the lavazza coffee vending machine

THE LAVAZZA COFFEE vending machine was temporarily out of order. A small dark-haired woman was busy with a screwdriver, installing some new buttons and features. Soon it would be possible to get pastries and croissants. The new installation panels showed an eye-watering array of colorful treats. As such, there would be no coffee for me. “Come back soon,” she said.

The common area of the hostel, in which the machine was located, was dark. Someone had turned out all of the lights. There was always this musty smell in there, the smell of hostels. A long bar in the corner. It was sort of like a rock club crossed with a hostel. The only light came from behind the bar, where wine glasses dangled and thick bottles of whiskey glowed gold.

Back in the room, my father was tapping into a laptop. He was wearing a green t-shirt. “Don’t you want to go see some museums while we’re here in Amsterdam?” I asked him. Surely, if we were in the Dutch capital, we could see a few Van Goghs in the process. But he just kept working and reminded me that I should be working too. I was supposed to cover the Olympics in Scotland in a week or so too. What lasting impact would the games have on Edinburgh?

I went back out into the common area to see if the machine was fixed, but it was even in a greater state of reconstruction. There were wires and panels everywhere, and the small dark-haired woman was at work with her screwdriver, putting everything in place. She had on a white sweater, glasses, her hair was braided. She was quiet. Focused. Diligently at work.

Back in the room, my father was gone, but a young woman with a backpack had arrived, asking if she too could spend the night. Who was I to protest? She had blonde hair, a silent, unassuming character. Wore a plaid shirt. Probably from some place like Idaho. She took a seat on one of the bunks and water began to flow into the room. Was it water from one of the canals? Soon all of the dirty old bedding was soaked and there were pillows floating by.

In the common area, the Lavazza coffee vending machine was at last in order, but the button for a straight black coffee was now missing. There were tropical cocktails to be had, rich, creamy pastries and doughnuts, but not one simple black coffee. This was bad. Was I really going to get a flat white? Or maybe I would have to do the impossible and leave the hostel? Surely a good cafe was located just down the way at the foot of some bridge. Just a few steps.

Back in the room, the water had subsided and the carpets had dried. The bedding had all been replaced. I was face to face with a woman dressed in gold, who looked like Madeleine Kahn when she played the Empress Nympho in History of the World, Part I. It’s hard to describe the lovemaking process. I don’t really remember that part, only that at some point it was sensual overload. Her golden dress, and that curly hair. It was everywhere, all over me, from every corner, I was absorbed into her delicious essence. “But you’re older than my mother,” I told Madeleine Kahn. “This can’t be happening. This just can’t be happening.” “Oh, it’s happening,” Madeleine Kahn said while sucking on my ear. She was also dead but it didn’t seem to matter.

supermarket

IN THE SUPERMARKET, it seemed as if I couldn’t find anything. Long aisles full of goods, but the ones I wanted or was in search of eluded me. That supermarket was so vast that even the section I was in could have accommodated a whole neighborhood of Beijing or Mexico City. And between these rows of canned goods and leftover Easter merchandise flitted Dulcinea.

I would catch a glimpse of her at the end of the aisle or turning a corner, some locks of her gold hair, her gray pants, but she never acknowledged me. Still, she must have seen me, because only a woman who was purposefully making sure to move in such a way, to avert her gaze in such a way, to turn her torso just so, must have seen the person she was working so hard to avoid. Was this how things would stay between us? Just like this? But I was right here.

Then I saw her, fully, from the back, the whole fish. She was inspecting different loaves of Estonian rye bread for consistency. I traced out her silhouette. Now was my chance to break down the emotional and physical walls between us. That hair, those curves, that smell. Her. Dulcinea. She was there. I was here. And I loved her so. This was the strong stuff. The bright lights of the supermarket beaming down. She read the ingredients and took her bread and was on her way, turned a corner, hurried off. But would she one day see me? One day would she?

gino’s kitchen

GINO REPURPOSED an old colonial farmhouse on the north shore of Long Island, somewhere east of Port Jefferson, in that winding country sprawl that stitches together Mount Sinai, Miller Place, and Sound Beach. These are long, sleepy country roads, canopied with lush dense greenery. It was here that he set up his own restaurant, fittingly dubbed “Gino’s Kitchen.”

How I wound up at the restaurant is a mystery. All I know is that I was there. It had retained some of its older architectural elements, but there was a kind of atrium with walls of lattice and ivy growing all over it. Small round tables were arrayed throughout this atrium area, with white tablecloths, covered with candles, hunks of ciabatta straight out of the brick oven, and wine glasses filled halfway with red and white. Servers swooped in and left like graceful birds.

As I walked through this part of the restaurant, I began to notice that only women were seated at the tables. Beautiful young Italian women. Or were they Italian-American women? They were looking at me as if I was attractive. There was that discernible moment of being overwhelmed, followed by a facial twitch that showed they were trying to regain their composure. Lovely chocolate-headed brunettes, sipping chianti, eyeballing me, inspecting me. But if I stayed … I told myself. But if I stayed … One of the Italian women had very pink, full lips.

In the kitchen inside the main house, there were enormous pots of water boiling. In went the fresh pasta, over here was the sauce, or gravy as some call it, bubbling up and spurting red, like the La Brea Tar Pits. It seemed like an army of chefs in white were shoveling in pizzas, beating eggs, drizzling vinaigrette. I peered down into the pot of sauce, could see hues of purple and orange on the surface. What was he putting in there? Chili pepper? Just then, Gino entered, a head like an eggplant, round, muscular, in a black t-shirt that read, “Gino’s Kitchen.”

“What the fuck are you doing in my kitchen?” he said to me. “Nothing,” I stammered. “I just was having a look at the sauce.” “Don’t you dare try to steal my fucking sauce recipe.” he said. “Get the fuck out now. Get the fuck out of my fucking kitchen!” There was a door at one end, and I sort of backed my way toward the door. Outside, the light was a strange kind of blue twilight gray. With a push and a shove, and a twist of a metal doorknob, I was out the door, back under the trees of Miller Place or wherever this was. More black SUVs pulled into the gravel parking lot, and I got on my way. Maybe I could hitch out to Orient. Take a ferry up to New England. Leave the island for good. It was quiet and a light breeze was rolling in off the sound as I started walking. In the distance, I could see the white spire of an old congregational church.

the narva bakery

THE SUN WAS RISING as I was strolling along the river promenade when, on a whim, I decided to turn up one side street that arched back toward the gray center of town. It was morning in Narva, where it was perpetually late February or early March. Ice clung stubbornly to every façade and rooftop. One’s breathe, like smoke, was always visible and drifting, and the sounds of sturdy boots punched out a clean rhythm on the city’s frosty mottled sidewalks.

About halfway up this street, I noticed a wooden house packed in between two mighty Soviet-era structures. It had a multipaned window that bowed out into the street. Behind the glass, I could see fresh loaves of bread, scones, Cornish pasties. I looked up at the sign but couldn’t make out the hand-painted name. Was it Trelawney? Pendragon? One of those names.

How could it be? How could it be that there was a British bakery hidden in the back streets of Narva? Who was the rogue baker who dared to operate in this sea of Russia-facing Russianness? What clients did he have? Did they even know what a pasty was? What a secret!

It was terribly cold at that moment and I thought a hunk of good sourdough, a slab of butter, some good marmalade, and a strong coffee would be the ultimate fix. Through the window I could see the baker at work, though his back was to me, and he was dressed in old-fashioned clothing. This was not fully Dickensian attire, but he had on a gray coat and flat cap, and an old checkered scarf wrapped around his neck from a century ago. He was an older man, but not much older. It could have maybe been a handful of years between us, but his hair shone silver.

I knocked on the door and then tapped on the window. “Can I come in?” I said. Behind the man, I could see stacks of tea chests with words like Premium and East India stamped all over them. The man cocked his head as if he was confused by the situation. Then he mouthed to me the words, “We’re closed,” through the window and went back about his work. But why were they closed? I was maybe the only person who was lucky enough to find that Narva bakery. Why shut me out?

vance

AFTER VICE PRESIDENT JD Vance returned from his trip to Tallinn, it was said that a great change had come over him. No one was quite sure what had catalyzed this right-on-time midlife crisis onset, but it could have been the sum of experiences. Maybe it was viewing the Anton Corbijn retrospective at Fotografiska, or merely watching men and women the same age as him engaged in stirring table tennis matches in the many yards and alleyways of Telliskivi. Maybe it was his first taste of a delicious VLND Burger. Nobody knew what had caused it.

The changes were visible. The Ulysses S. Grant-inspired beard was the first to go, followed by that sharp suit he had worn when famously lecturing Zelenskyy. After the Tallinn trip, Vance had started wearing a pale blue, long-sleeve shirt that read TALLINN on it. The shirt was one-size too large, which gave Vance a billowy, college-freshman-getting-over-his-hangover look.

It was this changed Vance that I encountered at the Elliott School of International Studies in Washington, DC, a few weeks later when I went to retrieve a few books I had left behind in the student lounge during a six-week crash course in Baltic Studies. I went into the sparse, multi-level area, climbed a set of stairs and found the books in the corner where some older couples were sitting around and chatting. One of the women, with dyed blonde hair, wore a pink dress, the amount of cleavage visible was on the level of the grotesque. Who were these people?

It was then that I noticed a van pull up outside the school, and Vance and his entourage — a mix of press pool, Secret Service, and Hillybilly Elegy fans — follow him in. With his pink, cleanly shaven face and TALLINN long-sleeve t-shirt, it occurred to me that Vance was starting to look more ex-boyband star than vice president. He came into the lobby and was mobbed by students. Then he told his followers that he needed a rest and sat down on a couch across from me. I was nervous. What could I tell Vance? Was now the time to do some lobbying on behalf of the Baltics? What would Kasekamp say? How would he handle this? I decided to play it cool, to let him do the talking, to make him think that I was his friend. If I came at him with some slogans, he was more likely to tune me out. For whatever reason, the president had not yet turned on Vance, despite his new look. Perhaps after having alienated the British and Italian prime ministers and the Pope, he had decided that annoying the man who could make him redundant with one flip of the 25th Amendment was not the best idea.

“Well,” Vance said. “I came to hear your ideas.” Something about that Ohio drawl made “ideas” sound like “odors.” His put his hands on his thighs, leaned in. “You want to smell our odors?” I asked. Vance gave me a strange look. I gave him a strange look. It occurred to me that I might be tripping. Had I been dosed? How else to explain the weird 1950s couple in the student lounge, especially the woman with the pink dress and obscene cleavage. What was going on?

I noticed some other students in the back, leftwing university alumni, familiar to me from my undergraduate days. They began to circle each other. I was mortified. They were going to mess up my lobbying on behalf of the Baltics. We had Vance right here in the palms of our hands. He was becoming one of us, the seventh friend, so to speak, in addition to Ross, Phoebe, Joey, Monica, Chandler and Rachel. Or was JD Vance the replacement for Chandler? All we needed to do was give him some good coffee and his transition to the light would be complete. And those boneheads wanted to insult him? To my amazement, they began singing a familiar song. It was “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the Disney anthem. One of the protestors had even dressed up like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia and was dancing on the hands of the protestors.

“Anything your heart desires will come to you!” Mickey shouted down at JD Vance. I clasped my hands over my eyes. I was certain that I had been drugged. None of this could be true. But when I looked back, I saw that JD Vance was crying. The impromptu singing of the Disney song had moved something in him. “I love that song,” he said. “I just love that song.” Vance turned to me and said, “I’m staying here with you guys.” Happy collegiate faces surrounded him, encouraging his big change. Someone shouted out, “Get this man a latte with coconut milk!”

“No, sir,” said James David Vance, shaking his head. “I ain’t ever going back to the White House.”

connery

AFTER THE EVENT, I was approached by a woman who looked familiar, but I wasn’t sure where I knew her from. People were slowly leaving, many of them taking their time as they walked back to their cars. It must have been some kind of outdoor concert, or maybe a spring wedding in the countryside. It was light out, but a dim, dusky sort of light that hung in the air. We found ourselves at a small playground, and the woman took a seat on a seesaw across from me. We balanced each other out. She told me that she knew who I was, but that we had never met. She said that she worked for the BBC. The woman from the BBC had light-coloured hair, but there was mischief in her features, in the shape of her lips or behind those eyes. Then she said, sliding across the seesaw to me, “I have wanted to do this since I saw you in Dr. No,” and she began to kiss me. Ferociously. Violently. I felt like I was being consumed by her. Something about the seesaw encounter with the woman from the BBC unsettled me to my core. Especially those words she said to me while sucking on my ears, “I loved you in Thunderball.”

After we parted ways, I went home and decided to wash up. It was then that I saw what she had been talking about. There, peering back at me in the mirror, was Sean Connery, the actor who had played James Bond in the 1960s. I looked just like Connery in the mirror, the suit, the tufts of brown hair, that slightly amused expression. But how could it be? When I looked down at my hands, they were my hands, not Connery’s hands. My arms were my arms. I could make out the slope of my nose if I focused closely on it. But in the mirror I was Connery, suit, tie, and everything. When had this happened? At what point had I turned into Sean Connery?

I tried to find out more about the woman from the BBC, obtaining information from various intelligence contacts. She had once had short hair, in a Princess Diana-inspired period, and had been married to some New Wave singer who had committed suicide, or was it autoerotic asphyxiation? What was I to do about my newfound predicament? Or, well, being Sean Connery wasn’t all too bad. It had its perks, certainly. When I was in the shower, washing up, there was a knock at the door and Tarja came in, dressed in white. “I just happened to be in the neighborhood,” she said, “and …” Her eyes went downward and a dreamy look settled across her face. “What?” I said, lathering myself with soap. “Do you see it?” “Oh, I see it,” she said. But then I realized she was referring to my physique, not the fact that I had turned into Connery. Which made no sense. Had I merely been Connery to the woman from the BBC? Maybe every woman was seeing her own desires in me? “I have to go to Stockholm,” I told her.

“I am coming with you,” Tarja decided. She left the shower and when I exited and dried off, a towel still around my waist, I could see her white suitcase there, next to mine. But I didn’t want Tarja to accompany me to Stockholm. Wasn’t she married? How could this have ever been a good idea? A man in a 1940s suit was standing there with my things and said, “I think I see her husband coming.” “You do?” “Yes, he’s just over the hill.” “Can you please just tell her that I needed to go to Stockholm alone.” I put on my clothes, went outside and found her seated beneath a tree with her husband and children. She looked up at me sorrowfully. “It looks like we just broke up,” she said. “All on account of you. The good news is that I can come!”

“No,” I said. “I need to go to Stockholm alone!” I needed to catch the next LuxExpress bus to the capital, to get on the right ship. But Tarja’s interloping had cost me 10 minutes and when I looked back, from beneath that outdoor tree, I saw the bus drive by. The man in the 1940s suit then appeared and said, “Looks like you two will have to drive up, come I’ve got the car ready, your bags are in the trunk.” So it was settled. An overnight cabin with Tarja, an adulterous liaison. I began to miss the woman from the BBC. She had been so upfront with her feelings and desires. She just took me right there, on a seesaw. There was no weirdness, there was no hesitation. I wondered if Connery’s life had been like that. Women seizing him at parties, no questions asked. There was no way to know anymore though because the old chap was dead.

double plastic

A DIM BEDROOM, sprawled on the bed. She told me that she had sworn off men, for all time, on account of our serious inadequacies in every department, but that didn’t stop her from walking in and climbing into bed alongside of me, while we watched some long-forgotten TV show from the Nineties, something action fantasy, like Xena: Warrior Princess. We began to kiss then, which surprised me, but I went with it, then quickly I had the shirt up, revealing pleasant rolls of womanly middle-aged fat. Like pre-baked pastry dough. I disappeared into her chest with soft and long licks until her son came into the room for a moment. With a certain deftness I repositioned us in an instant, so that it looked like we were just reclining.

The moment he was gone, the sex continued. I wore a condom and she inserted a female condom, which looked like one of those clear plastic bags you get at the supermarket, you know, the kinds you fill up with bananas or chestnuts. The friction of my plastic against her plastic rendered the whole experience double plastic. I couldn’t feel a thing. I didn’t know if anything was happening. Somehow I had lost all sensation in my body. Her own freckled face wore a haunted, sleepy expression. “Are we making love?” I asked her. “Because I just can’t tell.”

After the double plastic incident, I left the house, took a long drive. It was a sunny day, I was cruising down some boulevard in a sprawl of gas stations, supermarkets, and telephone poles. Sonja was there, waiting on the street corner, about eight months pregnant. She looked beautiful with her blonde hair, all dressed in black, plus that big fat gut showing beneath her.

What else was there to do but give her a ride?

“But why are you still being nice to me?” she asked. “Can’t you see I’m carrying another man’s child?” She wasn’t very happy about being treated so royally by me, with the chauffeur escort business — we had just pulled into a home improvement store parking lot. “Because you are you,” I told her. “And I still like you, wherever you happen to be in your life.” I went on, “Plus I am going to miss you. Once that baby pops out, you are going to disappear for a while. You are going to be in the baby cave or cocoon. It’ll be years before we ever have the chance to have a normal conversation again.” Sonja found all of this disarming, but she softened upon hearing it.

Inside the home improvement store, there was a carnival, and Sonja paid a few euros to throw giant balls at some targets. Maybe she would get a prize. She threw another ball and struck the target. Lights began to flash. Then my eldest daughter walked by and started to watch Sonja. “Who is that woman?” she said, almost in awe of this pregnant Amazonian throwing balls at a home improvement store carnival. “She is amazingly beautiful,” she said, as if she was observing an especially colorful fish at an aquarium. “She is,” was all I could say to that. “She is.”

community cinema

ON MY BACK on the kitchen floor, she was facing me, her hair all done up in curls. She was very proud of herself because of the success of her latest exhibition. She was wearing a white gown, I imagine she had been sleeping, or was in the midst of preparing for bed. I looked up from my spot on the floor and said, “Come here,” and pulled her on top of me. She laughed when I did this. There was of course the question of how far this kitchen game would go.

The kitchen hadn’t been remodeled for decades. There was blue tile on the walls, one window with a raggy curtain. Two other Viljandi ladies sat behind her on chairs. They were enjoying the scene, it was just like their community cinema, kogukonnakino. Our faces were face to face, and her dark curls were everywhere, and then the lips parted. There was that hesitancy that’s always there, the heft of a warm figure across my abdomen, and then the tongues that began to probe each other, like playful little snakes. One went in and the other went around.

As this was going on, the Viljandi ladies from the community cinema approached her from the back and began to massage her legs. She laughed out of pleasure and joy, and the kissing continued. Then, from downstairs, I heard the creak of a door, and the fourth woman arrived, a young artist in a corduroy jacket. Somehow I could see her in the foyer even though I was on the floor. Her eyes smarted with happiness. Her reddish hair was pulled back, her cheeks were rosy pink. She had a package in hand. Another birthday gift! “Well,” she said. “I’m here!”

easter

BLUE CHOCOLATE EASTER EGGS, stolen from somewhere. I was seated in the Viljandi Library, assembling baskets for the librarians. But how many eggs to give each? They needed to be allotted according to size. I wasn’t going to let any single librarian be the favorite. I filled the baskets, each one had an equal amount of smaller and larger ones. These were beautifully decorated with golden designs ringing the metallic blue. When this was all done, I stepped out

I noticed I had a broom in my hand. Strange. I had never tried to fly with a broom. Like a real witch, or male witch. What were we called? Warlocks? It was a bright day with a strong cool wind blowing from the north, and I rose up into it with the broom between my legs. This proved hard to steer, I pointed the broomstick toward Kodukohvik, clawing at the cold air as if trying to swim, but the winds blew me back toward the shopping center and I struck a giant billboard of my daughter’s fourth grade teacher Miss Madu before sliding down to the ground.

There I was, on the hard stones of the sidewalk, when Ignacio came walking by, looking like a true troubadour. He had on his black cap; this only drew more attention to his folk singer’s mustache. Ignacio said, “I have to go back to Chile, man, but I don’t want to,” he pulled at his eyelids as he did it. “I don’t want to go back.” He said Chile was full of liars and manipulators.

After that I went in a nearby cafe, where I ordered up a cappuccino. Who else should be sprawled out on the couch but the poetess Els Stenbock, nestled beneath a blanket in the blue light, her eyes all fire and her hair all gold, beads of sweat on her brow. I dove into her like one dives into a swimming pool. Struan Peel was there. He was jealous. Frowning, moping. He said, “You two are going to get married,” I said, “But we can’t, she’s already married.” She was.

Struan looked back with some agony at the baristas, but they were all attracted to the same sex, be they man or woman. There was no love to be had for this young straight Englishman who looked like Shakespeare, and so he walked sullenly out of the bar. I gave Els another kiss, and she purred. It felt good to be kissed, to have any intimacy at all. I had started to doubt in love all together and then … So there was one woman who did not despise me in this world? She was hiding out at the cafe on Tallinn Street? “Come back here,” Els Stenbock demanded.

But I couldn’t. I had to find Struan, who was stricken with grief and self-doubt after having been rejected by the gay baristas. “There’s no love left for me,” he had muttered before leaving. “There’s just no love.” Outside things in the streets had changed. This was no a longer town, these were the frozen wastes. A musket ball went whizzing by. When I looked down, I saw that I was in the uniform of the Swedish army. Embroidered into my blue uniform was a golden XII.

I was in the Great Northern War. I scrambled down a snowy hillside, more musket balls went flying by, and I heard the sounds of Russian being spoken from a nearby grove of spruces. The soldiers had built a barrier made of branches, and as I stood on these branches, I could see that I was standing on top of a deep, open well. I looked down into this frozen well and saw the branches emerging. What even was this? The tree of life? The branches circled, almost as if they were arranged into constellations. Space, time and trees intertwined. What good fortune that I hadn’t fallen in. Who knew how deep this was. It was all just too puzzling. Where was I?

I decided after that to go back to the cafe after that, to the safety of Els and the couch, where she no doubt lied in waiting for me, warm beneath a blanket. But there was no street anymore and there was no cafe and there was no door. There were just fields of snow, forests full of trees, cannons blasting in the distance. I was stuck here in the great war. Where was that door?

princess

I DON’T REMEMBER how I met the Princess. I do remember that I was in Italy, just outside of Corigliano, on my way to the Sila, when I stopped into a gas station and was nearly seduced by another woman, whose nerves I calmed in Italian. After that, I stole a candy bar from the gas station and was on my way. Later, I heard a lot about the candy bar, but at the time, I was just trying to outdo my scofflaw friends, who had never bought a train ticket in their lives. When I calmed the Italian woman, I told her she was beautiful, of course, that most men were in love with her, but for various reasons why I could not accompany her on the next part of her trip.

Then I went back to the apartment we had rented on the coast and I think that’s where I met the Princess and her entourage. She was undoubtedly the Princess of Wales, but not that Princess of Wales. She looked almost identical to Annikki, except she spoke the Queen’s, or King’s English, and had incredible, royal posture. Her hair was golden and almost alien to the touch, her skin was milky colored, smooth and flawless. The group captain assigned to protect her carried out a very thorough interview with me. This was a younger lad who could have been an ex-quidditch player. Somehow I passed the test. The night was spent watching romantic comedies on a fine couch and sharing bites of cookies. I think the Princess liked me.

And then she was off again, with her dresses and entourage, to complete her tour. Eventually, when I returned home, I heard about two things. One was the deep shame my family felt upon hearing about the candy bar stolen from a gas station in Italy (“And you know, they have it all on video! The owner is so disappointed in you, a fellow Italian stealing!”) but also the elation that their son had finally met a new woman and that she happened to be the Princess of Wales.

“Is it true that she really likes you?” my mother asked. “Yeah, we get on great,” I said. I somehow wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about. She was just a princess. “You know,” my father said after a turn. He was standing there dressed in sober black, my consigliere. “This could be good for you. Have you thought about asking her for a royal appointment?” I shook my head vehemently. “You know, I knew you were going to do this,” I said. My father stepped back, as if struck by a dart. “Do what? All I am saying is, she happens to be a princess, you happen to need a job. She likes you. She happens to be in a place where she could get you a gig with a high-paying salary.” “I might have met the new love of my life and all you can think about is how I can benefit financially from it?” I said. “No, no, just listen a minute,” he said. “Don’t forget, you were so desperate you stole a candy bar!” “Oh, I’ll send Mario a whole box of goddamn candy bars!” I shot back. “Same old shit,” I said. “Same old snaky manipulative shit!”

After I left the room, I could hear them argue about who had done what wrong. My mother blamed my father. My father said he was only trying to help. My brother was there in the corridor with a package, wrapped up in plain brown paper and tied with a ribbon. He was standing there patiently in a jacket and tie, like the doorman at a Manhattan hotel. “I thought I’d get you this for your birthday,” he said, then gesturing with his head, “Don’t listen to them. They don’t know anything about princesses.”

I removed the paper and saw what it was, a new Jack Kerouac book. Discovered in the vault of an old mobster, published for the very first time. There were pictures of Jack on the cover seated at a typewriter, or standing somewhere in the desert beside a cactus. The cover and the paper were smooth to the touch and they aroused a kind of tingling curiosity within me. Good old Jack. “I knew you’d like it,” my brother said. “Thanks,” I said. “Now this is a good gift.”