“Oh, my, Antonio—with abdominals like these, it’s clear you’ve been playing squash!”

“Yes, I have, and I have spurned the crackpot diets of the American fraud Dr. Oz. I can’t believe that man is a highly credentialed member of the medical establishment.”

“You silly boy. You have the cock the size of a rhinoceros horn, but you’ll never be clever enough to win the caption contest.”

“Shut up and kiss me, woman. My letter about the novels of Mary Renault got as far as fact-checking!”

“But it wasn’t actually published…was it, my sexy, simple stallion?”

“Enough talk! I must have you now. The way string quartets are multiplying these days, one will be here any minute.”

“Well. I’d hate for you to be blue-balled by a cello, so…no, no! Must not rip, must unzip. I could have bought out three underwater mortgages for what I paid for this dress.”

“I…I…I throb like the engine of a Formula One. By the way, did you know that pursuit is now being developed in America?”

“Not too horny to take a moment to impress me with having flipped through the Sporting Scene, I see.”

“Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Name sections to me, my amor.”

“Oooh. Profiles, Fiction, a Critic at…how very, very LARGE!”

“Poems!”

“Drawings!”

“CARA MIA, SHOUTS AND MURMURS!”

“Oh, Antonio…like a surge of liberal idealism, you never last long enough. Even Nixon could go longer, according to the new biography.”

“Please, Maria, do not share my shame.”

“Too late, Tony. Precocious but premature…it’s already the Talk of the Town.”

“What?!”

“Yes. It was Briefly Noted.”

– Jay Gabler