A Savage Place

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I WAS SITTING in my office above the bank with my tie loose and my feet up, reading a book called Play of Double Senses: Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Susan Silverman had given it to me, claiming it was my biography. But it wasn’t. It turned out to be about the sixteenth century English poet who spelled his name like mine. The guy that wrote it had become the president of Yale, and I thought maybe if I read it, I could become Allan Pinkerton.

I was just starting the chapter titled “Pageant, Show, and Verse” when the phone rang. I picked it up and said in as deep a voice as I could, “Allan Pinkerton, here.”

At the other end a voice I remembered said, “Mr. Spenser, please.”

I said in my Pinkerton voice, “One moment, please,” and then in my normal voice, “Hello.”

The voice on the phone said, “Spenser, do you expect to deceive anyone with that nonsense?”

I said, “You want to hear me do Richard Nixon?”

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