The first thing you learn to do is to say nothing at all. The second is how; you never tell an outright lie, because it's a bit difficult to fib Ernest Hemingway with a straight face, but instead spin on wholly true but factually inaccurate accounts. You are from America, and of modern makings, and no matter how the others might disparage your claims, you are a man of those. You are not of present makings, not in their minds. Fitzgerald would find it alarming.

You slip of course, because like all good things you're going to ruin it and ruin it well. Sometimes you have to pull manuscripts back, because they're dated in days that haven't yet happened, or annotated by people who don't yet exist. Other times you forget to say medicine in place of medication, and say hello before it's in fashion. The last mistake makes it your turn to be surprised.

There is no roaring in these twenties, these are not the twenties. You step back, and almost sail back over Scott's couch. Another step forward, and Franklin is offering you a glass too respectable for the hour; a step back, then.

Your world is coming undone twice over now. Once, you sought refuge in Dali and the Charleston, but now with no dock to make port for, your ship is left adrift. Wandering in a sea of cities and the people that built them.

It's like standing on the rim of a pool, your toes hooked over a rough stone mantle. There is nothing but to spread your arms back and fall into the green light; history has never felt so wet. You watch the Bastille Saint-Antoine fall, dine at Robespierre's table, but at the end of the night are back in your bed in Paris, poor and grasping for the present.

Ink once set cannot be unwritten. This is not like writing a book. Everyone talks first draft, and the plot progresses first draft, confused and without a climax in mind. You've gotten better at this, you can unfold whole eras before you, but the future is no closer now than it was when you began.