Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches has published four full-length fiction collections as well as a number of chapbooks and several nonfiction books. Since 1977, his work has appeared in scores of magazines, anthologies and websites, including Harper’s, Fence, Bomb, Semiotext(e), North American Review, Fiction International and Billy Collins’ Poetry 180 project. His next book, Everything Happens to Me, a collection of irreal autofictions, will be published by Pelekinesis this fall. He is a native of Brooklyn, New York.

My Dinner with Montaigne

The only Montaigne I was familiar with was the French essayist, so I was surprised to receive, out of the blue, an invitation to a dinner party the following Saturday from a certain Fred Montaigne, a total stranger. In the letter Montaigne told me that he admired my lyrics to jazz tunes and thought I’d be a great addition to the guest list.

            I wondered if I should go. I’m definitely an introvert, and the prospect of a dinner party full of strangers gave me heart palpitations. Yet I was intrigued. Every once in a while people tell me they admire my fiction, but this was the first time anybody had singled out my lyrics. Maybe he was in the music industry, or had connections. I really should deal with my discomfort and just go for it.

            I called the RSVP number. A man answered. “Hello, I’d like to speak to Mr. Montaigne,” I said.

            “Montaigne at your service,” came the reply, a very theatrical delivery.

            “Oh, Mr. Montaigne, this is Peter Cherches. I appreciate your dinner invitation and just had a couple of questions. Is this a formal affair, or is casual dress all right?”

            “Whatever your heart desires,” he said.

            “Well, then, what time should I arrive, and should I bring anything?”

            “8 p.m. Just bring yourself and a song to sing.”

            “Ah, so I’m the entertainment?”

            “No, you’re a guest like everyone else, but I ask all my guests to sing a song or read a poem after the meal. Think of it as a bonding ritual.”

            The evening of the dinner party I took an Uber to Montaigne’s address in Brooklyn Heights and was startled to see it was a large mansion. Maybe this guy owns a record company, I thought.

            I rang the bell and was greeted by a man I assumed to be the butler. He was dressed like The Penguin from the old Batman TV series. He wore a tuxedo with a purple bow tie, a purple top hat, had a monocle in his right eye and a long cigarette holder in his mouth. He even sounded a bit like Burgess Meredith. “Welcome, welcome, welcome,” he said.

            “I’m Peter Cherches.”

            “Indeed you are. Fred Montaigne, but you can call me Montaigne.” He offered a hand and I shook it. “Follow me.”

            A bunch of people were already seated at a long dinner table. I was relieved that all the other guests were wearing smart but casual garb—except, that is, for this one guy with a hipster beard who wore a loud suit of many colors and a fedora. It seemed rather inconsiderate of him not to remove his fedora at the table. Maybe he’s an orthodox Jew, I thought. But when we were all asked by Montaigne to introduce ourselves he let on that he was a “conceptual poet.”

            I introduced myself, said I was a fiction writer and sometime jazz singer. “And don’t forget food blogger,” Montaigne added. “Don’t sell yourself short!”

            It was certainly a very distinguished bunch at the table: poets, musicians, and critics (literary, music, and food).

            And it was quite a feast that Montaigne served.

            The first course was Shanghai soup dumplings in mini bamboo steamers, each containing a single xiaolongbao.

            “An amuse bouche,” Montaigne proclaimed. “Are you amused? The next course,” he announced, “will be spicy bratwurst with injera and shiro. This fusion of Ethiopian and German cuisines consists of grilled sausages seasoned with paprika, garlic, ginger and berbere, the classic Ethiopian spice blend. The sausages are served atop shredded injera and accompanied by shiro, a thick stew of chickpeas, onions, tomatoes and spices.” Boy, that sounded great. It was.

            The next dish was a fried tarantula accompanied by a lime and Kampot pepper dipping sauce, a Cambodian delicacy. It tasted somewhat like crab.

            Montaigne described the next course in detail. “Next up is a frisee and mizuna salad with kielbasa and farofa. The greens are tossed with sliced kielbasa and farofa, a Brazilian toasted cassava flour mixture that adds crunch and nuttiness. The salad is dressed with a tangy vinaigrette made of lemon juice, olive oil, honey, mustard, garlic, salt and pepper. The salad is a fusion of textures and flavors, with a balance of smoky, sour, sweet and spicy notes.” Wow, that sounded good too. It was.

            This was followed by a cheese course, Vieux Boulogne, a 14-year aged cheese from France that many consider the stinkiest cheese in the world. I may be old friends with the author of The Stinky Cheese Man, and I’m normally an adventurous eater, but I’m not a fan of even mildly stinky cheese, so I just left it sitting in front of me until a big, burly guy who looked like a bar bouncer came up behind me. “Is something wrong?” he asked.

            “Oh, I’m not really a fan of strong cheeses,” I said.

            “You will be a fan of this one. If you know what’s good for you,” he said. I didn’t appreciate being spoken to that way, but since everybody else was eating theirs, I didn’t want to make a stink. It wasn’t as bad as I’d imagined, but I was no convert.

            For dessert we were served peaches in port, a surprisingly retro classic.

            After coffee, Montaigne made an announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for attending my soiree. Now that you’ve experienced the talents of my chef, it’s time for you all to share your own talents. I hope your offerings will be a fitting postprandial amusement. For all your sakes!”

            What did he mean, “for all your sakes”? It was ominous, but I figured physical violence was unlikely, stinky cheese incident notwithstanding.

            “So who will be our first volunteer?”

            I certainly wasn’t going to go first, so I waited. A woman at the other end of the table raised her hand.

            “Excellent,” Montaigne said. “Our lovely cellist will now play for us.”

            The woman got her cello out of its case, and set up off to the side. After tuning up she played the opening of one of Bach’s cello suites.

            “What does the music critic of The Times think?” Montaigne asked, looking straight at a man two seats away from me.

            The man cleared his throat and said, “It’ll do in a pinch.”

            “Excellent. The lady gets to go home tonight!”

            What did he mean “gets to go home tonight”?

            “Who’s next?”

            Not me, I thought. I heaved a sigh of relief when a guy who was sitting next to the cellist volunteered. It was then I realized I knew the guy. It was Cliff Fyman, an old poet friend. I was actually one of the first little magazine editors to publish him, decades ago. I hadn’t seen him in years. He got up and read one of his New York cabbie poems. It was funny and charming.

            “Bravo! Here’s another one who’s going home!”

            Going home, going home, what was all this about going home?

            The next up was the conceptual poet. He started by explaining his piece. “I took a short story by Peter Cherches, retyped it myself, breaking it into lines in the process, and turning it into a poem.” I didn’t know whether to be flattered or not. It was actually one of my favorite stories, but it sounded so weird delivered in that artificially deliberate poet voice rather than the matter of fact, conversational tone I use when reading my own stories in public.

            “A brilliant short story,” Montaigne opined. “Unfortunately, it makes a shitty poem. Ding, ding, ding! This one has made it to a ransom round.”

            Ransom round?

            “A mere five thousand dollars to spare this man. Who would like to be a hero tonight.”

            Nobody spoke up.

            “It doesn’t have to be one person. Several of you can pool your money.”

            Still nobody spoke up.

            “Excellent. Charles will be very pleased.”

            Who was Charles?

            “Oh Charles…” Montaigne called out.

            The bouncer returned with a guillotine.

            My story may indeed have made a shitty poem, but was it worthy of a beheading?

            “Last call!” Montaigne announced.

            Nobody spoke up.

            The conceptual poet protested. “But the art world loves me!”

            “You should have worried about the literary world,” the book reviewer from The Washington Post said.

            The beheading was swift and clean. You could tell Charles was a pro. The fedora remained on the conceptual poet’s rolling head.

            “Well, Mr. Cherches, it appears to be your turn.”

            I was sweating bullets. Sure he said my story that the conceptual poet retyped was great, but Montaigne also seemed like a loose cannon. I got up, and in a quavering voice said, “I’d like to do the first 16 bars of my additional lyrics to the song ‘Everything Happens to Me,’ popularized by Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1941, music by Matt Dennis and original lyrics by Tom Adair.”

            “Take it away, P.C.!” Montaigne shouted with brio, and I began to sing.

            I join a new religion and the preacher starts to sin,

            I throw away my turtlenecks, next thing I know they’re in,

            I’m always playing solitaire, but still I never win,

            Everything happens to me.

            I buy a famous painting and discover it’s a fake,

            I move to San Francisco and they have another quake,

            So far a pair of broken arms has been my only break,

            Everything happens to me.

            “Marvelous, simply marvelous,” Montaigne enthused. “And how appropriate. May you live to write many more like that.”

            I let out a sigh of relief when I realized I’d been spared. Then I went over to Cliff Fyman and made a plan to meet for drinks a few days later.

            Old friendships must be maintained when either party could be gone, poof, just like that.

Ain’t That a Trip?

The water in my building had been shut off for a few hours due to a plumbing emergency. Anytime this happens, it takes a while for the water to get back to normal. When you first turn it back on, the water starts coming out in explosive rusty brown spurts, and you have to run it for at least five minutes before you start to get clear water. I went to the sink in the bathroom, to see if the water was back on. It was, and there were the explosive spurts, but the water wasn’t a rusty brown, it was like a rainbow flowing from the faucet. It was beautiful, but I didn’t want to drink it, or even wash my hands with it. Who knew what could be in it. I’ve seen rainbow-like patterns on oil slicks, after all.

            I kept the water running, and the colors only got more vibrant. It was blowing my mind. It was a trip! When the water’s brown, it often has a funky, oily smell, but the smell, or to be fair the scent, of this water was like a shifting repertoire of fragrances: patchouli, musk, sandalwood. Had hippies overtaken the water supply? What next? Would the faucet start playing the Grateful Dead? Well, there I was wrong. After a few more minutes, Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” started blaring from the faucet. It was really loud. Would it disturb the neighbor? His bathroom is just on the other side of mine, and the vent would surely carry the scents and sounds.

            King of kings and Lord of lords
            King of kings and Lord of lords
            And He shall reign forever and ever
            Forever and ever…

            It was really freaking me out. I’m an atheist Jew. I don’t want my water faucet singing about King of kings and Lord of lords. The only King of kings I know is Jeffrey Hunter, and the only Lord I know is of the flies. I turned the water off. I needed to figure what to do about this rainbow thing.

            The first thing I did was post an email to the co-op’s listserv. I asked if there was anything odd about anyone else’s water. I didn’t give details about mine. I didn’t want to look like a wacko to my neighbors if the problem was limited to my apartment, though I assumed the other three apartments in my line, at the very least, must be having the same experience.

            There were several responses within minutes. Someone on the first floor said they just checked and everything was normal. The cute young sublessee in the apartment above me, she of the intriguingly noisy sex that sounds like Keith Jarrett without the piano, said her water was just fine.

            I had only checked the bathroom sink, so I figured I should try the kitchen too. I turned the water on.

            Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah…

            Still a rainbow. It comes in colors everywhere, at least in my apartment, I thought. I turned the water off and sat down at my computer. I googled “rainbow-colored water from faucet.”

            According to the Star-Tribune, “Rainbow-colored sheen on water is from iron bacteria, naturally occurring living organisms (harmless to humans) that live on iron in the water.” Is that what my problem was, iron bacteria? Should I trust a Minnesota newspaper that my water was harmless? Maybe Brooklyn water is different.

            As apprehensive as I was to initiate contact with him, I decided I had to check in with the neighbor. I rang his doorbell. He answered the door wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt, cutoff denim shorts, and sandals. He wore love beads around his neck and his hair was long, scraggly, and greasy, even though it was close cropped the last time I’d seen him, only days ago. His eyes were glazed over. I think he was high.

            “Hey man, nice to see ya. What’s happenin’?” He’d never been glad to see me before. He must have been really stoned.

            I asked him if everything was OK with his water.

            “Water, man? Water? Water is so square, man. You should see what I got here. Come on in buddy, I won’t bite.”

            I entered the apartment and followed him to his bathroom sink.

            “Check this out, man.” He turned the water on. “Ain’t that a trip?” It wasn’t even a short excursion. His water was perfectly clear. “I’ve been groovin’ on this all day. Nectar of the gods, man.”

            “What do you see?” I asked him.

            “What do I see? I see peace on earth, man. I see a chicken in every pot. I see a joint in every chicken. I see God. Look. Don’t you see God?”

            I looked. All I saw was clear water. “No, I just see water.”

            “Bummer, man.”

            I excused myself. “Look, I’d better get back to my apartment and see how my water’s doing. Keep on truckin’.”

            “Take it slow.”

            I went back to my apartment and turned on the bathroom sink. There was a sputtering sound. Then I heard a voice coming from the faucet. It was a radio deejay. “That was The Grateful Dead, with ‘St. Stephen.’ Next up we have Richie Havens singing ‘Freedom.’” But I didn’t hear “Freedom,” all I heard was the sound of water running. Cool, clear water.