Someday My Prince Will

The waiter returned to the table several minutes before Gregor reappeared, and the young man was smiling and humming a happy tune to himself, which well he might. I wasn’t very surprised Gregor didn’t appear first. He gave me plenty of time to receive and pay the bill for lunch; I had gotten the drift of who would pay earlier in the day when I managed to have my wallet out first at every turn of the skiing experience. And, of course, we drove in my BMW convertible. Gregor claimed this was because he’d fallen in love with the car, but I suspected that Gregor had no real transportation of his own. There was no loss on the lunch bill, though. The well-satisfied waiter hadn’t charged for Gregor’s meal.

That evening in the town square open-air restaurant under the bright stars peeking through the swaying pine trees and the cool breezes coming down from Mt. Olympus in this otherwise frying pan island at the start of summer, the atmosphere was festive and electric. Artists know how to have a good time and how to remain convivial as they sank deeper and deeper into drink. Gregor, who, of course, I brought and who, of course, was instantaneously and enthusiastically adopted by the artists, was particularly convivial with a usually very serious young abstract painter who I’d always thought took himself a bit too seriously.