thank God.
In the afternoon, we went for a tromp around “the property,” as Sam referred to it. One thing was abundantly clear: old man Lawson had snapped up a pretty piece of real estate with all his advertising dough. Rolling fields, handmade fences, a picturesque pond overlooked by a huge willow. It sounds corny to say, but it was a real storybook farm. It even had a name: “Darlington.” So old man Lawson might say to his friends: “How would you like to come up to Darlington for the weekend?”
We squelched around in the mud, in borrowed rubber boots. Max and I hopped on one of those huge cylindrical hay-bales, and tried to get it rolling. Soon it became a competition to see who could stay on longest. Finally, Max aborted with anoath. I kept rolling (why? to impress Les with my “balesmanship,” I guess) until I hit some sort of snag in the ground and pitched face-first in the mud.
Inside, I had a bath in the big clawfoot tub, and took a long nap. I drew the blinds, crawled into the bed, and with the smell of fresh-laundered sheets in my nostrils, I sank into a deep, dark hole.
I awoke from my sarcophagal snooze feeling refreshed, yet groggy and disoriented. With a towel around my waist, I staggered toward the shower like some sort of undersea creature. Clearly I had sunk, for six hours, to the lowest depths of sleep, to the bottom of the sea, where strange eyeless creatures scuttle across the sand and huge prehistoric leviathans slide silently through the inky blackness.
That shower really perked me up, though. First hot, then cold, then hot again. I came out feeling like a champ. I dressed, to impress Les, really. I’m a bit of a dandy, a fop, a Macaroni, a Count D’Orsay or Beau Brummel. Actually, I
wish
I could dress like those legendary 19th-century exquisites, especially the great Beau, “the greatest dandy of all time.” Not that he dressed showily, far from it. Beau spent hours in front of the mirror to achieve an effect, in the words of an astonished contemporary, “exactly like that of every other gentleman.” The difference was apparent only to the initiate, it was all in the details: the way only three links of his watch-fob ever showed, the way he polished the soles as well as the uppers of his Hessian boots to the same mirror-like sheen, the brilliance of his linen, the careful elaboration of his famous-throughout-Europe cravat.
Obviously, I could never hope to achieve such a level of almost spiritual dandyism. With my limited budget and secondhand wardrobe, I’m a faux fop, I guess, a
flâneur manqué
, a cheesyMacaroni. Still, I try my best. I like to think of myself as in spirited revolt against the costume of our age. It’s too sporty, too casual, as if the wearer were saying life is casual, life is a sport. Whereas the costume of an earlier era proclaimed “Life is theatre,” a construct I infinitely prefer.
Sashaying down the stairs in my snappy haberdashery, I catch a whiff of an arrestingly appetizing aroma, an olfactory aria of garlic, cheese, tomatoes, and…nutmeg?
“Les’s famous lasagne,” Max informs me, when I join him in the library. Locally famous, he explains, for being the best lasagne anyone’s ever laid their lips on. “You won’t believe your tastebuds,” he says.
He’s sitting in the big chair by the fire, a drink perched on one arm, an ashtray on the other, feet perched on an ottoman,
Hunger
cracked in his lap, a bridge lamp staring over his shoulder. I cross to the bar, stage right.
“So, you say old man Lawson doesn’t care how much of his booze we drink?” I ask over my shoulder, somewhat disingenuously, after having lapped up so much of it last night.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Drink all you want, he couldn’t care less.”
Maybe the plane did crash, I think, and this is the after-life: all the scotch you can drink, a cozy stone farmhouse, a tantalizingly beautiful and sexy woman just out of reach. The only question was:
In the afternoon, we went for a tromp around “the property,” as Sam referred to it. One thing was abundantly clear: old man Lawson had snapped up a pretty piece of real estate with all his advertising dough. Rolling fields, handmade fences, a picturesque pond overlooked by a huge willow. It sounds corny to say, but it was a real storybook farm. It even had a name: “Darlington.” So old man Lawson might say to his friends: “How would you like to come up to Darlington for the weekend?”
We squelched around in the mud, in borrowed rubber boots. Max and I hopped on one of those huge cylindrical hay-bales, and tried to get it rolling. Soon it became a competition to see who could stay on longest. Finally, Max aborted with anoath. I kept rolling (why? to impress Les with my “balesmanship,” I guess) until I hit some sort of snag in the ground and pitched face-first in the mud.
Inside, I had a bath in the big clawfoot tub, and took a long nap. I drew the blinds, crawled into the bed, and with the smell of fresh-laundered sheets in my nostrils, I sank into a deep, dark hole.
I awoke from my sarcophagal snooze feeling refreshed, yet groggy and disoriented. With a towel around my waist, I staggered toward the shower like some sort of undersea creature. Clearly I had sunk, for six hours, to the lowest depths of sleep, to the bottom of the sea, where strange eyeless creatures scuttle across the sand and huge prehistoric leviathans slide silently through the inky blackness.
That shower really perked me up, though. First hot, then cold, then hot again. I came out feeling like a champ. I dressed, to impress Les, really. I’m a bit of a dandy, a fop, a Macaroni, a Count D’Orsay or Beau Brummel. Actually, I
wish
I could dress like those legendary 19th-century exquisites, especially the great Beau, “the greatest dandy of all time.” Not that he dressed showily, far from it. Beau spent hours in front of the mirror to achieve an effect, in the words of an astonished contemporary, “exactly like that of every other gentleman.” The difference was apparent only to the initiate, it was all in the details: the way only three links of his watch-fob ever showed, the way he polished the soles as well as the uppers of his Hessian boots to the same mirror-like sheen, the brilliance of his linen, the careful elaboration of his famous-throughout-Europe cravat.
Obviously, I could never hope to achieve such a level of almost spiritual dandyism. With my limited budget and secondhand wardrobe, I’m a faux fop, I guess, a
flâneur manqué
, a cheesyMacaroni. Still, I try my best. I like to think of myself as in spirited revolt against the costume of our age. It’s too sporty, too casual, as if the wearer were saying life is casual, life is a sport. Whereas the costume of an earlier era proclaimed “Life is theatre,” a construct I infinitely prefer.
Sashaying down the stairs in my snappy haberdashery, I catch a whiff of an arrestingly appetizing aroma, an olfactory aria of garlic, cheese, tomatoes, and…nutmeg?
“Les’s famous lasagne,” Max informs me, when I join him in the library. Locally famous, he explains, for being the best lasagne anyone’s ever laid their lips on. “You won’t believe your tastebuds,” he says.
He’s sitting in the big chair by the fire, a drink perched on one arm, an ashtray on the other, feet perched on an ottoman,
Hunger
cracked in his lap, a bridge lamp staring over his shoulder. I cross to the bar, stage right.
“So, you say old man Lawson doesn’t care how much of his booze we drink?” I ask over my shoulder, somewhat disingenuously, after having lapped up so much of it last night.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Drink all you want, he couldn’t care less.”
Maybe the plane did crash, I think, and this is the after-life: all the scotch you can drink, a cozy stone farmhouse, a tantalizingly beautiful and sexy woman just out of reach. The only question was:
Similar Books
