Cold and Pure and Very Dead by Joanne Dobson

it until the very last second.”
    “Really?” Most of the writers I read are dead—Shakespeare, Dickinson, T. S. Eliot—and the live ones are lucky to get a cup of cappuccino from their publicists, let alone a
huge promotional blitz
. “What’s the novel about?”
    “A kid and his sister, lost in the woods.”
    “Sounds like ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ ” I’ve always been such a smart-mouth.
    “It’s
nothing
like ‘Hansel and Gretel,’ ” Jake replied sharply.
    T he fourth Crown Royal double was proving to be the proverbial straw for Jake. Having wound up his tale of the recovery of poor Saunders’s body and the perilous journey with the funeral litter down the Tibetan mountainside guided by a single lonely but loyal native boy, the adventurer abruptly ceased his tale.
    Two hours and counting of Jake Fenton’s company was beginning to disabuse me of romantic fantasies I might have entertained about the man. Jake Fenton wasn’t about Romance. Jake Fenton was all about Jake Fenton: the Fenton wit, the Fenton charm, the Fenton brilliance, the Fenton sex appeal—the Fenton
cojones
. This masculine self-absorption would ordinarily have put me—a staunch feminist—off my feed, but the difference between garden-variety narcissism and literary genius was epitomized by the difference between the drunken blather of the other guys at Ernie’s and the world-class word-spinning of the man beside me. As long as I accepted the evening on Jake’s terms, I could enjoy the Fenton take on the blood sport of life—and the ephemeral catch in my breath every time Jake stopped talking and granted me another shot of his sexy little smile.
    Eventually Jake’s hand found a casual perch on my thigh. The catch in my breath was no longer ephemeral, but this man was a little too slick for me. Just as casually, I removed the hand, replacing it on his own thigh. As if I had pushed a button or switched a lever, Jake ceased talking. Suddenly he concentrated on smashing bar snacks. One by one, tiny goldfish, sesame sticks, pretzels, met their fate, crushed to crumbs between the oak bar top and Jake’s broad thumb. Then he buried his gaze in the booze, and kept it there, despite my earnest attempts to resuscitate the conversation.
    Great. Just great!
I thought. My evening in the presence of literary genius was going downhill a good deal faster than Jake, his native guide, and poor Saunders’s corpse. And my heroic escort was looped, obviously in no shape to drive the big brown Range Rover he’d picked me up in.
How in hell am I going to get home?
I wondered.
    As Jake brooded into his whiskey, the atmosphere in the bar began to heat up. I hadn’t been paying much attention to the two guys next to us. They’d been downing draft Buds for the past hour and a half and reminiscing amiably about high-school glory days, but suddenly they struck out over who’d made the winning run in game twelve of senior year. Their voices rose, and I glanced over at them. The redhead with the shoulders unexpectedly hooked a right at the pudgy guy in the “I got shucked at Pete’s Oyster House” T-shirt, connected, and knocked him off the bar stool. He crashed into Jake. The impact jolted the writer out of his sulk. Jake caught the guy, staggering as the impact of Pudgy’s weight hit the impact of the Crown Royal. Without even pausing to think about it, he shoved him powerfully back into his assailant. Then he socked him in the stomach. The pudgy guy vomited all over the redhead—and over every one else within range. I vaulted off my stool.
    “Who do you think you’re shoving, asshole?” The pudgy guy, back on his feet, caught at Jake’s arm with a barf-spattered hand. Jake met him with a mean elbow, and Pudgy grunted and doubled over. The redhead steadied Pudge, his bosom pal again, and took a wild one-arm swing at Jake.
    “Shit.” The novelist slurred even that simple integer of Anglo-Saxon verbiage. “I don’t have time for this crap.”