The next day I myself receive a small package from FedEx. It contains Meiselman's slender book of privately printed poems and a letter. The letter, with its opening saluation of "Dear Mr Kastell," offers an abject apology, of an elaborateness that resembled the chapters I had seen of his immigration book, overwritten, though without the footnotes. Its postscript, presumptious as always, reads: "I hope we can put all this behind us, Ed, and meet again soon for lunch." 

As for the book of poems, it was inscribed "With affection and admiration". Flinches is its title, a title much superior to the poems, every one of them spoiled by undistinguished social-science language that has no business winding up in poems. Glimpsing the poems in the book, I myself flinched at one line that read: "The hebetude of my lifestyle left her unwilling to interact." The content was something else. Each of the poems registers a defeat or disappointment in its author's life. The first disappointment is about his mother's dying before he really got to know her. Another is about his failure to live up to his father's expectations. Others are about different women, as he delicately puts it, "dumping" on him. A poem called "Double-Cross" is about a boyhood friend who betrayed him, stealing his high-school girlfriend. One poem describes his disgust with his own body. Not exactly instructive and or delightful, Irwin Isaac Meiselmen's poems, yet in their cumulative effect sad and strangely moving. What became clear from the poems is that Meiselman considered himself a loser but without the least clue about the appalling pushiness and insensitivity to others that helped make him so. 

When Meiselman's book of poems arrived I knew its author would not take long to follow. One Wednesday morning, as I felt I was breaking through on a crucial chapter early in my new novel, the phone rang, and, without the aid of caller ID I was certain it was Meiselman. He may not have had much talent for writing, but his talent for calling at precisely the wrong time was unsurpassed.

"Ed, Irwin Isaac Meiselman here."

"Yes?" I say, attempting to get as little welcome and as much disdain into my voice as possible. I decide to give up on the lost cause of telling him not to call me Ed. 

"Hope you received my book of poems."

"I did," I say, and deliberately do not offer any even tepid compliments, lest they offer him an opening wedge. My intention is to treat this call as if it were from a   charity rumoured to be strongly anti-Semitic. 

"The reason I'm calling," Meiselman says, "is that I have to ask a favour of you. A big favour, I'm afraid."

"What is it?" 

"I'd rather ask you in person," he says. "Are you by any chance free for coffee this afternoon?"

"Not this afternoon," I hear myself saying. "Tomorrow afternoon is better." Weakling, I think to myself. Enough of this jerk already.