The Stories of John Cheever

When I got back to New York, I arranged a lunch for my friends, in a restaurant in the Sixties that has a private dining room. At the end of the meal, I made my speech. My best friend there was the first to answer. “You’ve been away too long,” he said. “You’re out of touch. We don’t go for that kind of thing over here. I can only speak for myself, of course, but I think the idea is repulsive.” I glanced down and saw that I was wearing a brocade double-breasted vest and pointed yellow shoes, and I suppose I had spoken in the flat and affected accent of most expatriates. His accusation that my thinking was alien, strange, and indecent seemed invincible. I felt then, I feel now, that it was not the impropriety of my discovery but its explosiveness that disconcerted him, and that he had, in my absence, joined the ranks of those new men who feel that the truth is no longer usable in solving our dilemmas. He said goodbye, and one by one the others left, all on the same note—I had been away too long; I was out of touch with decency and common sense.

I returned to Europe a few days later. The plane for Orly was delayed, and I killed some time in the bar and then looked around for the men’s room. The message this time was written on tile. “Bright Star!” I read, “would I were stedfast as thou art—Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night…” That was all. My flight was announced, and I sailed through the eaves of heaven back to the city of light. MONTRALDO

The first time I robbed Tiffany’s, it was raining. I bought an imitation-diamond ring at a costume-jewelry place in the Forties. Then I walked up to Tiffany’s in the rain and asked to look at rings. The clerk had a haughty manner. I looked at six or eight diamond rings. They began at eight hundred and went up to ten thousand. There was one priced at three thousand that looked to me like the paste in my pocket. I was examining this when an elderly woman—an old customer, I guessed—appeared on the other side of the counter. The clerk rushed over to greet her, and I switched rings. Then I called, “Thank you very much. I’ll think it over.”