(a continuation of last Thurday’s and this Monday’s post… the pictured cocktail-Delicious Excess)

“I suppose that’s why I’m here speaking with you,” I said, stammering, fixing my eyes on the light fixture behind his left ear. His gaze was intimate and distracting; looking at him was like gliding your legs over smooth, cotton sheets.

“You were once in my position, right? One way or another you made the jump from Granddaddy’s paper to the Times. Someone helped you, someone guided you in the right direction.” I stopped, already exhausted by my position and what I would be forced to ask. Christopher continued looking at me, hard. I re-crossed my legs.

“Brilliant son-of-a-bitch,” he began. His words casually ran together in that familiar languid cadence that reminded me, despite appearances, we came from the same place. That, and an occasional lazy vowel, divulged his past. But that was it. Christopher had exorcised the rural South from his demeanor, politics and whiskey. A skinny knee pressed against the fine linen of his pants, my leg just an inch away. “Does your grandfather still wear that Stetson hat of his?” he asked, reaching for the crystal decanter.

He didn’t give me time to respond.

“It was my first year at the Gazette, I must have been around your age.” Christopher stopped for a moment, acknowledging the waiter in the doorway. He walked over and, with great fanfare, began rearranging the landscape of our table. Starched, white napkins preceded the tumbler of whiskey and chilled ice bucket. The requisite salted peanuts were removed and replaced by three gorgeous little bowls: hills of fresh pistachios, hand-cut potato chips and olives peaking over their silver rims. Finally, the waiter nestled a set of sterling silver prongs deep into the ice bucket. The rumbling ice cubes reminded me of Fitzgerald and cocktails with playwrights at the Plaza. The sound was soothing and expensive. Christopher took a handful of pistachios and rolled them around in his cupped palm as if he were about to throw lucky 7’s at the Craps table.

“Working at the paper shook my scrawny frame. I was always scared of something or someone. One day, around lunchtime, the newsroom got very quiet—it was an important hush. I didn’t know what was happening so I kept eating my sandwich, hunched over the typewriter keys.

“‘Sugar Bowl’s this weekend, son. You comin’ to New Orleans with us to figure out which team has the sorriest quarterback?’ That was all your granddaddy had to say and I was hooked. Next thing I know, we’re flank to flank in the stadium cheering along with, who I thought, were 80,000 of his closest friends. I was sure that he knew everyone there. ‘You having a fine time, son?’ he asks me. ‘Your folks know what you’re doin’ this weekend?’

“Jesus, I don’t know if I managed a response. I’m not sure if it was the booze or all that time in the sun…” Christopher winced. “No, no it was him,” he said definitively. “He was the most important man I had ever met and there he stood next to me, six feet, five inches tall with that white cowboy hat. He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, ‘See those cameramen down a ways, a few rows off the 50 yard line? Why don’t I get them to put you on national television? Whadya say, Randolph?’”

I noticed that he went in and out of character with ease. All it took was a subtle shift in posture, a turn of his upper lip and suddenly Granddaddy peered out at me through Christopher’s thin, tortoise frames.

“All of a sudden, I was an insolent bastard. I said he couldn’t do it. It sounded wrong coming out but I couldn’t stop myself. Your grandfather faced me finally and said, ‘Today’s gonna be the day that all of Mobile sees you at the big game. Just watch what I do.’ He reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out a stack of crisp $1 bills. All it took was a light breeze and a flick of his wrist and the bills flew everywhere. They went above us, below us, down to the cameramen. It was like spring in Central Park and a strong gust of wind had stripped the blossoms from their branches. People were jumping and shouting—”

“And?” I asked, setting my drink down on the table.

“Anyone else would have stopped, not your grandfather. He threw more bills into the air. Then came the cameramen. Like he promised, we were all over the evening news, in every newspaper south of the Mason-Dixon…”

I quietly shelled pistachios and let Christopher talk about Mobile for the rest of the evening. But, there was that knee, so close to mine… Sipping, waiting, wishing, I wondered if his fine, linen fabric would brush against me, at least once more?

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