Being within a 2-hr drive on the Overseas Highway to Key West, the tip of which is 90 miles from Cuba; and given the romantic penchant for the allusion to the nefarious import of ambrosial hand-rolled cigars, it is no shock on a brilliantly sunny morning while reclining under the azure sky by the pool in Key Largo suddenly to discern the pleasing waft of a good cigar in the ether.

Without lifting my head from the chaise longue to squint and garner a view through the glaring sunshine I reliably predicted the author of this sub-tropical bouquet diffused in the late morning air; namely, my vibrant acquaintance “Moon” from Long Island (Oak Beach), New York. Though Moon has surgically evaporated a portion of his erstwhile corpulence, he has nonetheless retained sufficient bravado to buoy his former podginess and the glamour of his sybaritism. His is an irreverence celebrated worldwide; it is one which humorously endears him to the more urbane and restrained populace. He is unquestionably a devotee of the epicurean lifestyle. He has in addition the relieving and superlative feature of having snapped his figures at, and walked out of the room from, Donald J. Trump who unsuccessfully sought to compromise Moon’s corporate entitlement. The account may be apocryphal though he has so many other similarly entertaining stories that I have lost track of the necessity to “fact check” by any mechanism available to me. In the meantime the superlative ingredient of the reports is their unquestionable literary capital and derivative amusement.