As I’d been completely mystified and happily amazed during my recent discussions with my friend Gustav concerning Roberto Suarez (see “The Black Swallowtail Butterfly Is Falling,” Flora Fiction, October 2023), I was looking forward to my next dinner with him.
            We sat at our usual table at The Radish Café, and he said, “I enjoyed your account of The Black Swallowtail Butterfly. I’m glad you changed my name in it; I don’t need people coming into my office to talk about it. And you made me sound more erudite than I actually am.”
            “It was a very curious phenomenon. I’m glad you showed that to me. I’m not sure I can read anything ever again without thinking about Suarez.” I looked at the menu. “The salmon is on special tonight. They make a wonderful sauce for it.”
            “That reminds me,” Gustav said, picking up his briefcase and taking a small book out of it. “I have something I want you to read. Have you ever read anything by Ellsworth Salmon?”
            “This isn’t one of those Suarez situations, is it?”
            “No, not at all,” Gustav laughed, handing me the book. “And it’s not a thousand pages either. Just three stories. We can talk about them next week.”
            I looked at the cover. “His name is Ellsworth Count Carnegie Salmon? What kind of a name is that?”
            “It’s his name.”
            We ate our delicious meals (Gustav took my recommendation for the salmon), and then returned to his apartment to drink brandy, of which I had too much.
            The following Friday, after having read the Salmon stories, I couldn’t wait to talk to Gustav at the café, so I went to his apartment directly, carrying a rolled-up canvas I had painted that week.
            He was surprised to see me that early, but he let me in. I set the book and a five-dollar bill on Gustav’s piano, and then unrolled the painting.
            “It’s the strangest thing,” I said. “I’ve never painted in my life but, after that first Salmon story, I felt a compulsion to paint, so I went out and bought a canvas and some paints and brushes, and here it is. What do you think?”
            Gustav admired the painting, an abstract made up of basic colors in vertical stripes that melted into each other, bordered by empty spaces on either side. “Very interesting. Very interesting, indeed. There’s a fascinating progression of colors on it.”
            I didn’t know what he meant by that, but my mind was already focused on something else. “And another thing. Do you mind if I play your piano?”
            “Not at all. I didn’t know you played.”
            “I don’t.” I raised the piano’s fallboard, sat on the bench, and plunked out some notes. “I’ve had this tune going through my head all week. Do you recognize it?” I played a one-fingered solo that lasted about two and a half minutes.
            “It does seem familiar somehow,” he said, with an impish grin.
            “Wait a minute,” I said. “Does this have anything to do with those stories?”
            “Tell me about the first story you read.”
            “Well, it’s a very complicated plot about generations of a family but that seems irrelevant to the big picture. I have an impression of the characters but nothing more than that. I suppose that’s why each chapter is named after one of the characters.”
            “Good. Very good. Did you get any sense of the progression of those characters?”
            “Well, yes, I could see that Randall, the patriarch, in the first chapter, was a murderer and thief, his son Oscar in the second, less so, and so on. By the time it got to Victor, he was almost a perfect person.”
            “And how did you come to that determination?”
            “Well, I suppose it just seemed natural that the succeeding generations would become better people.”
            “Or did it have to do with colors?”
            “Colors? What do you mean?”
            “The colors of the spectrum are, in order, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The initials of the colors are the same as the initials of the men and therefore the titles of the chapters. Randall. Oscar. Yuri. George. Brandon. And—”
            “Victor!” I said. “I hadn’t noticed that. That’s very interesting.”
            “Now look at your painting.”
            I did, and immediately noticed that my painting’s colors, from left to right, were red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
            “There were two other important characters in the story,” continued Gustav. “What were their names?”
            “Um, Randall’s father, Ivan. He was already dead at the beginning of the story. And Victor’s unborn son, Ulysses.”
            Gustav looked at me as if that was supposed to mean something.
            I thought about that. “Um, I. U. I. U. Oh, I get it. Infra-red and ultra-violet.”
            “Very good. That’s why you never see Ivan and Ulysses.”
            “So, what about that tune I was playing when I have absolutely no musical background? Does that have something to do with the second story?”
            “Who were the characters? Who was the matriarch?”
            “The main ones were Elena, her daughters Gabriela and Belinda, and Belinda’s daughters Delia and Francesca. I don’t see where you’re going with this.”
            “E, G, B, D, F.”
            “Of course, the lines on a treble clef.”
            “And the other characters? Look them up in the story. I realize they’re a little obscure.”
            I opened the book to the second story. “Frank. Annie. Caroline. Edward. Ah, I see. And the tune?”
            “It’s the order in which they speak. By the way, did you notice that you gave me five dollars? It’s there on the piano.”
            “Yes, I was wondering about that myself. I don’t owe you five dollars. No doubt it has something to do with the third story.”
            “Again, look at the order in which the characters speak.”
            I flipped to the third story. “George. Iris. Veronica. Emerson. George again. Ursula. Sam. Tom. Abigail. Veronica again…”
            “Look at their initials.”
            I read them through and saw the light. “I have it. It spells out ‘give Gustav five dollars.’ Very clever, my friend. There’s no such person as this Salmon fellow, is there? You wrote these, didn’t you? You’re Ellsworth Salmon.”
            “Yes,” said Gustav, and smiled. “I lied.”
            “How on earth did you come up with that ridiculous name?”
            “Ellsworth Kelly was an abstract artist. Count Basie was a wonderful piano player, and Andrew Carnegie was, among other things, a philanthropist.”
“Ah, so my giving you my money is philanthropy, is it?” I laughed at Gustav’s implication. “What about his last name?”
            “I went to The Radish Café earlier that day to look over the menu. I knew the dinner special was salmon.”

Bill’s stories, plays, and comedy sketches have been published, produced, and/or broadcast in Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Czechia, England, Germany, Guernsey, Holland, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Singapore, South Africa, the U.S., and Wales.