Professional Amateurs
“I don’t like ads,” I said. “If I enjoy something, I’d rather keep it to myself. I don’t want the Nickrenz Quartet to get thick famous. Then I might have to pay extra to see them.”
“It’s your civic duty, mon ami. Share know-how with others and make some money while you’re at it. That was a high-culture pap you waved off. A classical commercial could make you lots—specialized audience. Baby says: artistocracy. If you did a spot like that once a month you could quit it with the owls. Look at me, look at the way I glow—do you think I’d glow like this back at the Department of Wax? I’ve made my appreciation work for me. I have a joie de vivre and I’m never going to lose it…I feel as terrific as this wine tastes…”
His Palmer went off. He read it and gave a high-five to a paparazzo who had silently approached with a dealcard. The shutterbug was wearing a vintner’s tunic. He smiled and his camera buzzed.
“...because this lovely York Chardonnay,” Bengt swirled the glass in the candlelight and beamed with a winning smile, “is the essence of refreshing. The quintessence of the new cool. I’d recommend it to anyone; Bengt Marc drinks it, shouldn’t you?”
The pap left and Bengt returned to his chair and his veal. I had to give it to him: he could go in and out of commercials like tapping a switch. We got to talking about a boy we had known growing up together who got killed in a thresher accident. I had discovered it first, found his tennis shoe in my family’s hydroponics. We conversed solemnly and as I twirled the last vermicelli on my fork I looked up at the monitors—Bengt’s wine endorsement was already running. A ruddy man with a bushy moustache stood up immediately at the other end of the restaurant and waved his hand for attention: “Garçon! York Chardonnay for this table!”
Bengt’s palmer went off again. He looked at it and gagged on his recently endorsed wine. I got up to help him but he pushed me away, wheezing. He turned to make sure he wouldn’t be seen, and retched the chardonnay on the floor. Then he got up, strangled his nerves into submission, rubbed his throat to comfort the fly and ran a hand over the top of his head to make sure that his hair was right.
“Sorry,” he said. “Olympic sized thrill. It’s a collaborative.”
On the other side of the Cafe, Ella had lit a Wu-Krazer Diamondback light tobacco-free cigarette. She was savoring the smooth burn and nicotine-less buzz while lying back in her seat with her thighs provocatively parted at forty-five degrees.
The Nickrenz Quartet’s palmers beeped and the four women nodded to each other. They began the stately strathspey that is the Wu-Krazer theme—a song that, for the last few years, had also been associated with New Year’s celebrations there in Stockholm. The cello pumped like a procession as the higher strings crossed over it again and again, lacing up the major-key glory.
Everyone noticed Ella in the warm yellow spotlight. Everyone noticed Bengt Marc crossing the room towards her. Hands lifted from the crowd to touch him as he passed. He ignored them, let them rest on his belt loop for a second or brush the side of his leg as he walked towards his lady.
“Is that a Wu-Krazer Diamondback you’re smoking?” he asked.
“Why yes it is, baby,” she said, with that voice.
“Then I think I love you.”
The W-K theme crescendoed into curling notes as they kissed. Glisten, that violinist was.
