Meet Louis Ives: well-groomed, romantic, and as captivating as an F. Scott Fitzgerald hero.

Only this hero has a penchant for ladies clothes, and he’s lost his teaching post at Princeton’s Pretty Brook Day School after an unfortunate incident involving a colleague’s brassiere.

Meet Henry Harrison: former actor, failed but brilliant playwright, and a well-seasoned escort for New York City’s women of means.

He dances alone to Ethel Merman records, second-acts operas, and performs his scrappy life with the dignity befitting a self-styled man of the world.

What can this ageless Don Quixote of the Upper East Side have to offer a young gentleman such as Louis?

What, indeed.Well, the answer lies somewhere between the needs of an irascible mentor and the education of his eager apprentice…between cocktails on the Upper East Side and an even more intoxicating treat along the secret fringes of Times Square…and between friendship and longing.

Jonathan Ames

Scribner