Janis moved his glass to a side table. Todd reached down and picked it up again. “That is such bullshit!” he said before swigging the whiskey down in one sloppy gulp. He put the glass down, making a visible dent in the table.

“All I said,” protested Joe Hines, “was that Mailer’s day is over.”

“Over?” mocked Todd, whose knowledge of Norman Mailer was overshadowed by his fondness for any aggressive writer who liked boxing and his own penis. “Mailer’s never had his day. His day hasn’t even begun!”

“It’s been years since Mailer wrote anything decent,” said Mike. “That piece in America magazine…”

Todd Milstead actually sneered. It was a real Victorian sneer, the kind that went best with a pair of carelessly twisted mustachios. Todd’s sneer said, I am going to demolish you for that opinion. It also said, because for once I know what I’m talking about.

“Norman Mailer has been an American institution for so long that he’s starting to come over like another kind of American institution,” said Todd with his head tilted back and his eyes half shut.

“Oh shit, he’s quoting. I love it when he does this,” said Joe, omitting the second part of his thought, which was: “to someone else.”

“Said institution being the electric chair,” intoned Todd, “into which some of us would rather be strapped than endure another line of Mailer’s unfortunately deathless prose…”

He stopped. “Is that the piece you mean?”

“I guess so,” said Mike. “But that’s not the part I mean. I was referring to the quote from Mailer himself where he says—”

“Writing books is the nearest men come to childbirth—that quote?” said Todd. “I am the embodiment of the American novel—that quote? Tell me which one you mean. Because,” and Todd tapped his forehead, “I got ’em all in here.”

Janis, returning to collect some cigarette-butt-filled plates, made a mental note. If Todd was starting to boast about his powers of memory, that meant the evening was either going to wind down or get nasty. Not that the two were connected—although Todd Milstead’s tendency to use his eidetic memory as a weapon could be a fight starter—but when Todd started boasting, he also started getting personal. She removed the more fragile glasses from the room.

“I can’t remember ’em all like you can,” said Mike.

“Yeah, Todd,” said Joe. “You have to give us mere mortals some leeway here.”

Todd, like all egoists, was incapable of extracting irony from anything that resembled praise. He got up and nodded.

“Time for a piss,” he said. “Mailer!” he added scornfully, and left the room.

There was some silence. The three men drank their decent whiskey.

“You know,” said Billy. “This morning I saw the strangest thing.”