I was having dinner at Bucky’s at the Grand Hotel in Point
Clear when I saw an older distinguished man sipping a martini and staring
through the back window at the horizon of the Gulf of Mexico as the sun
set. And I knew him—not his name or the name
of the woman he was missing and privately toasting with his small sips of that
martini. But I knew him, and the
concentration of his memories filled the space around him and drew me to him,
like a love song. Like the great old
love songs, I grew up singing. Those
songs fit his story.
When I got home, I wrote this story that happened to me when
I saw a man whose name came with the sunset and the martini and the black grand
piano he kept eyeing longingly: Franklin
Lovejoy.
So, in a way this story is autobiographical.
LOVEJOY was inspired by a real-life sighting of a man who had
been deeply in love and as it turns out with more than one woman. It’s part of the mystery of writing that
stories come this way from chance encounters or in this case, a chance
sighting. This is Lovejoy’s story—and
mine, in a way. I hope it will be one you enjoy too
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