3 Martinis in the Rain
I had three vodka martinis at Reif’s Tavern before heading to the 92nd Street Y.
It was an evening with Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie. Hitchens was at the height of his mainstream popularity and, some might say, the height of his powers. We were rapt, silent during his disquisitions, giggling at his back and forth with Salman, and howling at his jokes.
After the engagement, the book signing line wrapped around the basement like the Jungle Cruise. I was 34, a new father, and desperately trying to make sense of life after my son had been diagnosed with severe nonverbal autism.
As I approached him my heart was thumping. The man in front of me proffered his phone, insinuating a little too forcefully that I take a photo of him with the man himself. I politely told him to fuck off.
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Hitchens was wearing a yellow rumpled suit I’d seen on him before. I handed him a business card I made containing some trite atheistic nonsense I thought was brilliant at the time. He looked me right in the eye and said “Thank you, I will read it, I promise.”
Then he put it in his inside jacket pocket and signed my copy of Hitch 22.
It wasn’t until a few days later that I’d heard he’d received his cancer diagnosis the very morning of the event.
Anyone else would have canceled. He didn’t cancel. In fact, he was stupendous.
He signed every single person’s book in that line, looking them right in the eye. He may have torn his enemies apart, showing no quarter, but to his fans, those who had spent their good money to come see him on that rainy night, he showed the respect due prime ministers and kings, if for only 30 seconds.
All the while knowing he’d just received a death sentence that day.
There hasn’t been another like him and there probably never will be.
