Leonard sighed theatrically and threw another crumpled piece of paper into the can next to his desk. “It’s too much. Do you know what Tom Wolfe said about satire?”

Henry looked up from the couch, where he was reading a magazine and waiting patiently for Leonard to finish his work so they could go to lunch. The mesh trash can was deliberately chosen, he knew, because it made the depth of his cartoonist brother’s angst over his discarded work so visible to his audience.

“I do not.”

“Basically, that we’d come to a point in civilization where there was nothing outrageous you could write as satire that wasn’t going to be a fact in the newspaper the next day.”

Henry smiled. “O tempore, o mores.”

“Shut up,” Leonard said absently. Henry’s younger brother was tall and lean, with a giant head made even bigger by a wavy mane of Important Artist hair. He was the man who made others sigh in despair when he sat in front of them at the theater, knowing they’d have cricks in their necks from weaving and bobbing as they tried to see what was going on center stage. Most people took him for the older brother, because he was the serious one.

“And it’s not easy being funny when I can’t stop thinking about that tuition increase, either.”

“You know I have that handled,” Henry said smoothly.

Leonard turned around and regarded Henry with his somber, horsey face. “I do know that, and it eats at me. It eats at my masculinity, my status as a provider for my family, my…”

“You shut up,” Henry cut him off. “You pay the rent, you put food on the table, you’re a wonderful father. It’s handled, forget about it.”

“No, you shut up,” Leonard replied. “God, we’ve reverted to childhood.” Leonard’s grey eyes glazed over. “Hmm. Reverting to childish argumentative…”

Leonard trailed off as he turned to his drafting table, and Henry went back his magazine, but he couldn’t focus. He didn’t like lying to his brother, but if he’d ever dropped the mask, acknowledged that the tuition was a burden, Leonard would have summoned Christina, and laid it out for her, and she, of course, would have immediately and courageously shouldered the burden of returning to public school.

And we can’t have that, Henry thought. Even if it takes a big lie to prevent it.

His stomach grumbled. “Leonard.”

His brother didn’t respond, which meant he was deep into his work. “I’m going to go get something to eat. I think maybe albatross soup with a walrus fat soufflé.”

“Mmm,” Leonard muttered.

Henry left his brother to his work, enviously. He wanted that, that moment when Leonard’s face went blank, his brain abandoning the labor of forming facial expressions to marshal every resource to the aid of whatever fantastic idea had blossomed in that moment of inspiration.

In a virtuous fit of economy, he decided to forget about lunch, and just have coffee and a bagel. He slipped into a coffee shop and took a table, the place deserted enough that a single diner wasn’t obligated to take a counter seat.

Leonard’s cartoons were mostly about families – crazy, artistic, neurotic Upper West Side people, perfect for The New Yorker. Their mother and her entourage had long ago decamped upstate for greener, and cheaper, artistic pastures, but their city upbringing still gave Leonard material for his work.

Henry sighed and pulled the dreaded notebook out of his bag.

Write what you know, he wrote at the top of the page.

What the fuck do you know? he replied defiantly below that.

He scribbled his answers. Impostors. Actors. Con men.

But with good intentions.

Yeah…

He thought some more. Why was he a con? It certainly wasn’t for the money, not for himself, anyway. He wasn’t Neal Caffrey. He wasn’t Frank Abegnale from Catch Me if You Can.

Or are you?

He paused, before writing down the hard question.

Is there something more you need, from being Hamilton Dillon, than just the money?

He kept writing, exactly as the questions and answers popped into his head.

It’s not just the money. You’re addicted to being Hamilton.

Okay yeah. I love being that guy. I love people thinking I really am that guy. Not this guy, the failed novelist. But him, prosperous, cultured, successful, tasteful...

Even if it’s an illusion? Even if they desire someone who doesn’t exist?

Doesn’t he? Henry answered himself, scribbling defiantly. Isn’t Hamilton real in those moments? Aren’t I him, then, there?

I don’t know. Was he real, that first day of his existence?

Henry paused to think about that.

* * *

Three years earlier, Henry Davis had gone to his sister Theodora’s wedding upstate. Single, he went stag, unwilling to inflict upon any friend his mad, bad, dangerous-to-know family, and the drama bound to ensue before, during and after the wedding.

Sure enough, two of Theodora’s exes (one organic kale farmer and one professional whittler) showed up and made a scene at the reception. Traffic had been a nightmare and they’d lost their opportunity to ruin the wedding proper, but they did manage to spoil the cutting of the cake.

Henry ignored the assigned seating on the place cards and took a seat at the farthest table out from the dance floor. He found himself seated next to Nathaniel, a handsome older man, around fifty or a little older, who reminded him of the Most Interesting Man In The World from the beer commercials. They talked about art, and politics, and novels.

Eventually, deep into their discussion about Infinite Jest and what we “give ourselves over to,” Henry realized they’d been left alone by all their table mates, who’d gone in search of lighter conversation.

Maybe it was the sharp suit his mother had bought him for the wedding. Maybe it was just the calm he felt, defying his family’s commandment to sit in the middle of the dramatic action. But Henry got the impression that Nathaniel had the wrong impression about Henry. Nathanial was a successful attorney, who’d represented a SoHo gallery in a famous trial in the 90s (Holy Rollers vs. Art), and he was treating Henry as if he was a peer.

Henry was sure it was the suit, the haircut he’d splurged on, his general air of lofty distance, or the combination. Looking back, he probably looked like someone who was “in publishing,” in a trust fund-y kind of way, or who worked for some upper-crust philanthropic organization, drawing a token salary he didn’t really need.

“So what do you do?” Nathaniel asked him.

And it just came out. Some part of him immediately decided, No, I’m not going to tell him I’m a rootless twentysomething with a BA in English, in the suit Mom bought me for this wedding, whose knowledge of artistic Goings On About Town comes from The New Yorker and not from experience, if what’s About Town costs money to be Going On.

In that moment, he wasn’t that guy. He was who Nathaniel thought he was. Someone more prosperous, successful, someone with direction. Henry had the education, the polish, just not the money to keep it up…

And yet, to lie to this guy and then to go home with him, which they were clearly by now both considering a possibility? No. Henry liked him too much for that. After all, what if they really hit it off, and then Henry had to tell him, it was all an illusion, he lived in a shitty studio in Hell’s Kitchen where the floor slopes and the next door neighbor’s a crazy cat lady and he had $1.48 in savings.

So he’d tell him a lie that would put an end to it all, and get them both gracefully out of the situation.

“I’m an escort.”

Nathanial raised an eyebrow. He was a city boy, and not the least bit fazed by it.

“Really. What do you charge?”

“Two thousand dollars,” Henry said, pulling out the highest number he’d ever heard of from his friends.

“Are you available tonight?”

“Why yes,” Henry said, astonishing himself. “Yes I am.”

* * *

They left the wedding, and Nathaniel waved a black credit card at a hotel desk, and then they were in a hotel room and Henry pressed Nathaniel against the wall, attacking him with a passion he’d rarely experienced before.

He was drunk on it, the lie, the illusion, the power. The idea that he was so attractive that an equally attractive man would pay him two thousand dollars to fuck, when he’d have gladly and enthusiastically done him for free!

It was like a sorcerous spell. He was someone else in bed that night, more dominant, more confident, more everything. He came more often than he ever had, he fucked Nathaniel and Nathaniel fucked him, and in the morning Nathaniel kissed him and got dressed and hit the ATM in the lobby and came back and handed him twenty five bills. And Henry thanked him, and they parted amicably, both well satisfied.

* * *

What if I’d told Nathaniel that I was, I don’t know. But I could say I was an escort and hey presto, I was. No lie, in the end, was it?

He thought about that for moment.

What if I’d really lied, made up some other kind of con. That I was the classy literary gent he thought I was. That I was the representative, I don’t know, of some kind of JD Salinger-esque recluse. Some story that nobody could contradict because…

“Fuck me,” Henry said out loud.

Write what you know, the voice inside him said with a wild laugh. And what do you know best?

Being a goddamn con man, he thought with a grin, his pen finally racing, unstoppable, across the blank pages.