The Fine Art of Singing for One's Supper

A Long Short Story - in Two Parts

DEDICATION:           

  This book is dedicated to my first reader and editor, Linda Burgess.

            So, if the syntax, spelling and content are clumsy, it’s all her fault. Whereas, if the sentences soar and the prose sings, I will gladly take the credit.

            Unlike the making of a painting, which is a solitary activity, with writing there are so many people to thank – those who read and encouraged, those who laughed, cajoled, edited and made suggestions. You know who you are and I am grateful, but a special thanks to Paul Kincade, Ken Decell, Carroll Chiles Moore, Dorothy Howorth, Thom Grexa Phillips, and Frida Weisman.

INTRODUCTION AND DISCLAIMER:

A useful definition of fiction might be a piece of writing so redolent with verisimilitude that it’s believable. Fiction comes easy for some yet is nigh unto impossible for others. The characters and situations in The Fine Art of Singing for One's Supper and other stories are all fictions. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental, though I did recently read an obituary of a woman who was a lot like my Mrs. Rosenwater, but she is not.

            The problem I set for myself in The Fine Art of Singing for One's Supper was to take a group of stories and put them in the mouths of various persons created for just that purpose. Then I had them attend a fictitious dinner party I believe we all would have been pleased to have been invited. I needed to string these stories together in a believable narrative, which took some editing on my part and considerable indulgence on the part of the reader.
            I hope I’ve succeeded and that you have half as fine a time reading as I had writing The Fine Art of Singing for One's Supper.

            The short stories and images included here have no bearing on the novella, but are a bonus - they are the kind of thing I do.

Sybil and Simon’s lives were about to change inexorably.

They were, in many ways, typical New Yorkers of their generation—well-educated, upwardly mobile, energetic, driven, and physically attractive. Simon worked for an up-and-coming mergers and acquisitions firm in downtown Manhattan. He was soon to be made partner. 

Sybil wrote code for a dot-com startup poised to go public, but not before disrupting everything in sight. She also worked on her own writing from 5 to 7 a.m. each day. She was deep into a novel that lacked focus; its characters and plot changed with regularity. 

They lived in a smart Tribeca loft with a view of the Hudson River. It had once belonged to an artist who gave up his own work for refurbishing and selling loft spaces. Sybil and Simon entertained often and were very conscious of their social situation and place in it. They had given thought to having children but were ambivalent.  

            Children demand time, attention, au pairs and/or daycare, summer camps, and private schools notwithstanding. Some of their friends thought children a necessary accessory, but Simon and Sybil were not convinced.

            The two had met at a black-tie soirée at the Yale Club. Both were alumni and were pleasantly surprised to learn that they had attended this bastion of Ivy League academe at exactly the same time, had friends in common, had taken some of the same classes, and even attended the same lectures.

            Their MBA and pre-law curriculum had been mastered with a minimum of effort. They had all the credentials and connections necessary to take on the world, or at least the borough of Manhattan which, for a New York provincial, was all the same.

            The scent of ambition hung heavy in the air whenever Simon and Sybil interacted. They never talked about it, but to call them goal oriented was an understatement. They had much but wanted more, which is to say they wanted it all.

            Both had significant trust funds, so a prenuptial agreement was necessary. Their wedding had been small, private and the guest list select. One of her mother's friends, a billionaire divorcee, offered her lavish contemporary manse in the Hamptons, which was perfect. Plans for their honeymoon were put on hold since Sibyl and Simon did not want to be out of the social mix for a moment.

And then, as if from another era, the envelope was delivered on a silver tray by an ageless man in livery. He made a slight bow at the waist then turned on his heel disappeared into the Tribeca traffic. 

Sybil and Simon immediately RSVP’d in the affirmative to the number listed on the gold bordered, finely engraved invitation with personalized calligraphy. The invitation itself was an objet d’art—more of a summons than an invitation. To be thus invited could only mean they had arrived and achieved a new status in New York society. Pride mixed conspicuously with curiosity as they contemplated the evening. 

They came to understand that over the last several weeks they had been vetted and obviously passed! They were to be the bright young things at a gathering ten days hence at the Park Avenue apartment of Mrs. Arnold P. Rosenwater. 

Rumor had it that the guest list would be formidable and include a retired ambassador or two, certain high-ranking military personnel, Pulitzer Prize winners, various artists, writers, media moguls, and the occasional surprise guest. All would be expected to sing for their supper—to exude charm, tell stories, and be generally affable and engaging. 

Their hostess, Mrs. Arnold P. Rosenwater, was a woman of high reputation. She had been widowed for more than a decade, yet still insisted on being addressed as Mrs. Arnold Rosenwater. The food would be edible, if just barely, and lukewarm. No wine would be served, but a fine selection of single malt scotches, including but not limited to Glenfiddich, Glenmorangie, The Macallan, Oban, and Talisker would be offered before and during dinner. Crystal glasses with shaved ice were refilled with promptness and everyone would be pretty well oiled by the time they were called to table in the candlelit dining room. With enough scotch, any fault found with the food would soon dissipate. Tongues loosened, tall tales and confessions were soon to be forthcoming. 

The formidable Mrs. Rosenwater greatly enjoyed her salons, but they were not without agenda. She had a penchant for collecting wounded birds and tonight's gathering would be no exception. Her great and good friend, the late Lester Weatherly, was a prime example. He might have seemed silly on the surface, but was typical of the obsessive, overbearing New York type that Mrs. Rosenwater had come to tolerate. 

Dr. Ruben Shelton was a physician who had lost his license over his involvement in the importation of blood products from Africa. Much of the blood was tainted and did more to spread the AIDS virus than all the unprotected sex on the East Coast. He had made a fortune but lost most of it on bad real estate investments. 

Carol Laughlin’s family had been friendly with Mrs. Rosenwater since childhood. Her Aunt Kathryn and Mrs. Rosenwater had been boon companions before, during, and after the marriage. There was much talk about the two, right up until Kathryn's death of undetermined causes. 

Carol graduated third in her law school class at the University of Virginia. She joined a prestigious firm in Washington, D.C., and took on most of the pro bono cases the firm championed. She soon became disillusioned and spent the next ten years in the Peace Corps before coming home and enrolling in remedial classes at UVA. Currently, Carol thought her future might be in copyright protection. The allure of authenticity intrigued her. 

Cursed with a sense of right and wrong, William Yarbrough was old Virginia. He had been a conscientious objector during the Vietnam war and had settled in San Francisco but moved back to Loudoun County after his family’s estate was settled very much in his favor. 

One of Mrs. Rosenwater’s favorites was Glenn Keenan. He possessed exceptional manners, was well-traveled, well-read, and well-turned out. After West Point, he rose up the ranks to three-star general, but his career stalled when he had an affair with an enlisted person whose gender was never specified in the hearing’s documentation. 

An inspired journalist, Maureen Solomon became obsessed and seduced by war. Of all the drugs she had used, and there were many, adrenaline was the one she came to prefer and risk taking was the best way to acquire that rush. 

Leroy LeFoy was something of a dandy, a writer who had shown much promise when young. He was a regular at Elaine's and a pioneer of the soon to be discovered Hamptons. He frequented Bobby Van's Steakhouse in Bridgehampton with the likes of James Jones, Willie Morris, Winston Groom, and Truman Capote. Leroy wore his writer’s block like a badge of honor and waited in vain for it to lift. 

Originally from an old California family, Ambrose Fremont had been a diplomat whose career in the State Department was a storied one. He had befriended Arnold Rosenwater at Princeton and was one of the few friends Mrs. Rosenwater had kept since her husband’s passing. Ambassador Freemont stood ramrod straight and carried himself as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders, which it once had. 

Destined for the rock 'n' roll Hall of Fame, Hilda Buchanan and Anthony Amber were complete outliers at this gathering. They were either excessively ignored or stared at compulsively. No one spoke to them, but they seemed not at all concerned. How Mrs. Rosenwater knew them and secured their presence was a mystery. 

Retired Air Force Colonel Adam Watson was a sly one. He now ran a very successful international cyber security firm. It was rumored he listened to everyone's phone conversations which he never denied. Col. Watson had been very much involved in the United States operations in the Middle East and was an expert on the Cold War as well.

            The only named participant not present was Arnold P. Rosenwater. His spirit was, however, palpable. No one knew what the “P” stood for, but on occasion Arnold would say his middle name was “Potemkin” in honor of his Russian heritage and the tiny village near Odessa where his family had lived for generations.

            Arnold and Eleanor Love Partridge had been introduced to one another by mutual friends. They married and enjoyed a dozen years of marital bliss. It was his first and her second. When he died in his sleep, she was inconsolable. He left behind a huge fortune and his name.

            Arnold P. Rosenwater was the grandson of Jebediah Rotowski, a Ukrainian Jew who had fled west from central Ukraine rather than be conscripted into the Czar Nicholas's army. He had found his way to New York and was processed at Ellis Island and spent a year as a peddler on the lower east side of New York before looking for opportunity elsewhere.

            Even though he spoke little English and had few resources, young Jebediah Rosenwater, as he was christened at Ellis Island, ended up in a caravan traveling through the American South in search of a place to put down his pack. 

            Such a place presented itself in the little Mississippi Delta town of Moorhead where two railroads crossed. This was where the Southern crossed the Yellow Dog as the Yazoo Delta and Southern railroads came to be known. It was there that W.C. Handy first heard a kind of music he would appropriate and call the blues. His Yellow Dog Blues became a staple of the genre.

            Jebediah’s son Harry would take over the family dry goods store and grow it into a thriving concern. His precocious son Arnold would score very high on admission tests and win a lottery to be accepted into Princeton as an undergraduate. There was a strictly enforced quota on Jewish students. Arnold would be duly harassed by the student body in general and especially the Lawrenceville prep school graduates who were Princeton legacies. Only one of his fellow classmates came to his defense, and that was Ambrose Fremont, who would become U.S. Ambassador to Luxembourg while Arnold would move to Paris and open an art gallery under the auspices of the Central Intelligence Agency.

            They would retire, move to New York and become wealthy speculating on currency and art and remain lifelong friends.

And then there were Simon and Sybil, whose stories were yet to be told. 

As the guests arrived, they were ushered into the posh drawing room where they introduced themselves and made small talk. Their crystal glasses, Waterford of course, were charged with the single malt scotch of their choice. Mrs. Rosenwater joined the crowd. She carried a small silver bell which she rang to call everyone to table. 

After all had been seated, Mrs. Arnold Rosenwater stood and tapped lightly on her glass.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome! It’s a cold and onerous night out, not just in New York but in most of the world. We will fend off the depredations of time, winter, and sobriety with stories as we enjoy one another’s company.” 

She took her seat as the salad course was placed in front of each diner. “I will begin,” Mrs. Rosewater grandly announced. 

“I am from a small town, as are many of you, and we are not alone here in Manhattan. So many of the people who affect a native New Yorker attitude are in fact from the hinterlands and can’t seem to get over themselves. What characters! One such person was my dear friend, Lester Weatherly, who lived in this very building. 

“He was full of affectation, but entirely engaging and so dear to me. Wonderful. Marvelous. Stupendous. Spectacular. These were not just often-used superlatives in Lester Weatherly's vocabulary, but dramatic, emphatic pronouncements made on all things he observed. He admired all phenomena in the natural world and had been known to declare the annual May blooming of his penthouse garden irises sublime! With martini in hand, he’d pull up a chair to watch and record in his botanical journal the progression of each budding flower. 

“I recall once we were walking on Park Avenue when he dropped to all fours, mesmerized by an army of ants transporting the corpse of a wasp back to their colony on the median. Extraordinary, he intoned to passersby stepping over him and occasionally onto these highly motivated, organized female worker ants no less intent on success than the typical Manhattanite. The irony was lost on poor Lester.

“Here was a man who, in the parlance of the day, lived in the moment. He was deeply affected by the academic and actual alike. While studying the classics at Cambridge, he had become a favorite of the vicar and King’s College historian John Saltmarsh and apprenticed himself to the Master of Grounds, an unlettered, functional illiterate who nonetheless was one with the soil and perfectly embodied the English penchant for gardening. 

“Lester traveled extensively in the Orient, as it was then called—the Russian Steppes, Manchuria, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. King Sihanouk of Cambodia personally escorted him through the ruins of Angkor Wat’s temple complex before he traveled on to Ceylon and Siam—ultimately renamed Sri Lanka and Thailand—where he became a scholar of Khmer culture and Buddhist mythology. What an appetite! 

“His senior position at a grand Wall Street firm gave him ample opportunity to exercise his formidable social skills, acquired during a privileged upbringing among Charleston’s Lowcountry elite and honed at Sewanee’s Kappa Alpha house. 

“Always the Southern gentleman, Lester relished the high life and the low. He was a devotee of the downtown New York scene. He moved in the circle of Robert Mapplethorpe and his lover Sam Wagstaff, and you will find him in Patti Smith’s photographs that document life on the Bowery at CBGB’s, the seminal punk-rock venue. 

“He was not entirely trusted by this crowd, given the fact he was an unapologetic hyper-heterosexual. Lester had a child with the South African model Swalia Embrace and, by all accounts, was a doting father until the little girl began to talk, and he realized she had nothing to say. 

“Lester Weatherly had encyclopedic knowledge and an elegantly furnished mind. His worldview and empathy were boundless, if at times enigmatic. So, it came as a complete surprise to his coterie of friends when, at a dinner party one evening, Lester started to weep. Unnoticed at first, it began with a single tear down his cheek, which was shortly followed by another, accompanied by soft sobs, and ultimately erupted into uncontrollable wailing.  

 “He was inconsolable and escorted to his car by sympathetic, if bewildered, dinner partners. Lester was still blubbering when his driver delivered him home to his butler, who helped him into bed. When his tears did not subside, the following morning his personal physician had him admitted to Lenox Hill Hospital. Friends, flowers, and well-wishers arrived, as did a minister, his personal trainer and life coach, even a rabbi to offer opinions and proffer solutions, but all was for naught. 

“It is something of an irony that the chemical makeup of human tears and saline solution is, for all intents and purposes, the same. The latter was introduced intravenously into Lester and kept him alive, but not for long. He willfully wasted away without taking nourishment or uttering a single syllable. 

“Wild speculation followed the news of Lester’s mysterious demise and was the talk of haute New York for days and days. Toward the end, his only sister, Chastain, had come up from Nashville to be with him and tend to his affairs. When cleaning out his hospital room she found there, under his pillow, a dog-eared, tear-stained, paperback copy of Erich Segal’s novella, Love Story. His was a death by empathy, and Chastain dared not tell a soul.” 

After our hostess ended her story about a life so well-lived, there was a rustling of napkins and silver, and a smattering of applause. Then an extended silence was at last broken. Dr. Ruben Shelton rose to his full height of six feet, two inches and launched right in. 

“It is the role of science to debunk myth and superstition, and we generally do a good job of it. However, the inexplicable often presents itself. I daresay Lester Weatherly might have benefited from the ministrations of a particular small-town doctor with whom I’ve been acquainted. His name was Dr. Key Lloyd, all puns intended, and wild stories of his unorthodox practice abound. 

“Of all the lesions Dr. Lloyd had studied, Marilyn’s was his favorite. Slightly raised, pink, blue, and on occasion bright red, it was a full four inches long and ran diagonally across her rib cage under her right arm, ending very near her breast. Given that hospital gowns open in the rear he was, during her convalescence, to become quite familiar with that particular place on her body. 

“She claimed the scar was numb, yet when, under the guise of examination, Dr. Lloyd fondled or kissed it, she shuddered as though he had stimulated her nipple. She would never tell him how she got the scar, so, to her utter delight, night after night he invented tales of the scar’s provenance and told her the stories in a quiet but fervent whisper. 

“One fabricated account had her side pierced by white-hot shrapnel during a Vietcong mortar attack in the Mekong Delta circa 1968. Then there was the I-75 rollover accident when her black SUV ended upside down in the Everglades amongst a gaggle of rutting alligators. Another elaborate narrative attributed the scar to her narrowly escaping the ire of New England Puritans during the Salem witch hysteria. 

“So angry a scar could only have been made by hooded captors wielding hot pokers during the Spanish Inquisition. There were bullfighting scenarios, as well as a gold-filled galleon pillaged by Blackbeard and his lusty crew. There she was at the Romanov executions, and on board an observation balloon fired upon during the Battle of the Somme. 

“Historical context aroused them both. As with Scheherazade, there were a thousand-and-one possibilities, but the truth was far less dramatic, if no less romantic. She had become entangled in a Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, barbed-wire fence after an assignation in a duck blind with her husband's best friend. Birds were flying everywhere, but the only shot fired had been down her throat, and she couldn't tell Dr. Lloyd that now, could she? 

“Our patient was, in fact, beginning to embrace, even believe, these alternative explanations and could not wait for Dr. Lloyd to make his rounds, initiate an examination, and relate the next installment. The scar got no rest and took on a life of its own, becoming anxious, irritated, and yet it was an integral part of their foreplay and the only real thing he and Marilyn had in common.  

“Late one night, when Dr. Lloyd touched his tongue to the sensitive area, he felt something sharp. With his teeth he drew out a small shard of metal—bright and shiny as stainless steel. He showed her the splinter, and when she held out her hand, it pricked her. Cool, clear, spring-like liquid oozed from the wound. The scar began to fade, as did her other symptoms. 

“All that was left was a single drop of blood pooled in her palm.” 

Dr. Felton took his seat, satisfied with himself for introducing a touch of the supernatural, to say nothing of the sensual. High drama was always welcome in the evening’s discourse. To his left sat a comely young woman in her thirties, alone and quiet as she had been for most of the evening. Carol Laughlin, the longtime family friend of Mrs. Rosenwater, sensed it was her turn. She began slowly in a low voice, almost a whisper. 

“When I was in law school, I used to drive back and forth from Charlottesville to the D.C. suburbs. I’d often stop at a particular Waffle House, as much for amateur sociological reasons as for the food. I had nothing in common with these people but was drawn to them and the place. There is one night I shall never forget. 

“The customers who filled the place were a cross-section of gender, age, race, and class. It was late of a Saturday night, soon to be Sunday morning, and all fell silent and statue-still when the exchange got loud and intense. 

“Honey, you'd sooner get a certified letter from Satan as to mess with me tonight, is a direct quote from the waitress to a disheveled ol’ boy standing there looking all roughed-up and used.  

“The only sounds audible were bacon frying and coffee brewing, and their respective smells were having a Pavlovian effect on the Waffle House crowd. The young man in question was unshaven and wearing a vintage, yellow Caterpillar hat cocked to one side. His misbuttoned plaid shirt was partially tucked into his new Levi’s, tags still attached. An over-sized silver bull-riding rodeo belt buckle rounded out his ensemble. 

“Our waitress stood square-shouldered; feet planted in her rightful place behind the Waffle House counter. They both stared long and hard at one another. One of the patrons, cell phone out, took note of the wooden plates on the handle of a .38-caliber snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver protruding from the ol’ boy’s right back pocket. His hands were on his hips just inches from the aptly named Saturday-night special. He brought his palms up slowly and held them out flat, like a mime pushing against an invisible wall. I do not want no trouble, he said emphatically. Just my bacon-and-egg sandwich. 

“The waitress had been holding a paper bag the whole time, which she pitched, and he caught. Their eyes remained locked. The only sounds were coffee brewing and bacon sizzling. 

“Tomatoes? he asked. On the side, was her detached and even reply. This one’s on the house, she said. Don't want no trouble, he said again. You go home and see to them children, she implored. Yes, ma’am, were his last words before he eased out into the dark.  

“Outside, the door of a pickup truck opened and shut, an aging engine cranked, and gears ground into reverse. Headlights came on and washed the parked cars with brilliant white light. A collective sigh of relief was audible in the small, tightly packed space. The waitress opened the cash register and, from her apron pocket, deposited several bills and some change. 

“That's my boy, the waitress said to no one in particular as she gently closed the register. He ain’t been out long and don't rightly know how to behave among folks.  

“That’s when the parking lot came alive with flashing blue lights and the sound of sirens. Tires squealed, men shouted and cursed, and the Waffle House clientele rushed to the windows, cell phones held aloft...  

“Then came the loud report of a .38-caliber pistol followed by the unmistakable burst from 9-millimeter Glocks. Patrons screamed, hit the floor, and scrambled under tables. 

“The waitress did not move. She stood behind the counter, holding onto the cash register which slowly opened. She stared down at the neatly ordered drawer. It had divisions for bills—twenties, tens, fives, ones—and compartments for quarters, dimes, nickels, pennies. Here was universal order, a place for everything and everything in its place. It seemed as if the waitress took a great deal of comfort in that.” 

Carol finished and took her seat to quietly mouthed thank you’s and thumbs up around the table. Conversation rose from a whisper to low rumble as everyone discussed the stories with their neighbor. All grew quiet when William Yarbrough slid his chair back and stood. 

“I too, have often made that drive between Charlottesville and Washington,” he began. “And I know that Waffle House well. Now I’ll never pass it without thinking of what Ms. Laughlin witnessed there one night. Chilling, and all too real. The potential for violence is always present in the Commonwealth. 

“My family-owned property just east of Highway 29. Most of it is gone now. It had its own stories. I grew up hearing them. The land can only hold its secrets for so long and then it speaks out loud to anyone who will listen. I have clear memories of being told of the battle—a skirmish, really—on my grandfather’s Virginia farm in the summer of 1863. 

“A Confederate battery, some infantry and a smattering of unattached cavalry, six of whom are buried there, were bivouacked on the property. My great-grandfather Luke, and Ash, the old Negro manservant who had stayed and been assigned to the boy, watched from the upstairs gallery as a column of Union soldiers marched unannounced across the Rebel front. 

“The ground was flat and unencumbered by forest, much as it is today: ideal for grazing livestock, military maneuvers, or three-acre lots cordoned off for casual country living. 

“The Rebels scurried about, whooping and hollering, and unlimbered their single smoothbore, nine-pounder Napoleon brass field piece. The cavalry saddled up and mounted with enthusiasm as the surprised and confused Union recruits, who had been in Washington City two days earlier, broke ranks and milled about. 

“The Union officers had managed to lose the ridge road that would have taken them safely into Winchester and, by misreading a compass heading, had ended up on the more or less deserted Coleman farm. All the young men were by then either entrenched around Richmond or dead. The Coleman slaves had turned contraband and left, except for old Ash, who had stayed behind out of curiosity or lethargy or both. 

“I first heard these stories during a childhood of summers spent with my maternal grandparents on this farm. The Rebel cavalry were no more than two dozen, from Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, whose units had been badly used at Brandy Station. They did not lack for spunk or élan, sporting captured horses, boots, plumed hats, and Henry repeating rifles. Mounted at last, they cantered off to the right in high demonstration, hoping to cut off any retreat by the Union detachment now marching back-and-forth to contradictory orders before eventually forming some sort of line to receive the Rebel’s inevitable, honor-bound charge. 

“Late into his 80s, my grandfather would walk the fields after a heavy rain looking for belt buckles, pieces of tack, Minie balls, and the like. He was seldom disappointed. One of the great mysteries of these amateur archaeological ventures was the occasional arrowhead or pottery shard that rose to the surface, suggesting that the skirmish of 1863 was not the first human occupation these fields had witnessed.  

“The Rebel battery fired three rounds of solid shot that landed harmlessly behind the Union troops. They loaded canister, the artillery’s equivalent of buckshot, and waited. The dismounted cavalry began firing down the Union line, causing much consternation. Then, as if by Providence, a Union caisson, pulled by a span of mules and hauling a spanking new 12-pounder Whitworth rifled breech-loading gun, came up on their rear. The Rebels overwhelmed the Federal teamsters, mounted their mules, and rode the Yankee trophy back to their position amid much laughter, hat throwing, and huzzahs. None of them knew how to operate the English-made Whitworth, but that did not stop the boys in butternut from loading—overloading, really—and firing in the general direction of the bright-blue line. It was not yet 9 a.m. on this June morning. Confederate coffee was boiling on campfires; the smell of side-meat frying filled the air. 

“I inherited the farm after my grandfather’s death. There had been numerous offers from real-estate developers, yet this much fought-over field would not stop belching up evidence: cups, forks, a rusty Navy Colt cap-and-ball pistol with four chambers undischarged, and even an old tintype bearing the faded image of a young woman. This, nevertheless, was prime real estate. 

“The skirmish went on all day, one side prevailed and then the other. Southern troops marching to the sound of gunfire reinforced the ragtag Rebels. Repelled in their first assaults, they were preparing for another when the Confederate ad hoc gun crew managed to ignite the black powder charges in the captured caisson and blow themselves and the Whitworth gun to bits—killing mules, horses, men, and igniting a fire that covered the field in black, greasy smoke. 

“The family’s oral history was sustained by the inspired and lyrical accounts of “The Battle of Coleman’s Farm” by one Rufus Jennings, a young poet from Bristol, Virginia, who survived the war, as did his journal. The official Union report was written by Levi Farnsworth, the company’s historian from Brockton, Massachusetts, whose dry, measured, but accurate entries are nonetheless invaluable for the mind’s reconstruction of the day. According to both Jennings and Farnsworth, a hard rain came in early afternoon, soaking everything and everyone. Nature provided a welcome respite, and the water collected filled canteens and cooled heated brows. 

“When the rain let up, a dense fog joined with the oily smoke as both Union and Confederates formed ranks for what all hoped would be a final assault. Officers barked orders, a bugler sounded the charge, a drummer beat a staccato tattoo. With bayonets fixed, both sides marched double-quick into glory or oblivion. The field was engulfed in an abnormal, earthbound cloud that hovered like a sandstorm from hell, obscuring everything that entered it. The clash of men and horses, metal and wood, made for sounds horrifying and unique. Curses, moans, yells, and pleas, God's name invoked in vain and praise, all uttered and emitted from the cloud as sightless men, without strategy or tactics, went at one another like two armed mobs. Every now and again something would be ejected from the maelstrom: a man running or crawling, looking over his shoulder; two men, one in blue, the other gray, helping each other with no obligation to cause or nation save their mutual humanity. Then the fog lifted, and the smoke began to clear. 

“The chroniclers, as if writing in unison, noted the sudden appearance of a double rainbow. Some men dropped their weapons, as if divine intervention had brought an end to the fray. All was quiet now except for the occasional cry from a wounded or dying soldier.  

“Thirst and fear are universal attributes of battle. I am told the old Negro and the boy filled water buckets from the house well and walked into the field. They could administer to the thirst but only observe the fear. There was plenty of both. 

“The soon-to-be-freed Ashland Cornelius Coleman was born in the late 18th century and had never ventured far from the Coleman farm. Nonetheless, he was wise and had seen much. According to family legend, Ash walked amongst the dead and the dying, speaking to those who could hear him, and those who no longer could. 

 “Admonishing them with as much disgust as dismay. Saying, White folks, quit this foolishness! Y’all got to stop this mess! He’d shake the motionless shoulder of a corpse and kick the booted foot of another and command, You’uns come to yo’ senses now!  

“And as he offered water to lips barely alive, he concluded, White folks, y’all is crazy.” 

The dinner guests sat still and motionless, digesting what they had just heard from William Yarborough. 

“Well,” said Brent Glenn Kenan, a retired army brigadier general who stood at attention. “They don’t call them war stories for nothing. And that was a good one! There was a lecturer at the Army War College in Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, a former German soldier who told of being captured at the end of World War II. I’ve heard this tale a dozen times, and it still resonates and loses nothing in the retelling because it’s true. I expect it’s supposed to have some profound meaning but hell, it’s just a great yarn. 

“The German prisoners of war were organized into groups of twenty and marched down the towpath to the loading dock to be processed, deloused, and transferred to Rotterdam in new military trucks, then loaded onto the same Liberty ships that had brought the trucks and ferried back across the Atlantic. Upon arrival in the U.S., they would be dispersed into small POW camps across the country, many of them in the American South. Rumors were rampant and scuttlebutt was king, but one thing was certain: the war was over for these lucky men. 

“Diederik looked the part of a Wehrmacht soldier—tall, blond, blue-eyed, with square jaw and erect posture—but he was in fact a Dutch conscript who despised the Germans. In the spring of 1940, they had washed over the Netherlands like the Zuiderzee at flood stage. The Germans had their way with the entire Dutch population. Women, children, and young men were their targets of shame, humiliation, and abuse, to say nothing of Gypsies, Jews and Seventh Day Adventists. 

“According to Diederik’s family lore, crowned heads of Europe had for centuries forced young men to serve as cannon fodder in their endless religious wars and hapless colonial enterprises. 

“One of Diederik’s comrades, now dead, had received a letter from a cousin captured in North Africa who said he often took the city bus from his internment camp to the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco factory in a place called Winston-Salem and smoked all the cigarettes he could steal. Obviously, life as a POW wasn’t all bad. 

“The trucks were nowhere to be seen, and Diederik’s group of POWs was ordered to sit. The two American guards, bored and distracted, carried their Gerard M1 rifles slung casually over their shoulders. They wandered off looking for shade.  

“We often think of World War II as being in black and white. What color there was resonated. April’s sun warmed the winter soil. Spring promised to be glorious with flowering trees, tulips, and daffodils just beginning to stir. The POWs became restless in the heat. One of their number began to whisper to the others. 

“There's no one watching. We must make an escape. If we wade the canal we can disperse into the streets. We do it now! For der Führer—for the Fatherland! 

“Turns out this man was a Prussian officer who had changed into a private’s uniform before capture. He was a much feared and despised true-believer who three days before had shot a 16-year-old Estonian conscript for leaving his post. This man was Waffen SS. No one moved. 

“Cowards— all of you! Cowards! If we go now some will get away. 

“American and British soldiers occupied the entire sector, and anyone trying to escape was sure to be shot. Besides, Diederik and his ilk had just had their first hot meal in weeks. Their future as prisoners of the Americans seemed full of more promise than had their former status as Hitler's shock troops. 

“The SS officer kept imploring the men to move. None did except for Diederik. As he rose, the officer smiled and got to his feet. One man—one man is with me. 

“In his right hand, Diederik held a stone as large as an Idaho potato. He looked the German in the eye, clicked his heels, and raised his hand as if to salute. He smashed the stone into the German’s forehead, dropping him to his knees. Diederik hit him again and again. The prisoners all moved in. One by one they began to kick and hit the Nazi with fists, boots, rocks, and spit. It was a hell of a sight! 

“The American guards ambled back from their shady retreat more irritated than concerned, but their MIs were at the ready, bayonets fixed. Achtung, you motherfuckers—achtung! 

“The POWs instinctively put their hands behind their heads. The bruised and bloodied German lay on the towpath. 

“Son of a bitch, said one GI, rolling the officer over with his foot, which put him half in the canal and half out. He looked at Diederik and made a motion with his head that all interpreted as permission. The SS officer roused a bit and coughed up blood. Diederik shoved him into the canal and held him underwater, his boot on the German’s neck until he struggled no more. 

“The GI reached into his breast pocket, brought out a pack of cigarettes, and offered one to Diederik. It was a Lucky Strike. Then, in one smooth motion, he flipped open a Zippo lighter, produced a flame, and held it out. Diederik lit up, inhaled deeply, and passed the cigarette to the POW on his left. Diederik understood little of this except that he had just killed his first man of the war. 

“The trucks pulled up to the loading dock, and prisoners began to climb aboard. When it came Diederik’s turn, one of the guards grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and thrust into his breast pocket a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes. The GI winked at Diederik, then the two Americans walked away, talking and gesturing excitedly about Dodgers and Yankees and something called spring training. 

“Diederik understood all this completely.” 

General Keenan’s story was well received, and he relished the smiles and gestures of approval.  

Mrs. Rosenwater was quite pleased with the way the evening was progressing. The art of conversation and storytelling was anything but dead. Rumors of its demise were greatly exaggerated. The salad plates had been cleared and the entrée served by the almost invisible but efficient staff. It was a brown piece of meat with an even browner sauce covering it and a serving of brown fingerling potatoes on the side.  

As the glasses were recharged with more single malt scotch, Mrs. Rosenwater said, “I was charmed to learn you went to UVA, Ms. Laughlin, as did Maureen Solomon before she began to travel the world and write for the Washington Post. She was a foreign correspondent, complete with trench coat and cigarette holder, and hair falling over one eye like Veronica Lake.”  

Maureen laughed and took a breath. “Yes, I did attend the University of Virginia’s school of journalism. I never had a room on The Lawn, but I did frequent an occupant or two on Mr. Jefferson’s sacred ground and breathed that rarified air on occasion. In fact, there was lots of heavy breathing, if memory serves, even some moaning.” 

There was generous laughter from the gathered guests. 

“I recall one encounter, and I’m sure the story will resonate with many of the women gathered here who’ve been known to matriculate. A recent article I read suggested that a rather high percentage of college students of our generation slept with at least one of their professors. Shocking isn’t it! How could they? Or should I say, how could they not?”  

Maureen took out several sheets of paper and unfolded them. “I work better from notes. I am, after all, a journalist! So please, allow me.” She began to read. 

“Romare smiled when I singled out the large glass bowl. It once held tropical fish, I suppose, but now it was filled with old corks from vintage wine bottles. Of all the souvenirs and exotic objets d’art collected and displayed throughout his vast mountaintop retreat, this was—to my mind—the most peculiar and compelling. 

“At my request, he reached into the bowl, extracted a cork, and held it up for examination. On it was written a date, 12/23/62; a place, Nairobi; a star, exclamation points, an asterisk, and other marks that made for a personal hieroglyphic he alone could decode. 

“In a lifetime of travel and adventure, Romare Bettencourt had won considerable acclaim and countless awards for writing with insight and passion about the world’s bleeding sores, exotic destinations, and the people who perpetrated and occupied them both.  

“His smile broke into a broad grin, then a full-bodied laugh. 

“Ahhhh. The young anthropologist! Passing through Nairobi on her way to Olduvai. She was at the Norfolk Hotel, as was I. 

“Don’t know if she ever discovered the origins of our species, but we both left Nairobi knowing a great deal about each other and the appetites of a sexual nature that have maintained our species at the top of the food chain for lo these countless millennia. 

“What a delightful time to be in East Africa, he continued. Revolution was in the air, old Brit Colonials were still stumbling about, a bit confused. Hemingway and his ilk came and went. Karen Blixen was in her dotage but still held her Old World salons at the farmhouse in the Ngong hills. It was all quite solemn and formal, yet mesmerizing for a young ex-pat with a typewriter. 

“What about the anthropologist? I inquired. 

“Oh, yes. Catherine. She was a fine, compliant companion. A beautiful, decorative creature. I took her everywhere, to everything. She thrived in Nairobi, and then—poof! —she was gone. 

“Have you written about this? 

“Heavens no! I would never betray a lover or friend. Haven’t published in the first person, really. Also, you’ll note that the wine was a Chateau Margaux 1948. Pierre Lachine. Very fine, especially with the backstrap of springbok grilled at table in the Norfolk’s courtyard. 

“My God, you remember all that? 

“And more, my dear child, and much, MUCH more. He reached for another cork. 

“Havana, 1959. I just missed Fidel at the Hotel Nacional. This was one of the last old-growth Bordeaux in their cellar. The girls of the Copa’s chorus line were as giddy and anxious as they were lusty, knowing things were about to change for them—and all of Cuba. It was the only time I visited Ernest at La Finca Vigia. We were to go for billfish but his boat, the Pilar, was in dry dock. He and Mary stayed dead drunk the whole time. And paranoid? My God! 

“This is quite remarkable, I said. Do you sit around of an evening and pull out these little time capsules of recollection? 

“No, not at all. He laughed. I have not dipped into the deep end of this anecdotal bowl in years. It’s all for your amusement. Pick one!

“I first met Mr. Bettencourt in journalism school. He was on a panel whose topic was ‘Cultural Casualties of the Cold War.’ He was everything my professors were not—charming, concise, convincing, and, in a word, authentic. He had been there, lived in the world, and witnessed much. Now I was here to interview him for my long overdue dissertation. It seemed to be going well. 

Chateau Petrus was stamped on the cork I chose. The writing was dense and somewhat smudged. Romare studied the object as though he were deciphering Sanskrit. 

“Let’s see. Ah, the Land of Smiles. Bangkok’s Oriental Hotel. Must have been 1957 or ’58—hard to read here.  

“Jim Thompson lived there before his Thai Silk business got off the ground. I met him during the war. OSS, of course. We had a lively time.  

“I recall this water festival. Loy Kratong. Always in October. Dry season but still hotter than the hinges of Hell out there. At night the Cha Phraya River was filled with small floating flower barges lit with candles. Otherworldly—just gorgeous! People threw coins as gifts to the deities. Children would dive after them. Some drowned every year I was told, but the river gods must be placated. 

“He paused, turning the cork over in his hand, and then continued. 

“There was this young man from the South—Georgia, I believe—who entered Jim’s employ. He devoured the language and culture. Quite good manners. A brilliant fellow. Wrote a fine biography of Thompson after he disappeared in ’67.  So sad, that— 

“I interrupted. What do the other markings mean? 

“Oh, the evening was splendid—but ended strangely. After dinner, Jim always arranged entertainments. Thai dancers. Such miniature delights—lithe and delicate and sensual in every way. They performed in small groups, then moved about amongst us. Guests would claim one or two and fade away into the anterooms, for God knows what purposes. 

“The place was clearing out. It was getting late when Jim presented me with this fabulously festooned dancer in native dress. Such subservience, seductive body language, with all the bowing and wahing—very Thai. I thought, ‘Well, when in Bangkok...’ 

“I took this bottle of wine when we walked upstairs to my rooms. Very sweet, the Petrus. Thai food goes much better with beer, actually. 

“Do go on, Romare! I said. 

“The minute we got inside, without much prompting, the inevitable disrobing began. I recall the ceiling fan made this whomp, whomp, whomp sound. My companion lost composure only when the last garment fell to the floor. I must have looked as shocked as I was. There before me, in all of nature’s glory, stood the most beautiful young boy. Eleven or twelve, I suppose. It’s hard to tell with the Thais. He could have been twenty for all I know. 

“Yes, and then? I asked 

“Well, I poured myself a glass of Gallic courage and gave him one, too. In the heat of the evening, he began to shiver. He’d apparently never tasted wine. It was all rather awkward. We had no common language, no cultural understanding. 

“I still don’t know why, but I went over to my luggage and produced two framed photographs that I always traveled with back then. Of my twins, Lars and Elizabeth. They were on a beach in Florida. Their hair sun-bleached and blowing in the Gulf breeze, surf lapping at their thighs, faces all aglow in their own land of smiles. Timeless even now, after all these years. 

“My naked dancer’s black eyes grew large when he saw them. We pointed back and forth. He’d look at me, then at them. He understood, I think.  

“They would have been about the same age. He couldn’t take his eyes off the children and only stopped trembling when I draped a robe around his shoulders. 

“We fell asleep, his head in my lap. When the sun came up, he was gone, and so was one of the photographs.” 

“A smile returned to Romare’s face. He replaced the cork and looked over at me. 

“He chose Liz. 

“As Romare left to refresh our drinks, he remarked over his shoulder, I’ve a surprise for you. 

“The lights in his trophy room dimmed. The music, a Rachmaninoff concerto, rose a notch, and I heard the faint pop of a cork being extracted. Romare returned with two oversized crystal glasses and a dusty bottle of Burgundy. I recognized its sensuous shape. 

 “Did you bring your overnight kit? You will be staying, won’t you?” 

Maureen Solomon folded her notes and looked up.  

“Yes, this will be a chapter in my memoir,” she allowed. “To be published next spring. And I’m afraid you’ll have to buy the book to learn how the evening ended.” 

Everyone was satisfied to imagine their own ending and the eventual publication of Maureen’s book was not likely to change that. 

Next came Leroy LeFoy who, thanks to the endless flow of single malt scotch was feeling little pain, but Leroy was nothing if not competitive. 

He was something of a celebrity, an award-winning writer. A decade before, Leroy had been recognized by the Pulitzer committee for his empathetic and graceful prose on the plight of refugees in the Sudan. Rumor had it he was shortlisted for the Nobel, but now his well had seemingly run dry. 

Leroy had been working on a novel for the better part of a decade and his writer's block was legendary and discussed openly in literary circles. Several of his short stories had appeared in Harpers and the Atlantic magazines, but that only inflamed the rumors of his impotence.  

“I don’t want to be too confessional here,” he began. “If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s the power of a disclaimer. Nothing of what I’m about to say is true, … but it could be. For lack of a better term, let’s call it Hypothetical Realism. A fancy phrase for fiction. So come with me, to a place exotic and of another time.” 

He removed folded sheets from his breast pocket and before he began to real aloud, added with a wink, “And remember, it’s all fiction.

“When writing, I find it impossible to concern myself with the arcane rules of spelling and punctuation. The plight of the dangling participle concerns me not at all, especially when operating under the threat of death. But syntax—that’s quite another matter.”

Leroy paused for effect.

“For me, writing has always come from reading. Words produce words, simple as that. Call me pitifully post-modern if you will, but that’s why I am currently blocked, constipated, bound up. I am hard-pressed to find a sustainable grouping of words in any comprehensible language on this outcropping of rocks in the middle of the Aegean in October with the Meltemi coming to an end—but more on that later.

“The summer people, those formally beautiful and deliciously trashy European languishers who populate this island from May until September, are mercifully gone, including the one who is directly responsible for my current predicament.

“My hostess, the ancient Lady MacWorthington, widow of Lord MacWorthington and last of the stodgy old colonials, has a library of sorts. Obscure, mostly 19th-century titles, all first editions are here, but she won't let me leave the house with any. I can read all I want under her watchful eye and constant commentary and occasional hand on my thigh—she goes a little higher each day—and endless cups of black tea that run through me like the mighty Mississippi flowing unvexed to the sea.”

Mrs. Rosenwater was noticeably uncomfortable with his description of a dowager mistress of a once great house. Leroy forged ahead.

“There are some fascinatingly obscure titles that could be just the thing to catapult me into a creative/competitive state, which is crucial to my productivity and which, since I have aged, I find harder and harder to acquire. Other writers may do the same; I don’t know and could not care less. I never credit my muse, and its hardly plagiarism—more like literary drafting—when I get behind a fine, rich passage that’s moving along at a fast clip, I can grab onto its cadence, its form and plot, and especially dialogue and speech patterns, and can sustain the refrain in my own words indefinitely.

“I use other writing not to find my voice—I have no voice. Yet I’ve a career, and quite a successful one. My personal life—my experiences, family history, emotions, and anecdotes—never make their way into my writing, but when I find myself in that word-filled wind-tunnel, the sentences just flow and flow. They seldom need editing or revision. It’s magic.

“But now I’ve lost my mojo, and that goddamn oligarch of a Russian with the 100-meter-long yacht he calls the Obscenity has promised to forgive my debts—and there are many—and spare my life, but only if I write the most compelling piece of prose he has read in his newly acquired language, English. (Thank God I won’t be competing with Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and he who bites the hand that fed him, Solzhenitsyn.)

“Serge Lutz Romanov (not his real name) plans to return to these rocky shoals in late November. “We will have Thanksgiving together,” he declares, that being his new favorite holiday. I will present the fruits of my imagination, and he will decide if I live or die.”

“How it came about: This was my first mistake, though I made many. The four of us—Serge and one of his fancifully named and ever-present bodyguards, Molotov or Kalashnikov or something associated with a cocktail; Winslow Malaise (his real name!), a foppish, professorial type from Antioch College on sabbatical and traveling under the aegis of the Fulbright Foundation (your tax dollars at work); and I—were sitting at the posh gaming table aboard that disgusting, floating monument to wretched excess and dysfunctional capitalism, the Obscenity.

“Serge had picked up this Malaise (oh, I do so love the sound of that) in a bar in Monte Carlo’s Grand Casino. They’d struck up a conversation about the Lost Generation—Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Dos Passos, and all the other insecure pencil-dick scribblers who had survived or dodged the Great War and just felt awful about it.

“During one of my brandy-fueled diatribes aimed at the effete and feckless Malaise, I cavalierly dismissed the whole lot, especially Fitzgerald, who couldn't recognize a good thing when he found one—Zelda, Hollywood, fame and fortune (if fleeting), rakish good looks, et cetera.

“I came down especially hard on The Crack-Up, his sketchy autobiographical piece about mental instability published in that paragon of lofty intellectualism, Esquire magazine (circa 1936). Such whining and complaining, so weak and lily-livered.

“Be a man, says I, followed by: He gave permission to a whole phalanx of confessional writers—the contemptible Robert Lowell, the boring Ann Beattie, and that whole miserable, navel-gazing, MFA-grasping crowd that still occupies to a great extent America’s literary landscape.

“Malaise was nodding off and about to fall out of his overstuffed leather chair when Serge raised the pot €10,000 and gave me one of his signature squinty-eyed, Cossack stares.

“And you can do better? he queried.

“Ha! Of course! I shot back. With one blind eye, the other bloodshot, and my writing hand tied behind me. I am a professional!

“Well, said Serge, the mutilation of the eye won’t be necessary, unless of course you do not win. I like a good wager, especially when something dear is at stake. I look forward to reading your response, your treatise.

“I beg your pardon? I gasped. Are you proposing a bet of some kind?

“Yes, of course. All of your debts will be forgiven, and the Obscenity will take you around the world if you win. If you lose, well… He pulled a finger across his throat.

“My pickled brain tried to make sense of this. How will we know? Who will judge?

“Why, Professor Malaise here. He has a PhD from Princeton, Serge announced with an unearned lilt of Ivy League arrogance.

“Which should disqualify him, I sputtered. Fitzgerald went to Princeton. They deify him there. Malaise can hardly be objective.

“It was all for naught. The Fulbright fellow’s head was flat on the table and stirred only when Serge offered him a €10,000 fee for ‘literary consultation.’

“The Obscenity would weigh anchor on the morrow. Malaise would stay on board to give tutorials on 20^th-century American Lit until Serge, the Obscenity, and its entourage returned for the ultimate read-off.

“We parted in cold silence. One thing was very clear. Should my offering not match or exceed Fitzgerald, it was lights out, so long, sayonara, sweet dreams, adios, arrivederci, the Big Sleep pour moi!

“This I knew. My nemesis had not come by his wealth passively. He had killed before, readily, and even bragged about it. After the collapse of the Soviet Union there’d been a mad scramble for assets among Russia’s would-be oligarchs. Serge Romanov and Molotov/Kalashnikov/Baryshnikov had duked it out with a small army of former Soviet intelligence officers' intent on taking oil and mining interests that were a huge part of Serge’s empire. There had been casualties, and Serge would have been among them except for Molotov/Smirnoff (or whatever his goddamn name was), who had snatched Serge’s chestnuts from the fire. The two were devoted to one another, and Serge was seldom out Molotov’s sight.

“For all of his high-profile wealth and acquisitions, Serge had powerful enemies. Now, as one of the last men standing, our not-so-benevolent host did not cotton to being challenged, contradicted, or made to look the slightest bit foolish, and unfortunately his English was getting better.

“As I slowly came to my senses, I began to calculate my chances. Winslow Malaise had read my work in obscure literary journals and The New York Review of Books and claimed to have admired a New York Times Op-Ed on Third World writers and why they mattered. He had not read my novels or my memoir, which was probably a good thing. He did, however, fondly recall a New Yorker piece praising a resurgent interest in William Faulkner and why his prose soared in such a singular way, occupying a stratosphere all its own, with no need for the unnecessary burden of punctuation.

“It occurred to me: Malaise could be finessed and would certainly have a say, but Serge would have the final word on whether I lived or died. I did not plan to go gently into that good night.

“Turkey Day was a mere six weeks away. If I was not to be the one roasted, I must eventually get back to Lady MacWorthington’s musty library, open my thighs, make amends, and put on a charm offensive to all I had offended—and there had been many.

“I agonized for weeks on end. When I next called on the Grande Dame, I found by the door a stack of old books (is there any other kind?) to be donated to the Red Cross. When I reached down, fate filled my hand with a copy of Big Woods, a 1937 edition of William Faulkner’s hunting stories. Faulkner! What was it about this tiny man with the outsized vision?

“I met him, you know, in the winter of 1962, at West Point. That’s right—I was destined for a military career but instead followed in the path of such distinguished dropouts as J.M. Whistler and E.A. Poe, who both fled that fortress on the Hudson as soon as they could flunk out. But one February morning, in my English class, reading from his work, was William Faulkner along with Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was busy snapping photographs. There is one of the Great Man and me; his high-pitched voice haunts me still.

“I took the book, better destined for moi than some encephalitic, terminal patient in the local infirmary. I read and reread it. Copied the text, typing word-for-word The Bear, The Old People, Race at Morning, even the dedication to Faulkner’s editor, Saxe Cummins:

We never always saw eye to eye

but we were always

looking at the same thing

“Brilliant!

“It was the introduction that encapsulated and held fast his native place, Mississippi, from prehistory to the present. You could see the timeless landscape, smell the humid air and fresh blood. It was all there, and I was captivated. Here was genius on the page. Nothing lost about this man, his generation notwithstanding.

“I recalled that Serge Romanov had become emotional only once in my presence—when he and Molotov laughed and sobbed deep into the night, an empty vodka bottle between them, about the ancient village on the Russian steppes from whence these two unlikely survivors sprung.

“That’s it!

“I will substitute all things Russian for all things Faulkner—the Volga for the Mississippi, Cossacks for Choctaws, serfs for slaves, bear for bear, and on and on.

“Praise the Lord.

“I am saved—or so I hoped.

“It was the morning before Thanksgiving, and the Meltemi, that ill wind from the north, was having one last blow. It is said the Macedonian King Philip planned his military campaigns in sync with the predictable Meltemi to keep enemy ships at bay. That was too much for me to ask, but I did sense a good omen with every breeze. 

“The sleek profile of the Obscenity appeared on the horizon, drew closer, and dropped anchor. Serge, Malaise, and a dozen of his Euro-trash hangers-on came ashore in the launch operated by the ever-present Molotov/Smirnoff/Popov. We had drinks at a seaside bar. I was unusually calm compared to the weather when Serge asked, So, my friend, are you ready for your trial by words? To put Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the entire Lost Generation in their place?

“I am prepared, I replied with Zen-like composure.

“It was all arranged. The launch would return for me tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. We would have a sumptuous meal, the Filipino staff was to dress as Pilgrims and Indians, and then I would state my case.

“I slept well that night. Next afternoon, girding my loins for battle, I fastened my vintage Patek Phillipe watch to my left wrist and knotted a silk Ferragamo tie in a half-Windsor snug against the collar of my Turnbull & Asser shirt, sleeves held fast by Clinton-era presidential cufflinks. I slipped on white cotton Saville Row slacks, added a bespoke blazer, a Burberry of London scarlet square flowering from its breast pocket. Gucci loafers—no socks, of course. I put on my polarized Ray-Ban sunglasses, collected the leather Louis Vuitton valise that contained the key to my questionable future—ten pages of typescript—and started for the pier.

“The Obscenity was backlit by the setting sun in a most dramatic fashion. The launch and the ever-dependable Ivan Novaya Molotovski (I had at long last learned his name) were idling just off the dock. I walked to the end, waved, and shouted to get his attention. He glanced my way, looked back at the Obscenity, then at his watch.

“At that very moment the great ship’s hull seemed to inflate and lift out of the water. A bright-orange fireball engulfed the Obscenity, blinding all except those wearing Ray-Bans. The sound and concussion reached us an instant later. It knocked me to earth and forced the launch hard up against the pier.

“I sat up and looked directly at Molotovski, not ten meters away. Smiling, he raised a thumb to his front teeth and flipped a timeless gesture of disdain, disgust, and dismissal. Then Molotovski opened the throttle and motored off.

“I was stunned but soon regained my feet and composure. The great ship and all it stood for were gone, disappeared, vanished like a bad dream. My leather valise had come open and the neatly typed pages were swirling around my feet and into the water.

“It was Thanksgiving and, at long last, I had something to be thankful for.” 

William Dunlap