BOXING WITH
HEMINGWAY
by David Hyde Robbins
© ® 2026 by David Hyde Robbins
Chapter Two
The Vanishing Man
Quentin –
New York City — September 4, 1925
First, I lost my writer’s edge, and then its center, like a swirl down the drain. I was a prostitute writing to deadline for a publisher-pimp as I conjured up my horror and suspense potboilers. Clement Klein, my editor-publisher, had no taste. His only requirement was that I turn out a book a year to make the spring list. Two would be better, and none of them needed to be any good. But this morning I had made up my mind.
From Clement’s cluttered office twelve stories up, Times Square was a dense chaos of advertising billboards that competed for attention: Maxwell House Coffee: “Good to the Last Drop!”; Chevrolet Motor Cars: ”Quality Cars at Quantity Prices”; Arrow Shirt Collars:“Follow the Arrow and You Follow The Style”; Camel Cigarettes: “I’d Walk a Mile for a Camel”; The Unchastened Woman an upcoming movie starring Theda Bara, looming here in slatternly repose. In four hours, the billboards would light up to lend Times Square some of its legendary glitter.
“For Pete’s sake, Quent! Paris?” Clement groused.
“Yeah. Paris,” I told him.
“You can't do this to us, dammit!” he sulked, and then took a pull from the leather-bound hip flask he kept filled with Four Roses Bourbon. He offered me a sip. “You have a contract.”
I waved his offer away. “I can afford to break it.”
“I can’t believe you’re serious about doing this all of a sudden. Why don't you go home, take a nap, and forget you ever came up with this cockamamie scheme.” He lit a cigar and made a scene about shaking out the match. “Maybe go to the tropics for a week to air out.”
I glanced at the feeble sway of the potted palm in a darkened corner of his office. Its scraggly fronds caught the swells of breeze from the squeaky, rotating fan on his desk. I thought his idea was good — maybe I should take a trip to the Caribbean — on my way to France. “Anyway,” he went on, “about your contract. We can sue.”
“Sure, go ahead.”
“You’re not going to buy your way out of this, friend. Not this time, not after your next book has already been announced.”
“I will finish it on the way over and send the script back with the ship’s return trip. You’ll have it in plenty of time to hack it up anyway you want,” I told him, then lapsed into thought. “I don't care.” I was surprised at how much it hurt to admit that.
“Paris. For God’s sake, Quent. Why Paris? You don't even speak French.”
“I don't need to.” I reasoned I could communicate to those around me through my art. And I heard that they were mostly Americans and Brits over there, anyway. “I just need to get away from all this clutter and these…expectations.”
“You mean never write another horror story? You’ll lose your followers. Hell, we’ll lose your followers. They love you.”
“All four of them. They’ll get over it.”
“Damn you, Quent! Where are you gonna settle in Paris, before it drives you crazy enough to return here?”
I gazed out the window at “here.” There was a time when I thought this city was mine. Since the end of the war, though, New York had sped up. I looked out and down at Broadway. The city’s sounds: a cacophony of bleating klaxons; clanging and grinding of construction machinery, and the clatter of elevated and subterranean trains rose from the street through the open office window. The warm gusts also carried the faint sting of exhaust fumes to add to the left-over redolence of cigars and yesterday's tuna and onion sandwich permeating the close air of Clement’s office. The black roofs and yellow hoods of the taxicabs knotted the congestions of traffic wending its way around some street trolleys.
I squinted at the scene as though trying to filter it out. Even the allure of Greenwich Village had become artificial. The tourists from uptown had found their way down to the Brevoort Hotel Café on 8th Street, to get drunk and talk of art well past midnight. That place used to be a shrine of pompous debauchery for us creatives. Now, none of it was any good anymore.
“I'm going to Montparnasse.”
“Among the starving artists and all that literary pretentiousness eking out a living there?” I fanned away his cigar smoke, which only stirred up the heat. “Now I know you're ribbing me, Quent. Phew! You had me going there for a minute.” He took another swig.
“I’m not kidding, Clement.”
“But all the way to Paris? My God, man, if it’s pretentiousness you want all you have to do is go a few blocks north to midtown. There you can drink away with those self-important literary bullies from The New Yorker who sit around in the Oak Room of the Algonquin criticizing other writers.”
“Too close to home,” I decisively told him. “I’m going to Paris, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Aren't we paying you enough?”
“It isn’t about the money. You know that.”
“Oh, right. It never was about the money with you. Look, just forget about going, okay? There can be only one Scott Fitzgerald in this business. Until he drinks himself to death.”
“…and only one Maxwell Perkins,” I retorted.
His expression fell into dismay. “At least I brought you out of the pulps and into a known publishing company. One that gives your work the respect it deserves.”
“Sorry, Clement. I didn’t mean that. You are a good editor.”
He twiddled his pen as he gazed thoughtfully at it to avoid looking at me. “I can't imagine you living in some cold-water garret over in God-knows-where.”
“Neither can I. So I’m selling my place on Christopher Street. I’ve bought a big farmhouse on fourteen acres in Giverny. “
“Of course you have. Where the hell is Giverny?”
“It’s in the nicer outskirts of Paris.”
He looked sadly at the pen, then put it down. “Of course it is.“ He jabbed out his half-smoked cigar in the over-stuffed ashtray. “You know what, Quent? I don't think you’re starved enough to pursue the freedom you need to endure as a literary talent among all those emaciated bohemians.”
“I need this, Clement.”
He raised his gaze to bore into me. “‘Need’ is often not practical. What about Mikey? Are you going to put him in an orphanage or something before you leave on this solitary quest of yours?”
“You haven't seen Michael since he was six. He’s now eighteen.”
“Same kid.”
“He’s coming with me.”
“What about Evelyn? Maybe she’ll have a change of heart and come back to you.”
The thought of Evelyn having played me for a fool sent a torrent of shivers down my back. She would never come back to me any more than she would leave that stockbroker she married so suddenly two months before. She had traded away her free spirit for the safety of a practical life. And to think I came that close to branding her as Mrs. Quentin-Flynn-Number-Three.
“I don’t want her to come back.”
Clement shook his head in resignation. “You're ruining everything for yourself, Quent.”
“We’ll see.”
I noticed his eyes had begun to glisten over. “Don’t forget to write.”
“Oh, I won’t, Clement. And this will be a fresh start in a new place. I’ll be writing something new. Something different. Maybe even something good.”
“Well, Quent, I meant don’t forget to write what you owe me.“
“It will be done. I’m calling it ‘The Vanishing Man’.”
“That’s appropriate,” he said. “So, you’ve already made your reservations? Have I, and your career here, become just footnotes?”
“Of course not, Clement. You may be many things, but never a footnote. Anyway, I plan on booking passage tomorrow on the Ile de France. I'll send my manuscript back on its return trip, like I said.”
“I’m holding you to your book, mister. We’ll be firming up our Christmas list in a month. Your reader-fans are depending on you.”
“Correct, Clement, that they are. All three of them.”
“I thought there were four.”
“While we were conversing, we lost one.”
“Yeah,” he muttered dourly. “Me.”
“I was meaning myself,” I said. But then again, I never was a fan.
Chapter Three
Finding Sarah
Quentin –
Montparnasse — March 28, 1926
Clement wasted no time publishing “The Vanishing Man,” but my dubious reputation as a pulp novelist arrived in Montparnasse before I had. Once, in Le Closure de Lilas, a bistro where writers worked as they sipped their café au laits, I noticed someone reading “The Vanishing Man,” while making faces at the pages. He then glanced over at me, and I quickly turned away. He had looked vaguely familiar, but then, in Montparnasse everyone looked familiar. And vague.
Soon after that, I changed my pen name to Q. M. Flynn. A pocket of French authors at Le Parnasse had taken to calling me “Quem,” most likely because the “Q.M.” had offered up a pronunciation challenge. I liked that and changed my nom de plume again to “Quem Flynn.” I had an idea that someday I might just shorten it to “Quem.”
Since our arrival, my son Michael had taken his musical talent to The Ginger Cat American Café, an intimate club tucked away off Rue d’Odessa. There, paid a pittance for playing back-up piano, he nurtured his skill and even performed some of his own arrangements. He soon became known in a few select circles — mainly homosexual ones.
Then came that March afternoon, where I sat trying to nurse another bourbon at Le Dome, when I first noticed a woman sitting alone a few tables away, sipping a green-colored Pernod. She sported a tousled, black page-boy cowl of a bob with straight-cut bangs that cupped her cherubic face. She took a long drag from a cigarette stuck in an ivory cigarette holder. Her expression conveyed a certain sadness hidden behind a tight-lipped attempt at pride.
I saw her again a few weeks later sitting in a booth at Le Select American Bar, engaged in conversation with another patron. A third, a frail woman wearing man’s clothes and an oversize fedora slouched down in the bench across from them. I decided I would walk by them and toward the bar on the pretense of ordering another drink. Some music came from the little stage off in a corner. It was “I’ll See You in My Dreams,” though it was hard to discern over the surrounding din. Finally, with my courage up, I made my approach.
“Bonsoir. Comment-allez vous, ce soir?” I said as I stopped, then faltered in the throes of an awkward moment, as I just stood there expecting something else to happen.
“Can I help you, monsieur?” The woman who had captured my attention finally asked. Her voice sounded dry; hardened from smoking.
“Ah! Vous et Americain.”
“Yeah. And your French stinks worse than mine used to.”
I smiled. “Well, I’m just learning.”
“Sit and join us,” her conversation partner said. He had an Italian accent.
My heart sank when she told him: “It’s okay, Carlo. He was just passing by.” She looked softly at me. “N’est pas, monsieur Americain?”
I felt defeated to my core. ”Uh, oui.”
“Nonsense!” the one she referred to as Carlo said.
“Here. Sit and drink with us.“
I glanced at the sardonic woman as though for approval. She shrugged her shoulders in acquiescence. “What the hell? Sure. Carlo’s buying tonight. It's his party.”
I edged my way into the empty spot next to the frail, silent one. “A celebration?” I asked Carlo.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “I just got a full year’s work from Le Bon Marché.”
“Congratulations. Who is he?”
She tightened her expression as she cast me a dry look. “It. Le Bon Marché is the finest department store in Paris. You really are just off the boat, aren't you?”
I tried to rationalize what it was about me she pretended not to like. “Uh, I don't get into Paris much. Just here to Montparnasse.”
“Okay,” she said. “Well, Montparnasse is in Paris, so, yes, you are in Paris.” She patted a stray fall from her bob into place. “So, who are you? You’re certainly not dressed like a starving artist. Are you an agent, or something?”
“No, thank you. I’m a novelist.”
“Be nice,” Carlo warned her. “Please excuse our friend, here. She is having a bad day.”
Her reserved smile seemed cruel, and her glance darkened. “I’m the resident pessimist. I always have a bad day. My name is Sarah, by the way. This one sitting next to me is Carlo, and his silent friend next to you is Anton-Marie, his muse. So, now, what’s your name?”
“Q. M. Flynn. Also known by a few around here as ‘Quem’.”
Sarah thought for a moment, then came to an awareness. “You’re Quentin Flynn, the novelist?”
Unmasked, I cast my eyes downward. “You know my work?”
“Well, yeah, I know of it, I guess. I recognize you from an author picture I once saw. The word’s gotten out that you’re here, and your “Vanishing Man” is making the rounds. So, I guess you’ve not really vanished, after all.” She was slurring her words. It was approaching midnight; that hour when everybody still awake in the 14 arrondissement was on their way toward being drunk, which would them staggering around the streets until dawn.
“Would I know this book?” Carlo asked.
“Probably not,” I told him.
A waiter appeared at our table to save me from the conversation. Carlo ordered the round.
Sarah glared at me with a one-eyed squint. “One of my writer friends once told me about your family. Don’t you own half of Brooklyn, or something?”
“Well, maybe a quarter of it,” I said. It wasn’t that far from the truth. “But that was seventy years ago, when my grandfather had a lot of farmland in Flatbush, when it was easy and cheap to own it. He just had the good sense to hold on to it. How do you know that? Are you from Brooklyn?”
“How come you know so much about my past life?”
“Word of wealth travels fast around Montparnasse. Some of us want to know who to tap for a loan we have no intention of paying back. Not me, though. Anyway, just because you own Brooklyn…”
“I don’t own it,“ I said.
“…doesn't mean the world ends there. The news from New York sometimes makes it out to Milwaukee where I’m from. Or was. Now I’m from here.” She inhaled languidly through her cigarette holder.
“Brooklyn? In New York City?” Carlo asked. “Your family owns all that?”
“Only a small piece of it.”
Sarah’s lips turned up in a half-smile. “You see that, Quentin? Now your family secret is out and has spread as far as Milan. Wasn’t that easy?”
“I'm sorry,” I said. “Can we just talk about Montparnasse instead of Brooklyn?”
“Touchy subject, hunh?”
I was becoming annoyed by her arrogance. “No. Just a tiresome one.”
“Are you going to take me to dinner tomorrow, Quentin?” she asked.
“Why? Because you think I am rich?”
“No, Quentin. Because I think, like me, you’re an artist in search of yourself. And I’m getting just drunk enough to ask you.”
© ® 2026 by David Hyde Robbins