Saint Jack by Paul Theroux

expensive but not strenuous sport, golf or deep-sea fishing in a fedora with a muscular and knowledgeable crew; to gamble with conviction instead of bitterness and haste; to have a pair of girl friends who wanted me for my money—the security was appealing: why would they ever leave me? All this and a town house, an island villa, a light plane, a fancy car, a humidor full of fat fragrant cigars—you name it. I guessed it would come to me late: fifty-three is a convenient age for a tycoon; the middle-aged man turning cautious and wolflike knows the score, and if he has been around a bit he can take the gaff. It did not occur to me that it might never happen.
    Being poor was the promise of success; the anticipation of fortune, a fine conscious postponement, made the romance, for to happen best it would have to come all at once, as a surprise, with the great thud a bag of gold makes when it’s plopped on a table, or with the tumbling unexpectedness of thick doubloons spilling from the seams of an old wall you’re tearing apart for the price of the used wood. One rather fanciful idea I’d had of success was that somehow through a fortuitous mix-up I would be mistaken for a person who resembled me and rewarded with a knighthood or a country estate; it was as good as admitting I did not deserve it, but that it was far-fetched made my receptive heart anticipate it as a possibility. It might, I thought, be a telephone call on a gray morning when, fearing bad news, I would hear a confident educated voice at the other end say, “Brace yourself, Mr. Flowers, I’ve got some wonderful news—”
    Wonderful news in another fantasy was a letter. I composed many versions of these and recited them to myself walking to the 8-A bus out of Moulmein Green in the morning, or killing time in a hotel lobby when a girl was finishing a stunt upstairs, or dealing out the porno decks, or standing on the Esplanade and staring at the ships in the harbor.
    One started like this:
    Â 
Dear Mr. Flowers
,
It gives me great pleasure to be writing to you today, and I know my news will please you as much . . .
    Â 
    Another was more direct:
    Â 
Dear Flowers
,
I’ve had my eye on you for a long time, and I’m very happy to inform you of my decision concerning your future . . .
    Â 
    Another:
    Â 
Dear Jack
,
I am asking my lawyer to read you this letter after my death. You have been an excellent and loyal friend, the very best one could hope for. I have noted you in my will for a substantial portion of my estate as a token thanks for your good humor, charity, and humanity. You will never again have to think of . . .
    Â 
    Another:
    Â 
Dear Sir
,
Every year one person is singled out by our Foundation to be the recipient of a large cash disbursement. You will see from the enclosed form that no strings whatever are attached . . .
    Â 
    Another:
    Â 
Dear Mr. Flowers
,
The Academy has entrusted to me the joyful task of informing you of your election. This carries with it as you know the annual stipend of
. . .
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    There were more; I composed as many as thirty in an afternoon, though usually I stuck to one and phrased it to perfection, working on it and reciting every altered declaration of the glorious news. The last was long and rambling; it was only incidentally about money, and it began,
My darling . . .
    No man of fifty-three wants to look any more ridiculous than his uncertain age has already made him, and I am well aware that in disclosing this fantastic game I played with myself, the sentences above, which prior to a few moments ago had never been written anywhere but in my head, much less typed under the embossed letterheads I imagined and pushed through the mail slot of my semidetached house on Moulmein Green—I am well aware that in putting those eager (“Brace yourself”) openings in black and white I seem to be practicing satire or self-mockery. The