King's Ransom

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The long curve of the bay window faced the River Harb and the late-afternoon traffic of tugboats and barges plying their way between the two states. The scene beyond the window was clear with the pristine snappishness of October growing into November, each orange-and-gold leaf boldly shrieking its color against a sky too blue, too cold.

The room itself was clouded with cigar smoke and cigarette smoke, lacking the sharply defined clarity of the outdoors, hazing over the people who had come to the room to transact business. The smoke hovered on the air like the breath of banished ghosts, clinging like early-morning cemetery mist to the wide hand-pegged planks of the flooring, rising to the exposed hand-hewn timbers in the ceiling. The room was immense, but it was cluttered now with the trivia of an extended skull-cracking session, ash trays overbrimming with butts, used and half-used glasses strewn about the room like the debris of a drunken army in retreat, empty bottles cluttering the tables, the men themselves exhausted and drawn as if they too, like the clinging shifting smoke, were ready to dissipate into the air.

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