The young Shakespearean lived in a shotgun house near the small town’s oak and cypress shaded lake, not far from the campus where he taught. He was excited to host the visiting writer for an erudite evening of cocktails. He wore his crested blue blazer, his maroon and yellow paisley ascot, pressed grey trousers, and cordovan wingtips, the scuffed nubby leather polished over the lopsided heels.
His colleague, the fiction writing professor who had secured the funding and invited the writer, knocked with the guest just as the Shakespearean had arranged the black lacquered tray of cognac and champagne on the leather ottoman that served as a table between the thin sofa and chairs in his living room. Behind them as they stood in the front door, he saw the sun setting over the lake, its brown water brightening gold, the twisted oaks filtering light through pale hanging moss, and the shining black cypress knees protruding from the ancient-looking surface. “Welcome, please,” he said, stepping back, sweeping his hand toward the room of worn, salvaged rugs that covered the rustic wood floor. “I’m so honored you’re here.”
His colleague, Rudy, introduced the guest, Damian, to the Shakespearean, Neal.
“I’m afraid I’m under dressed,” said Damian, assessing Neal’s dapper, lordly attire. “My bags are still in Rudy’s trunk.” He wore blue jeans and a cream-colored snap-button shirt, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, revealing curly white hair on is arms. He was older than Neal and Rudy, who were barely in their 30s.
“No worries,” Rudy said, as he shed his own jacket and laid it on the back of one of
the chairs. “Neal makes demands only of himself to set a certain sartorial standard.”
“Indeed,” Neal said. “Be comfortable. Make yourself at home. We know you’re going to dinner soon with the Chair, but we thought you might like a drink and hors deourves before that official event. I wish we had more time. The Chair is a theorist, and no one can understand him. But we hoped a prelude with other lovers of language for its own sake would suit you.”
“Much obliged,” said Damian. “Are you expecting others?”
“Well, I invited a few but now it is just we three. Obligations beyond my control. Have a seat, please,” he said, gesturing with a flourish first to the sofa, and second to the chairs, wincing slightly at the sight of Rudy’s lumpy jacket, it’s frayed dull lining turned outward. He didn’t mind Damian’s traveling attire. It gave him a natty ruggedness, like the author Neal imagined. But Rudy never dressed well. “We’re serving The King’s Pigs,” he announced.
“Great,” Damian said. As he and Rudy sat side by side on the sofa, Neal disappeared into his kitchen to fetch the platter of canapes he had prepared. Sliced black olives, sliced boiled egg, sliced cucumbers, sliced strawberries on small sections of bread smeared with cream cheese and chives.
When he returned, Damian looked up from a book he had pulled from Neal’s crammed shelves and said, “Those look beautiful.” He set the book aside, a copy of Mark Twain’s Puddin’head Wilson.
“We were wondering about the king’s pigs,” Damian said. “I mean Rudy and I, not the royal ‘we.’” He chuckled. “Is that what these canapes are called?”
“I assured him you don’t have actual pigs you intend to serve us, or for us to go out back and feed.”
Neal laughed heartily. “No. Oh, no. The King’s Pigs is the name of the evening’s drinks. It’s a British concoction of champagne and cognac and bitters. We will have to do without the bitters because I haven’t found a local store that sells them. Still, we shouldn’t let the champagne get too warm.”
While Rudy and Damian helped themselves to the food, Neal uncorked the bottles and poured the drinks. Then he presented each with a gold-rimmed flute of gold effervescence. He smoothed his thin blond hair over his forehead and proposed a toast. “To Damian Wells, special guest.” They formed a brief pyramid of touching glasses before sipping.
“Why are these called The King’s Pigs?” Damian asked.
“No clue,” Neal said, sitting in the chair vacant of the coat. He thought briefly of hanging it up but dismissed the idea because his guests would have to leave for dinner soon. “British irony, perhaps. Or maybe some king actually served it to his pigs. Can you imagine? I wouldn’t put that past a king, really. Excess and arrogance. I learned the recipe from my father.”
“Where in England are you from? Or is your father from?”
“Oh, we are not. I wish, obviously. My prep school was no Eton, and my university is in Nebraska, my home state. I did do a Fulbright at Cambridge and an undergraduate exchange at Duke. Hence, my father calls me the Duke of Nebraska, which I quite like. I rather have aristocratic aspirations, slogging out here in Alabama. Don’t be fooled by my accent. It’s affected, you know. I am as I desire to be.”
“The crest on your pocket?”
“I found this on a coat in a thrift store and had it sewn onto my blazer.” He tapped his hand on the fabric lightly. “It suits my image of myself.”
“I guess we all make ourselves up as we go through life,” said Damian. “I am certainly not as I was born. I come from Virginia sharecroppers, the only white folks without property until my grandfather hitched a ride with a traveling carnival and later married the nurse who tended to a wound he got from being on the wrong end of a knife-throwing act. Next he worked at welding ships. My father sold floor wax door to door and my mother sold fried fish dinners from our kitchen on Fridays. Imagine the odors of our little house, a structure similar to yours, by the way. I was the first to try college, for a couple of years. I sold some comic poems to a newspaper in Baltimore and got hired on to write some features. I pretended to be a writer until I was considered one. I see you have some of my books. From my Colorado days. Proof that sometimes a person can invent himself.”
Rudy said, “I guess I’m a fabrication, too. I mean I make up stories all the time, but to think that those stories created me as a professor is weird.”
“I love your story collection,” Damian said.
Rudy, blushing, said, “Thank you.”
“We seem to have ventured into the realm of speculative reality now,” Damian said. “But tell me, what’s new with Shakespeare?”
“Lots if you look. I’m finishing a paper that challenges the notion of the self-addressed soliloquy. I posit that, similar to the point of our discussion, they are meant to convey what the speakers want to believe about themselves, but more than that, to prescribe what others should think of them. They are spoken with awareness of whomever is listening, or of whom the speaker imagines is listening.”
Rudy said, “Is that new? And how do you prove that? I always believed that voicing thoughts to yourself merely gave solace about your existence.”
“I address that idea, too, but you will have to read the paper to judge the proof of my thesis.”
“To be is to be, am I right?” said Damian
“It’s not not to be,” said Neal. “To speak is to be among beings.”
“I love it,” Damian said.
Rudy pulled a watch from the front pocket of his chinos and arched his eyebrows upon reading the time. “I have to get Damian to his B&B before the dinner, which is in 17 minutes. This was too short. Next time, I hope the budget can support more people for the dinner. But this was nice, Neal.”
They stood and put down their glasses. Rudy had drained his and Damian left a quarter of his that caught sloshing light from the lamps. “Extraordinary,” he said. He bowed. “Will I see you tomorrow at the reading?”
“Yep,” Neal said.
Damian laughed and then smiled, and he and Rudy walked out into the night to Rudy’s Jeep. When they were gone, Neal lingered in the door to watch the moon light the mist that had settled over the lake. He imagined the wispy fog was ghosts communing with the alligators out there. “One day,” he said, “I will be tenured at a campus of actual ivy-covered towers instead of this dingy gothic swamp school.” He closed the door and wondered what impressive nonsense the Chair would bring up at dinner. They had eaten most of the canapes, but there was a lot of liquor left. He did so enjoy The King’s Pigs. He lifted the cognac to mix another for himself. Then he noticed that Rudy had forgotten his ugly jacket. He’d have to endure the awkwardness of Rudy’s quick return, and he so abhorred anti-climax.
~
John Holman teaches writing at Georgia State University in Atlanta. His latest book is Triangle Ray.