Alan Brickman

Fictional Characters 

Humbert Humbert was sitting at a window table, nursing a gin and tonic, and staring at the elementary school playground across the street. The young girls were so beautiful, he thought, so fresh and unspoiled, so perfect. He felt that old stirring in his loins, yes his loins, even though he hated that word. Should he turn away, so as not to fall prey to the old compulsions? Hogwash! Why deny himself the beauty the world had to offer. If God, in his great and infinite wisdom, had not meant us to lust, yes “lust” was a word he was not too proud to use, to lust after these embodiments of pure beauty, why then would he have made them so delicious, so tempting, so absolute and impeccable. Bugger off, he thought, to the naysayers, to every philistine who abhorred beauty, who was shamed by love, who hated life itself. I will stare if I wish, and damn the world’s prudery, I will do so without embarrassment or self-loathing. And I say to hell with Nabokov the betrayer, the liar, the scoundrel and his horrid little book.

He sipped his drink and sighed. The young girls across the street were playing double-dutch, praise be to our Lord and Savior, jumping up and down and up again, often revealing a hint of white or pink cotton between their thighs, and oh how it made him sigh with a happiness that warmed and chilled him in each moment. As he craned his neck for a better view, he felt a sharp slap across the back of his head, and an English gentleman, dressed elegantly in Saville Row but also somehow rough and crude, dropped himself into a seat at Humbert’s table and said, “Humbert, you pig! Have you learned nothing?!”

“I say, my good man, and who might you be?”

“I’m your conscience, you pervert. Put your tongue back in your mouth and get your mind out of those little girls’ panties.”  The man motioned to a waitress passing the table. He said, “Hey there gorgeous! A vodka martini, if you would be so kind.” 

The waitress appeared to know him. “The usual, Mr. Bond? Shaken, not stirred?” She let out a hearty laugh. “I go to the cinema all the time, and it just tickles my funny bone when you say that.”

James patted her on the bum and said, “Maybe we can tickle a few more things in my hotel room when you get off.” She laughed again, leaned in and wrote her phone number on a napkin, then fluttered off.   

“You see, Humbert?” Bond said as he folded the napkin and put it in his jacket pocket. “This bird’s twice as sexy as your kindergarteners, and she’s legal!” He let out a full-throated laugh that devolved into a cough. He cleared his throat and said, “You know the old saying, ‘Sixteen will get you twenty.’ And if you’re anything like your reputation, you like ’em half that!”

“No,” Humbert said firmly. “I do not know that old saying, and I do not think it is in the least bit funny. But I must say that you’ve got it all wrong.” He took a sizeable gulp of gin. “And by the way, I realize now who you are, Mr. Bond. James Bond, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, double-oh-seven and all that. The great cocksman of the Home Office. The woman you seem so smitten by,” he tilted his head in the direction of the waitress, “is but a common barmaid. She has a history, so much unseemly baggage. She has been despoiled, broken by her disappointments, by her shattered dreams, by the knowledge that life takes everything and leaves you bereft. Taking a woman like that to bed is inviting malaise, or worse, despair. The little ones, they have so much promise. They glow magnificently with the promise and hopefulness that has yet to be stolen from them.”

“Humbert, for all your big words, you are an imbecile,” said Bond. “It is exactly that experience, that ‘baggage’ as you would have it, that makes the sex so extraordinary! Real women know things, they understand things, and because they’ve been around, they are formidable! You couldn’t handle this hot little barmaid, you ponce. Either your head or your unremarkable little willy would explode.”

A man at the next table could keep quiet no longer. He tapped his knuckles on his table and said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but I couldn’t help overhearing.” Bond and Humbert turned to engage the man, each curious, but with a hint of annoyance. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Nathan Zuckerman, from America. And let me say what a pleasure it is to actually meet you both. You’re quite famous you know.”

“We know,” Humbert and Bond said in unison, then looked at each other and smiled, more than a little pleased with themselves. 

Zuckerman went on, “First off, you’re both perverts. And I know, I’ve been chronicling the subject for decades. And Bond, setting aside what is legal and what is not, you’re as much of a pedophile as our friend here. You continue to sleep with twenty-year-olds, and you’re what now, sixty? Older? As American boys say on the playground, ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size!’ Or rather, your own age! It’s as if you learned it from him.” He pointed with his thumb at Humbert.

Humbert scowled, but Bond was nonplussed. “But I do get my knob polished, don’t I, Nathan old boy. How long has it been since you could say that, what with your prostate issues and all?” He smiled in triumph. “I read too, you know.” 

“Touché,” said Zuckerman. “If you’ll allow me, gentlemen, the next round is on me.” He pulled his chair over to join them.