The
dwarf remanifests himself—this time sporting a burgundy beret.
“I get it,” I say. “This is about
hats, right?”
“Hats?” He fills his cheeks with air,
slaps them, and allows his face to explode with a drawn-out raspberry.
“Every time you reappear you’re
wearing a different hat.”
“I like hats.”
“I get that. But I don’t get why
you’re doing this to me.”
“I’m not doing s--- to you,” says
the dwarf. “You did it to yourself.”
“Did what?”
“Night-capped yourself.” The dwarf
belches. “It’s that last drink that always nails you.”
“It has never nailed me like this before.”
“Wah!” the Dwarf mock bawls. “Cry me
a f---ing waterfall.”
“Okay, okay,” I surrender
unconditionally. “Who’s next?”
The dwarf pulls out a pocket watch
and checks the time. “Well, it’s way past midnight.” He smiles. “Would you like
to meet Dracula?”
“Dracula wasn’t a real person.”
“Who says your visitors can’t be fictional?
You think you make the rules? I’ll give you Vlad the Impaler from Transylvania—he was real.”
I shake my head. “You already f----- up with Rasputin not speaking English, remember? I don’t speak Transylvanian, either.”
The dwarf recoils as if I’d slapped
him. “Smarty-pants!”
“But go for it,” I say. “If I
surrender unconditionally, I assume I’ll be able to reconcile with reality.”
“Really now?” The dwarf folds his
arms. “Then I guess it’s time for you to meet someone who refused to surrender unconditionally?”
Before I can respond, he hops onto a
barstool and twirls into a tornado until he looks like the Tasmanian
devil cartoon character and…
…morphs
into a corpulent gentleman with a bulldog face wearing a three-piece suit, bow
tie and bowler hat—and puffing on the longest, fattest cigar I’ve ever seen.
This time, as with Sam, I know who
it is, without any doubt whatsoever.
But this gent pays not the slightest
attention to me, absorbed as he is with a copy of The Times of London.
Finally, he takes another long draw on
his cigar, pulls it away from his mouth, blows a gust of smoke, and turns to
observe my presence.
“Young man,” he commands, “kindly
fetch me refreshment.”
“Of course,” I say, rallying as
before. “What would you like?”
“Roasted deer with foie gras and
truffle sauce.”
“They don’t do food here.”
“Ah.” He looks around with disdain.
“And I fear Pol Roger Champagne is also out of the question in this dungeon? Never
mind, I’m accustomed to living in a war room.” He pauses. “Might you stock
Plymouth gin?”
“I might.” And, indeed, I find a
bottle of Plymouth.
“A martini,” he instructs. “Three
ounces and one olive.”
“Vermouth?”
“Put a bottle of Vermouth on the bar,”
he instructs. “Merely observing it
will suffice.”
With a chuckle, I do as he says, and
he transforms from austere to a smiley picture of contentment.
“This is the solution to any
problem,” he says, and I’m not sure if he’s talking to me or himself. “A
martini and a cigar.” He puffs his cigar, looks up and watches as the smoke reaches
the ceiling, curls, then floats back down. “And fortitude,” he adds.
“You’re famous for saving Britain
from Hitler and the Nazis,” I say. “But most people don’t realize you’re also
the most prolific author in the history of the world.”
He shrugs.
“But my all-time favorite book of
yours is a very short volume called The Dream.”
He stirs, fixes his gaze in my
direction and studies me. “Mine, too.” He raises his martini glass. “To my
father, Randolph.” He toasts the air, sips,
sighs.
“Was it fiction?” I ask. “The
Dream?”
He smiles. “Not entirely. It was a private
article, never intended for publication. Your earlier guest was a far more
lucid writer than I.”
“Eddy?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “Mister
Poe is far from lucid.”
“Then…?”
“General Grant. He wrote the best presidential
memoirs ever penned.”
“Really?”
“Indeed. He set the standard for
American presidents to come. Not only did the good general write his memoirs
all by himself, he did so while in constant agony with throat cancer, which took
his life only two days after completing the final paragraphs of his
masterpiece of a book.” He pauses. “That’s fortitude.”
He pauses again. “They love you when you win a war that threatens their freedom
but forsake you once their freedom has been won.”
“Grant was a supposedly a binge
drinker,” I say. “Was it alcohol that led to his cancer?”
“That and smoking,” says Churchill,
studying his own martini and cigar. “As for myself, I’ve gotten more out of alcohol
than alcohol has taken out of me. You know why?”
“Do tell?’
“I adore martinis. And also
champagne—but only Pol Roger, of course. However, most of the time I drink Johnny Walker
Red—just a wee bit of whiskey in a whole glass of water. What I call a long whiskey. It is how I keep my
reputation as a boozer while remaining in command of my ministers, along with my
faculties.”
We are rudely interrupted by a loud
rapping at the door to the bar.
The door is locked, I gather, and
whomever is outside wants to come in, even though the bar is closed for
business (other than my own).
Churchill reverts to his newspaper, otherwise
ignoring the intrusion.
After a pause, the rapping begins
again.
I’m curious.
Should I answer?
The door knocks a third time. I
deduce that someone desperately needs a drink.
Question is, could I actually unbolt
the door?
And if so, might I escape through
it?
“I’ll see who’s there,” I say to
Churchill, easing myself off the barstool.
He grunts, non-committedly.
I open the door, half expecting to
see the dwarf—maybe he locked himself out?
But it’s not the dwarf...
