Dusel lives like a diplomat— no aristocrat-- always advising, appeasing, conversing (minor matters; meager meaning). At cocktails he excels genially, the perfect guest, professionally pleasing, adept at the quick quip, the casual compliment, no task too trivial nor request too onerous; each lovely hostess a demanding mistress. Dusel lives on borrowed means, luminous among the queens, the unreal scenes: six-foot Amazons arrayed like houri on designer duvets, carefully displayed coquettes among the peacock patios where the matrons pose, sharp cheek to cheek, and the poets, preternatural and pale, kohl-rimmed, retreat or shout above the din their latest lucid pandering: parsed sorrow or well-punctuated wit; another would-be Wilde, there, or, worse, an effete academic. Dusel sleeps alone, curled with Babette the dog and a princess phone, amber bottles aligned beside his bed. Once his face earned his place among the fickle fortunate, but now a certain servile grace his only mode of currency, and every day’s a race to prove that he is still master of the bon mot, a man of well-turned phrases and a careless elegance, glittering among the diamantine-- in every sense a prince among the princes. But late at night, when sleep eludes him, the church clock's clamor marking each creeping hour, Dusel fears that dawn will find him gone but leave all else unchanged. And then he tips his glass and dares his fate, swallowing obscurity by twos, washed down with only finest of champagne, an aging cavalier amid the blues.