“Hello Adam, my fine contemporary!” he exclaimed, shaking my hand in a nice kind of way. He always referred to me as his contemporary yet he had never produced a work himself as a professional or as an amateur. He was a shrewd business man that somehow could turn a profit off of poetry, which some could argue was an art in and of itself, and yes publishing is an art too, however his tactics were questionable. He slugged poems in Reader’s Digest, put them on drab paintings or photographs with horrendous one-word slogans like “HOPE” and of course underneath, one of my poems. Hospitals and clinics hung them in their waiting rooms or in their own rooms for god knows what reason perhaps some personal insecurity, be it unbeknownst to this man, this man who liked to think his poems were published in Paris, where they flourished as much as wine sales. “So! You look good, Montreal looks good! I feel good, your last book is still taking in some residuals, I sold one of your poems to Cosmopolitan magazine! How’s that!” He gave me a check for eight hundred dollars. I cringed at the thought of COSMO readers. But man was he good, really good, an All-Canadian Brampton boy who loved to play hockey and throw his body around, then he moved into securities before settling on art dealing and publishing—he loved the international acclaim and the esteem. And just like that, for a staunch Montrealer like myself: there goes one seventh of my fiscal debt. I looked at his eyes. “Now! The new manuscript? Is that it?” He pointed to the manuscript. “Yes.” “May I have a look?” he said, while taking it. “The Blood of My Apples, I like the title already, ha! May have to change it though, if we want a broad-based global marketing platform for this one. I’ll check the pie charts.” Ruby arrived with my small pitcher, I instinctively snatched the manuscript. “Oh sorry, I didn’t bring two glasses,” she said. “No worry, I’ll take a triple scotch,” Mercury surveyed the bar. “Do you have Jameson at least?” he added while leaning forward. “Yah we got Jameson.” “Well, then, suppose I cancel the triple scotch, and make it three bottles—I’m here with a real poet, and I want to get a real drunk on so I don’t forget this shit, sharing a writer’s time must be Dionysian, three bottles of Jameson and a can of coke!” exalted Mercury, relaxing in his barroom chair.