Another Bacon ButTY

With the sun levering itself up over London like a conscientious civil servant arriving early, I rang the Ritz to inquire whether breakfast might be had. I was not, it must be said, staying there, which usually places one in the social category of hopeful interloper.
 

“For how many, sir?” asked a voice so English it might have been issued with a bowler hat at birth.
 

“Four,” I said. “I’m heading back to the States later today, and we’d like one final breakfast before separation and sorrow descend.”
 

I had already tried the Savoy, where I was rejected with such politeness that it almost felt like approval.
 

“I can seat you at 8:30 a.m., sir. Under what name?”
 

“Hogg,” I said, faintly surprised. “Eight-thirty.”
 

“Delighted, Mr. Hogg. We look forward to welcoming you back.”
 

This should have been my first warning.
 

I retired to contemplate the day, mildly melancholy at the thought of leaving my boy, but heartened by the knowledge that ten hours in the air would allow uninterrupted engagement with a novel I had been wrestling with for several years. Jenny, meanwhile, had armed herself with a fresh Danielle Steel, a woman who finishes books with alarming regularity and no visible trauma.
 

I have written enough abandoned openings to supply a small village of writers with false hope. Doubt, fear, lack of imagination; something is always leaning on my shoulder, whispering encouragements like, “Perhaps this isn’t the one.” Prayer proved useless. Work, irritatingly, was the answer.
 

At four in the morning, Jenny slept peacefully. I opened the laptop and stared at the second draft of the story. Where must it go? With whom? And why did the heroine sound as if she’d been raised by committee?
 

At five, the phone vibrated.
 

This never happens on my yacht.
 

“What now?” I demanded, unjustly.
 

“Harry, it’s Steve.”
 

“Of course it is. Who else would feel spiritually compelled to ring at five?”
 

“Can you do it?”
 

I explained, for what I believed was the forty-seventh time, that I could not finish until the heroine acquired a voice that sounded like an actual human being rather than a well-meaning foghorn.
 

“They’ve expressed interest,” Steve said. “A real publisher.”
 

“So?”
 

“So they want the full manuscript.”
 

“Well then,” I said, “I should probably get it right.”
 

Steve reacted as one does when confronted with the artistic temperament before breakfast.
 

“You are not Stephen King,” he said patiently. “They’ve asked to read it, not adopt you.”
 

“I haven’t decided what I want to do with the letter.”
 

Had he been present, Steve would have flung me from a thirteenth-floor window with affectionate restraint. He insists I lack sensitivity. I insist he lacks vision. The debate remains unresolved.
 

By 7:45, my boy and his wife arrived.
 

“Come in,” I said breezily. “Jenny’s almost ready.”
 

This was a lie, but one delivered with conviction.
 

“I’ve a surprise,” I announced. “Breakfast at the Ritz.”
 

They exchanged a look of deep, private meaning, which I interpreted as gratitude.
 

When we arrived, the doorman welcomed us warmly. Inside, my son turned left with alarming confidence.
 

“Good morning, Mr. Hogg,” said the manager. “Flying back to the States today?”
 

At this point, I experienced the peculiar sensation of discovering that one’s son is not only successful, but recognized.

“It’s my father who booked the table,” my son explained.
 

“Of course,” said the manager smoothly, pivoting toward me. “Welcome, Mr. Hogg senior.”
 

Ah. So that was it. I had gained entry by inheritance. My life, it appeared, was now officially the understudy.

Over breakfast, I learned that my son and his wife came here regularly.

Sundays. Breakfast and tea.
 

I stared at him. He had not, to my knowledge, been alive long enough for this sort of lifestyle.
 

“I’m a surgeon now,” he said later, casually dismantling what remained of my authority.
 

I announced, perhaps rashly, that a publisher was interested in my novel.
 

“That’s wonderful,” he said. “Did they say when it would be published?”
 

“I leave details to Steve. I just write.”
 

Jenny, traitorously well-informed, clarified that the flight was delayed.
 

“Twelve hours,” she said.
 

I uttered a phrase unfit for the Ritz.
 

My son paid the bill.
 

I briefly considered disownment.
 

At the airport, we hugged. Heathrow charged five pounds to be dropped off.
 

Civilization, I felt, was wobbling.
 

No other flights were available. United staff entered a state of professional hibernation. We eventually took off around midnight. I slept. The story did not advance.
 

Except it did, slightly.
 

Somewhere between San Francisco and Denver, fortified by a bacon sandwich, I changed the main character’s profession.
 

He became a surgeon.
 

A Mister.
 

Jenny suggested I write something more like Danielle Steel.
 

I ordered another bacon butty.