A glass of montrachet. A single guttering candle. A private booth in the corner, his jacket (decorated with a small, tasteful flag pin) slung over the back of his chair and his Hermès tie loosened infinitesimally. The best, and some of the only, fresh flounder to be found.

And the lucid, tingling remnants of some really excellent cocaine (Percy refused to refer to cocaine by any of its slang names; ''blow' was vulgar, 'coke' dysphonious--and besides, verbal exactitude lent luster to any pleasure).

Of all of these things were life's golden moments made.

Percy took a sip of wine, pausing to linger over the taste. White wine was his trademark, along with expensive ties and his perpetual boyish smile. He felt it conveyed something of an unsullied spirit. He leaned over his Palm Pilot, which rested beside him on the table, and checked to make sure he didn't have any messages; he also paused to verify his security on the thing. He tried, of course, not to keep too many of his secrets in written form, or in any permanent medium. He was careful. Careful--never paranoid.

There was so much paranoia over online spying. Identity theft, ridiculous things like that.

People forgot to take care of the more mundane side of secrets--the palpable side. People retained information, not unthinking information superhighways. People and their secrets, and their connections, had bought Percy his expensive Galliano suit, the montrachet; the Palm Pilot... all of it, uncoiling like smoke from the smoldering remains of people's secrets. Of people's lives. There was something fundamentally sacred about privacy, particularly nowadays. Why else the mania for concealment? Terribly individualistic and American, really. Not that there was anything wrong with Americans, and he would swear his patriotism until his face turned red, white, and blue.

He finished his meal and dabbed at his lips with a napkin (they were classy here at l'Aube, he would give them that; they'd offered him a black napkin, to avoid lint on his black pants), and left a two-hundred-dollar bill on the table. The reason for wealth, According to Percival, was so one could float through life on its excess. Thrift was vulgar.

Settling his jacket around his shoulders and his hat on his head, he exited the restaurant and walked a few blocks--no need to call for his car yet, the night was brilliant--before pausing, back against brick and one eye on the yellow glow pooled around the base of a streetlamp, to light a cigarette. Post-prandial smoking pleased him, and it was a very American expression of--freedom! To choose! Freedom to be who he was, for which he'd fought for years, and, most amusingly still, a privilege he'd never exercised, nor wanted to exercise.

Who was Percival Murphy?

He inhaled deeply and watched glowing red ash crumble at the end of the cigarette.

Who was Percival Murphy? He was someone who knew how to enjoy life. In the winking instant before it burned to black.

Footsteps, and Percy looked up, elbow against his side, hand cocked, cigarette drawing trails of white through the darkness. "May I help you?" With his free hand, he fumbled for the button on his pocketed Palm Pilot that would summon one of his paid guards.