Modesty was not Irwin Isaac Meiselman's problem. Nor did he need the world to concur with him in his high estimate of himself. He paused to take a large bite out of his club sandwich, a quarter of the contents of which fell onto his plate.

After his father's death, Meiselman went on to recount, he sold the appliance parts business, and went off to live for two years in Israel, but didn't find it to his liking. He moved to Los Angeles, hoping to write sitcoms, but nothing came of that. He worked for six months for Steppenwolf Theatre, in some vague capacity that he did not explain very well. He published a book of poems, privately printed, a copy of which he promised (I took it as a threat) to send to me. He thinks of himself, he tells me, as an observer, an unattached intellectual, or, as he puts it, his mouth full of french fries, "Chicago's only full-time flâneur."

He scoffs up the remainder of his sandwich and orders a second Coke. He has a bit of mayonnaise on the right upper corner of his lips. I decide not to tell him about it; it adds to his charm. 

"To change the subject," Meiselman says, and here I thought he was going to ask me about my life or my own writing, for I had after all published five works of fiction, and a book of literary criticism, "do you by any chance have an agent?"

"I do, a woman in New York named Letitia Baumgartner."

"Think she might want to take me on as a client for my immigration book?"

I think of Letitia, tall, thin, cool in judgment, utterly professional in bearing, phlegmatic, properly pessimistic. I try to imagine the letter I might write introducing Irwin Isaac Meiselman and his hopeless single-spaced manuscript to her. Impossible.

Not a chance in the world, pal, I think, but instead say, "I know Letitia isn't taking on any new clients at the moment. But this could change."

Meiselman orders rice pudding for dessert. He tells me an off-colour joke about rice pudding, so gruesome that I tell myself to block out that I'd ever heard it. His own laughter at its punchline doesn't travel up to his eyes. 

When the check arrives, he asks the waitress if the restaurant takes American Express, which it turns out it doesn't. In other words, I am stuck for the bill, which isn't for a great sum — $26.17, plus tip — but, given that I had read his manuscript and that he was coming to me for advice, shouldn't have been mine to pay.