BooksBarbecue
Back The Deal Goes Down
Chapters (55)
  1. Cover
  2. Other Titles
  3. Dedication
  4. CHAPTER ONE
  5. CHAPTER TWO
  6. CHAPTER THREE
  7. CHAPTER FOUR
  8. CHAPTER FIVE
  9. CHAPTER SIX
  10. CHAPTER SEVEN
  11. CHAPTER EIGHT
  12. CHAPTER NINE
  13. CHAPTER TEN
  14. CHAPTER ELEVEN
  15. CHAPTER TWELVE
  16. CHAPTER THIRTEEN
  17. CHAPTER FOURTEEN
  18. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
  19. CHAPTER SIXTEEN
  20. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
  21. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
  22. CHAPTER NINETEEN
  23. CHAPTER TWENTY
  24. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
  25. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
  26. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
  27. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
  28. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
  29. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
  30. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
  33. CHAPTER THIRTY
  34. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
  35. CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
  36. CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
  37. CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
  38. CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
  39. CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
  40. CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
  41. CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
  42. CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
  43. CHAPTER FORTY
  44. CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
  45. CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
  46. CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
  47. CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
  48. CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
  49. CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
  50. CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
  51. CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
  52. CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
  53. CHAPTER FIFTY
  54. CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
  55. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The car gets airborne. We leave the road. We are really flying. We’re in the air. We hit the trees, I don’t know, we’re about ten feet in the air. Maybe more. Because we left the road heading off into the downhill side.

That McLaren is truly an amazing car. Mick was telling me, at the beginning somewhere, that it was really a race car modified for commercial use. So it was really safe, with the structure, and the roll bars, and there have been amazing accidents, people going over a cliff, and walking away, completely uninjured. There I am, strapped in, and the car is smashing into branches, particles of ice and pieces of wood flying, and we flip around, and when it finally all stops, I’m OK. Totally unhurt.

Mick had his seat belt off. That made the difference. He flew out of the car. That’s why he died.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

WHINE SPRITZER

“Forget talking about our sex lives.

The modern woman is talking about money.”

JESSICA BENNETT, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 9, 2020

TWO DAYS AFTER MICK MCMUNCHUN’S death, we stood on the veranda of the mansion—a small one as such things go—looking out on the Hudson, our American Rhine, basking in the gentle warmth of a late afternoon sun as it hovered a half hour above the mountains on the other side, promising that when it slid below those peaks it would produce a sunset worthy of at least a minor Thomas Cole canvas, Elizabeth, Madelaine, and I, each of us with a glass in hand appropriate for the drink it contained, like gentry, or perhaps two members of the gentry and one professional and valued servant of their class, just as if the Gilded Age was not some wisp of genteel nostalgia but lived on in reality and we had the good fortune to have been invited to visit within it as participants in its pleasures and privileges.

The McMunchuns’ home bar displayed a trend-filled dedication to an alcoholic version of the farm-to-table and the craft inebriation movements, full of Hudson Valley hard liquors, ciders, and wines, fashionable and high-minded, much to be commended, and so suitable to the moment. My stout, solid glass held a serious splash of Black Dirt Distillery Batch #3 Apple Jack, from 100 percent New York–grown Jonagolds—an excellent and distinctive apple—aged a minimum of five years, and bottled at 100 proof. Elizabeth had gone for the Hudson Single Malt from Tuthilltown Distillery over in Gardiner, just below the Shawangunks. Madelaine was sipping at a white wine spritzer. I had less confidence in our local wines than our beers and whiskeys, but once it’s spritzed, how much does it matter?