Hem lied about the bars and cafés. And the state he was in. Those clear words were written while knocking back shots of white rum in Harry’s Bar, he said. And these austere sentences were eked out amid a screech of accordion and soprano while I was molesting my third bottle of Bordeaux Cabernet Franc in Les Deux Magots. The best of it, my children, was written while the soundtrack of life was amped up to cacophony by the fuel of booze. Cheers, then. 

But that wasn’t true. It was written at a desk on lonely, sober Ontario mornings, with fear on his shoulder, grimacing down at the page.