I’m an angry man. Not a day goes by when I don’t feel infuriated by one thing or another. A friend took me to lunch at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. We were in the middle of a stimulating conversation that lasted more than two hours. The restaurant was almost empty, with no one waiting to be seated, and there seemed no reason to cut off our discussion, yet the waiters and busboys kept on circling our table, hovering nearby with their hands folded behind their backs, and I had to restrain myself from shouting, “Stop hovering. You’re like a bunch of ravens.” And I imagined snatching my cane, unscrewing it, and slashing them with the rapier that lay within. But my cane had been purchased for fourteen dollars at CVS and had no hidden dagger, no less a miniature airline bottle of Macallan eighteen year old single malt scotch.
