Austin Powers 4 - License to Shag: The Novelization - Prologue: Austin and Basil Drink Wine

​There was heat in the air. Tension. Humidity. You could taste wine drifting through the Parisian street, the groovy atmosphere of drunkenness emanating from a New Wave café, accommodating, trying its hardest.
         But its hardest wasn’t enough for Austin. He sat drinking a cheap 2008 Chardonnay. Everything was stained white, and every time the waiter passed by without asking how he was, he felt like he was being ignored.
         The café was inexplicably sexual. The salt and pepper shakers were penises and vaginas, with no marking to indicate which was which. There were vintage softcore porno posters all around, signifying some masculinity which wasn’t around anymore. More than all, there were colonial French postmarks everywhere. The tables were laminated over them, the front door itself an enormous vertical flag...
         Preparation H. Radiation from Dr. Evil’s failed tractor beam experiment had destroyed the only woman Austin managed to settle down with. Multiple myeloma in the spinal column. Foxxy had no chance of recovery. He kept going over it again and again, trying to square it in his head. Nothing he could have done.
         Sure, his brother didn’t know this would happen, but he was at fault. If Austin could forgive him, he didn’t know how.
         The door opened and Basil Exposition hobbled in.
         “Basil, I don’t need you here, mate,” Austin slurred.
         “Austin, I am very concerned about you,” Basil said. He was about eighty years old now. “We need to get you home.”
         “So we take the train baby!” Austin yelled angrily. “It’s nothing at all.”
         “Austin, really, would you come with me?”
         “Oh behave,” Austin said, letting out a tear.
         “Austin, really,” Basil sitting down next to him with some great effort. He grabbed for the bottle of wine.
         “Hey! That’s mine, man!” Austin said. Basil pulled it to his lips and took a swig. He smiled at Austin. “Groovy, baby.”
         Basil looked down with pursed lips. He sought for the right words, but they weren’t coming. There was no way to describe how sad he was.
         “She was a light in this awful world,” Basil said.
         “Oh yeah, don’t tell me what it’s all about baby. I can’t even go home. I go into that flat and I just see her. Around every corner. Can almost hear her voice. Hear her singing some new song. Doesn’t help that she was in at-home hospice for several months...”
         “I know, Austin.”
         “I only wish I could prevent it,” Austin said, head in his hands.
         That made everything heavy. Basil was already shaky from being very old, but his blood pressure rose a bit more and he had to take another drink to calm himself. He had liver spots all over his face and a vein looked about to pop. “Now, Austin, you know they banned the time machine,” Basil said.
         “I know baby, but I just can’t take it sometimes,” Austin looking around the room wild-eyed. “Who’s gonna tell me I can’t use it?”
         “The entire world voted on this, Austin.”
         “The whole UN, and they’re not so groovy as you might think.” He downed the rest of his glass, which was filled to the brim. He burped loudly. The waiter stopped near their table and looked expectantly.
         “Monsieur, would you like more of the wine?”
         “We have more of the wine,” Basil said, holding up the rest of the bottle.
         “Oh, I see,” the waiter said. “My sincerest apologies.”
         “It’s all groovy, baby.”
         There was quite a pause. A car shaped like a vagina drove-by.
“Oh, I just don’t know,” Austin said.
“I feel your pain, Austin,” Basil said. Well meaning.
“No, you don’t, Basil. Has your wife of nineteen to fifty years depending on how you count ever died?” Basil said nothing. Austin smiled wry. “I didn’t think so, baby.”
The waiter came by again, stopping with a pepper grinder. He looked at Austin and Basil like a little rat. He had many rat-like features if you looked hard enough, and had on a black-and-white striped shirt and a beret and full mime makeup. Austin looked up at him and suddenly realized something was wrong. He leapt up and punched the man in the face.
“Austin,” Basil said on cue, “why did you punch that waiter?”
“Because, Basil,” Austin smiled. “That’s not a man, man,” and he leapt to the ground, grabbing at the scalp of this bald man who’s beret had flown off. He pulled a bald cap off his head and revealed a woman with a full length of hair that was somehow a different person entirely, one with no makeup or anything.
Another waiter rushed over. “What have you done?” She said in a thick French accent. She was carrying a baguette that was shaped like a penis.
“This woman must be working for Scott Evil,” Austin said, shaking his head lightly in an affirming way.
“No,” the waiter said. “She just likes doing that. Dressing up like ze mime.”
Austin made a funny face and felt about as much embarrassment as when he came out of cryogenic stasis and had to admit that he used a Swedish penis pump to a woman that he found attractive. Vanessa...
“I’m so sorry,” Basil said, clutching at his heart. He felt so full of terror suddenly. His entire chest seized up and he fell to the ground out of his chair. “No, no,” he murmured.
“Someone call 911,” the waiter said in French. “This man has punched my compatriot.” Austin saw subtitles underneath her that said: “This man is so groovy. He make me the horny.”
“Oh, behave,” Austin said. He shot cat claws at her.
“Austin,” Basil wheezed. “Please get me to a doctor.”
“Oh, no baby!” Austin yelled, leaping over to Basil and rolling him over face-up. “I’ve gotta do CPR until the ambulance arrives, baby!”
Austin started pumping, lightly singing Burt Bacharach’s I Say A Little Prayer at a slightly slower tempo to keep himself on beat.
“Austin,” Basil said. “I may not make it. I want you to know...” He coughed.
“Spit it out, baby!” Austin shouted. Basil spat an enormous wad of gum out of his mouth. “That’s the ticket!”
“Austin,” wheeze, “I need to tell you... something important...”
“What is it, baby?”
“I was,” wheeze, “always in love with you,” wheeze, “Austin...”
Austin reeled. “O-Oh, behave,” he stammered.
“Austin, I love you,” Basil said. He smiled a weird, slightly horny smile. “That’s why I never told you that your first wife, Vanessa Kensington, was a blasted fembot...”
“Basil what are you talkin’ about baby?”
“I suppose it’s stupid, Austin, but I... I wanted you to be so hurt by a woman that you would stop focusing on them so much.”
“Wait a tick, Basil. Why didn’t you say something, baby? You know I’m bisexual, baby!”
“Austin, forgive me, please. All the gadgets, all the gizmos. The scientific experiments and computer programs. All I ever wanted... was your love...”
“Basil, you’re gonna pull through Basil, come on man!”
Basil exhaled loudly, kind of moaning, and passed on.
“Basil, no!” Austin slapped Basil’s corpse across the face a couple times, fruitlessly moving its neck to the left and right.
         Time moved quickly for a while. Austin held Basil’s extremely old, fragile, and dead body in his lap, a safe distance away from his penis just in case. When the ambulance arrived, they tended to the woman that Austin punched in the face and eventually one of them hoisted his body up in a fireman’s carry and walked out of the café with him. Austin sat, completely alone.
         A French policeman arrived on the scene, looking quite burly and upset. He came to Austin with a club drawn. “You are ze man who did the hate crime?”
         Austin held his hands up to be cuffed and stuck his head between his legs.