The Wheat of Virgin Spaces

“I remember a girl I knew in my bachelor days. An American, she had worked as a model in several haute couture salons in Paris and had acquired a taste for absinthe. We were at her place one evening and she asked me if I would like to have a martini as a nightcap. I said I was game, though I favored cognac and water in the evening, when the lights are low and the music is throbbing on the high-infidelity. She stirred up a pitcher of martinis and brought it on a tray with glasses and a bottle of absinthe. She set the tray on the coffee table, or, rather, the martini table. Now, I don’t know whether this voluptuous creature had ever heard about thujone…”