The Jewel Box by Anna Davis

potential and come up with the Great Magnum Opus. We all hope that’s what he’s been doing. And now you’re going to find out. You’re going to meet him—to be alone with him!”

    [From “Diamond Sharp Meets Dexter O’Connell”]
    For the last five years, since the publication of his third novel, Hell and Helena, Dexter O’Connell has been uncharacteristically silent. No novels, no short stories, not even an article or a book review. For almost a decade, barely a week would pass without O’Connell saying something loud and sparkly and stylish in a prominent publication. Barely a month without a protest against his “demonic” work from the Wisconsin League of Motherhood or the Texan Church of the Lost Children, or some other bunch of crackpots.
    Some have imagined him written out, spent out and gone to seed, resting his flabby arms on the bar of a cheap French hotel, sighing for his lost splendor. Others have him closeted away in a garret, bashing out the Great Magnum Opus in monastic isolation. Perhaps bashing his head repeatedly on the desk when he can’t summon it up, that ungraspable magical energy that once made writing as easy as laughing.
    And now here he is. Eating overcooked beef with Yours Truly. He has about him an air of contentment and ease. His hands don’t shake. He doesn’t seem at all like a man “back from the brink.” But will he whisper a single word into my sympathetic ear about what he’s been up to all this time? Will he, heck!
    “Yes, I’m writing a new novel,” he says reluctantly, after I have expended considerable charm in coaxing and cajoling him (and I am charming, let me tell you). “No, it’s not finished. It will be, though—probably in a few months’ time. I’m over here to work on a section that’s set in London. I suppose you could say it’s a sequel to The Vision , though the word “sequel” is a belittling one somehow. They’ve stayed with me, those characters. Stanley’s gotten a few gray hairs at the same time as me—” (Fret not, girls. I couldn’t spot a single gray thread on his head and am positive its particular golden hue doesn’t come from a bottle. Put this reference to the aging process down to poetic license.)—“Veronique’s acquired a kind of polish and poise that one sees in the slightly older but still beautiful woman. That wicked mischief of hers has evolved into something altogether more calculated. Question is whether there’s anything soft under all the brittle shine and cleverness. That’s what fascinates me about Veronique.”
    It’s taken him this long, he says, to feel ready to say something more about Stanley and Veronique. Their story has had to sit and mature in his mind as his own life story has gone rolling on. They’ve been growing up, with him, but have had to wait for him to develop a new perspective—on their experiences and on his own. Now, after all this time, after the bad-boy behavior and the silence, he’s finally about to give us the book we’ve all wanted for such a long time.
    The bottle of good red cast its usual spell, and Grace found herself beginning to relax. By the time they’d arrived at the Armagnac, she was entirely at ease and more than a little garrulous. She’d been telling him how men, in novels, were more attractive than men on the big screen.
    “They’re limited, you see, by reality.” She gestured expansively with her cigarette holder. “When you read a book, you can make of the main man whatever you like. You can mold him to suit your own personal tastes. The camera works to transform an actor into a hero, but it can go only so far in its transformation. I might be able to make a sponge cake from some flour, eggs, sugar and butter, but I couldn’t possibly produce the perfect French croissant, no matter how hard I try.”
    “And you’re fond of croissants, as any regular reader of your column will know.”
    “Shush, shush.” Another wave of the cigarette. “I haven’t