A Model World And Other Stories by Michael Chabon

during dinner, discussing the theatrical abilities of Bill and Luke and Clothilde and Janet, and particularly of Jewel; malt liquor made Monsour incredibly voluble, it seemed, as with each tall can he came to dominate the conversation more and more, and his stories—how I hate men who tell stories at dinner!—grew increasingly sordid and disturbing. He had been all around the world. Professor Baldwin, Levine, and I were abandoned to our disparate silences. Every time I looked at Baldwin, he was looking at me, beaming at me, really, as though he were in on some happy word of my fortunes, as though I had won some prize. I could hardly eat a thing. Levine nodded his head so intently at the things mentor and pupil were saying that I could see he wasn’t listening to a word.
    “And so I simply stole it. It was not mine, and it could be of no real practical use to me—you see that,” Monsour was saying. He had gotten loud and a little gross in the course of the evening—his bathrobe was all untied and some of the crucial buttons of his pajama top had popped open—and I remembered a piece of advice my father had once given me about never drinking anything that had a number in its brand name except for Vat 69. “While on the contrary, as I look back on it, this radio was her only connection, aside from me, to the outer world. It was precious to her. When I left, she would be cut off completely, as you can see.” He shook his head at the memory of this wickedness he had practiced, but with a wistful smile, as though he had long ago forgiven himself.
    “I’ve already heard that story,” said Jewel. She had also been drinking malt liquor; the continued adhesion of her sarong was in some doubt. “I told it to you, Baldwin.”
    “Oh, yeah, I remember,” Professor Baldwin said, smiling at me now with perfect fondness. He turned to Mehmet Monsour. “Why don’t you tell these two about that game? That sounded like a bear .”
    Oh, let’s play it,” said Jewel. She was sitting next to me, and as she said this she nudged me lightly with her left elbow. I was certain now that something unpleasant lay in store for me and certain also, for the first time, that as a person I meant very little to her. I was just another way of irritating her husband.
    “It is quite simple,” said Monsour, whirling on Levine and catching him off guard. Levine sat up and folded his hands scholastically in his lap. “In fact, it is hardly a game at all. We turn out all the lamps.” He rose from the table and gathered about him the flaps of his rootin’-tootin’ bathrobe. The candle on the dinner table shed its lone light. “This is all right, Baldwin?”
    “Sure it is,” said Baldwin. “Quite all right. I don’t think I’ll play, though. I’m no good at this kind of thing.”
    He looked at Jewel and they blushed like a couple of lovers.
    “Whatever you like. Fine.” Monsour sat down again and picked up his drink. “And now, boys, I would like you to please tell us.” He touched his hands together at the fingertips and contemplated the resultant structure. “What is the worst thing you have ever done in your whole, entire life?” He had asked this question of a thousand students over the past twenty years, and he paused after the fifth and ninth words in a way he had discovered to be particularly effective in eliciting a juicy response. “You, Mister, er—” He nodded his head at Levine. “Levine, I am sorry. You try first.”
    In the candlelight my friend’s face looked warm and flushed, and although I didn’t know the reason, I could see that he was about to unburden himself of success. He uncoiled the tie from around his neck and cast it on the table, then turned to face me, as did Baldwin, Jewel, and Mehmet Monsour.
    “After you,” he said.
    I suppose cuckoldry, charlatanism, and academic corruption are not the only things that could have produced a feeling of unease like the one that now suffused the dinner party. It