of boys and girls no more than eight or nine years old. But they're not dressed like children visiting grandpa. They're dressed a bit more formally than we would expect to see these days, in sweaters and prim little suits and dresses, almost as if they're attending Sunday school or going to the museum.
They stopped in their tracks as they saw me. They peered at me uncertainly.
"Just looking for the bathroom," I say, smiling.
Then I notice more children. A lot more. Say, fifty. And adults. Lots of adults. All of them looking at me. And then I notice that I'm no longer wearing my robe. I'm standing there in my tidy whities, fat hairy body exposed for all the world to see.
It's then that I see the sign hanging from the roof near the escalators in the distance. "MICHAEL CAINE WING". The madman had built his house onto the children's library they named after him.
Suddenly another fat hairy guy appears. He's not wearing much either, but instead of Jockey shorts he sports a loincloth made of what looks like bear skin.
"Are you my relief? Man, they didn't even give you a costume!"
"What?" I say blankly.
"Up there," he says, pointing at a diorama next to the window where a pair of life-sized Neanderthal wax figures sit beside a fire pit filled with blinking Christmas lights. "Don't worry, it's fun. The kids ask you a lot of questions about what it's like to hunt dinosaurs. I don't have the heart to tell them that they were all extinct by the time Neanderthals came on the scene."
"But—"
"Hey, no argument. Here, I'll let you have this." He peels off the bearskin loincloth and tries to hand it to me. He's not even wearing tidy whities.
"I'm just looking for a bathroom!" I shout.
Then I woke up, laughing. I learned a valuable lesson. Whenever you're visiting Michael Caine's house and you want to find the bathroom, you'd better ask him, even if you do interrupt his story.
