I wouldn’t want to be there either.

First, it’s some sort of oceangoing cult vessel favored by Alaskan fish murderers. Second, it’s yellow. (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a yellow boat before.) Third, he built the craft himself our of plywood and epoxy resin.

We took it out for a spin on Sans Frisco Bay at great speed. I poured the new captain some Russian vodka and complimented him on his nautical prowess as we bounced over the waves.

I told him a story of being in the middle of the North Pacific on the Greenpeace boat. The skipper chugged on a big bottle of Lemon Hart rum (over seventy-five percent alcohol!), then opined, “Hell, anyone can drive a boat when they’re sober.” Having set the stage, I sang a sea shanty I composed for the auspicious occasion.

With a hai! hai! hai!
And a hee! hee! hee!
We will drink a lot of vodka
When we go to sea!

With a hai! hai! hai!
And a hee! hee! hee!
We did drink a lot of vodka
When we went to sea!

We toasted again, and made plans to slaughter very large fishes.

“Um, none yet,” Bennett replied. “I was working on a novel for years, but I’m pretty stuck.”

“Sorry to hear things aren’t going well,” I said, “It’s pretty ambitious to write more than you read.”

“Actually, things still look promising,” Bennett continued. “On the bright side, at least I haven’t read any books either.”

“You have to read this!” she said as she waved a small sheet of paper.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It’s the best rejection letter ever!” she giggled.

Here’s what she received from the Beijing Journal of Artistic Excellence.

We have read your proposal with joyous delight. If we were to publish your work, however, it would be impossible for us to publish any work of lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that in the next thousand years we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your inspired proposition, and to beg you a hundred times to overlook our ignorance and pusillanimity.

“Savor it,” Holly advised, “you shall not see its equal in a thousand years.”

“I certainly hope so,” I agreed as I opened a bottle of whisky to celebrate her failure.

I have thought many times since that if poets when they get discouraged would blow their brains out, they could write very much better when they got well.

And with that I poured us each another gin and tonic.

I’ll never know; Taqueria Gringo was already out of business by the time I discovered it.

“It sounds like you could have written this,” Veronica said. She then read a couple of paragraphs aloud.

I am immersed in a lethargy deeper and broader and more sticky textured and sweet smelling than any I have known before. I must even screw up my sense of purpose to go trout fishing, and the fishermen who hold salon at the Menard Lounge are beginning to whisper that I arrive on the stream in the middle of the afternoon, yawning, and that I have taken to wading the stream downstream, with the current, like the old men do. This last is a vicious libel; in truth I have been lying supine on the bank, watching the leaves unfold.

... A week or so ago ... I got a letter from [Helen Clapesattle,] formerly head of the U. of M. Press, [who said] that she hoped that I was now lying fallow, as I deserved. This put a whole new light on it, a respectable, almost shining light. So now when my fellow townsmen ask me if I am just loafing I cut them dead with my archest look and say not loafing, stupid; lying fallow ...

“I didn’t get around to reading that part,” I replied.

“What do you mean, you never read it?!” Veronica exclaimed.

“Only amateurs read the books they review,” I explained. “And anyway, it’s a picture book. I did look at all the photographs.”

Of well, at least she liked the book, if not my approach to reviewing it.