The Paper Men [antikvár]

I knew at once that it was one of those nights. The drink, such as it had been, was dying out of my brain and leaving a kind of sediment of irritation, vague discomfort and even remorse. It had not been-no, indeed-a bender or boozeup. By the exercise of special pleading I could have persuaded other people that my evening's consumption had been no more than reasonable with regard to the duties of a host: an English author entertaining a professor of English Literature from overseas. I could alsó have pleaded that it had been my fiftieth birthday and that we had been having, quote, one of those long, continental meals that are at the heart of European civilization, unquote. (Come to think of it I don't know if that's a quote or not. Call it a clitch.) But the indefatigable analyst of my character-myself, that is-would have none of it. There had been those drinks at lunch. They were the fatal first step, implying in themselves a desert period between four and five o'clock when one would feel not justified but urged, shoved, compelled by the process started at midday to bring the six o'clock hour of offering the guest a drink back to five o'clock, which in its turn-and so on. If I could congratulate myself on a degree of sobriety at halfpast three in the morning, it was a minuscule triumph that most people would have considered a defeat. And boring young Professor Rick L. Tucker would be there at breakfast! At the memory of him I started up in bed, then collapsed again with a groan. It was a small blessing to count, that he had no wife with him, or I should probably have made a pass at her or at the very least been suggestive. And we should drink again. No. I should 7