“It’s a damned puzzle,” he told me. “What do I do? Smoke one a day? That way they’ll last five years and change, but all the while five out of six of the cigars I smoke will be slightly disappointing. Maybe I should smoke ’em all up, one right after the other, and enjoy them while I can. Or maybe I should just let them sit there in their beautiful humidors, remaining moist and youthful while I dry up and age. Then when I drop dead it’ll be Mary Katherine’s turn to put them up for auction.”
I said something banal about the conundrum of having one’s cake and eating it, too.
“By God,” he said. “That’s it, isn’t it? Have a cigar, Father.”
But, I demurred, surely not one of his Havanas? “You smoke it,” he said. “You earned it, Father, and you can damn well smoke it and enjoy it.”
And he picked up the phone and called his insurance agent.
Archie, I should mention, had come to regard the insurance industry as a necessary evil. He’d had trouble getting his insurers to pay claims he felt were entirely legitimate, and disliked the way they’d do anything they could to weasel out of their responsibility. So he had no compunctions about what he did now.
He insured his cigars, opting for the top-of-the-line policy, one which provided complete coverage, not even excluding losses resulting from flood, earthquake, or volcanic eruption. He declared their value at the price he had paid for them, paid the first year’s premium in advance, and went on with his life.
A little less than a year later, he smoked the last of his premium Havanas. Whereupon he filed a claim against his insurance company, explaining that all two thousand of the cigars were lost in a series of small fires.
You will probably not be surprised that the insurance company refused to pay the claim, dismissing it as frivolous. The cigars, they were quick to inform him, had been consumed in the normal fashion, and said consumption was therefore not a recoverable loss.
Archie took them to court, where the judge agreed that his claim was frivolous, but ordered the company to pay it all the same. The policy, he pointed out, did not exclude fire, and in fact specifically included it as a hazard against which Archie’s cigars were covered. Nor did it exclude as unacceptable risk the consumption of the cigars in the usual fashion. “I won,” he told me. “They warranted the cigars were insurable, they assumed the risk, and then of course they found something to whine about, the way they always do. But I stuck it to the bastards and I beat ’em in court. I thought they’d drag it out and appeal the judgment, and I was set to fight it all the way, but they caved in. Wrote me a check for the full amount of the policy, and now I can go looking for someone else with pre-Castro Havanas to sell, because I’ve developed a taste for them, let me tell you. And I’ve got you to thank, Father, for a remark you made about having your cake and eating it, too, because I smoked my cigars and I’ll have ’em, too, just as soon as I find someone who’s got ’em for sale. Of course this is a stunt you can only pull once, but once is enough, and I feel pretty good about it. The Havanas are all gone, but these Conquistadores from Honduras aren’t bad, so what the hell, Father. Have a cigar!”
“I don’t know why you were so apologetic about your story, Priest,” the soldier said. “I think it’s a fine one. I’m a pipe smoker myself, and any dismay one might conceivably feel at watching one’s tobacco go up in smoke is more than offset by the satisfaction of improving the pipe itself, as one does with each pipeful one smokes. But pipe tobacco, even very fine pipe tobacco, costs next to nothing compared to premium cigars. I can well understand the man’s initial frustration, and ultimate satisfaction.”
“An excellent story,” the doctor agreed, “but then it would be hard for me not to delight in a story in which an insurance company is hoist on its own petard. The swine have institutionalized greed, and it’s nice to see them get one in the eye.”
“I wonder,” said the policeman.
“I know what you’re thinking,” the doctor told him. “You’re thinking that this fellow Archie committed lawful fraud. You’re thinking it was his intention to make the insurance company subsidize his indulgence in costly Cuban tobacco. That’s entirely correct, but as far as I’m concerned it’s quite beside the point. Lawful fraud is an insurance company’s stock in trade, and anyway what’s sixty thousand dollars on their corporate balance sheet? I say more power to Archie, and long may he puff away.”
“All well and good,” the policeman said, “but that’s not what I was thinking.”
“It’s not?”
“Not at all,” he told the doctor, and turned to the priest. “There’s more to the story, isn’t there, Priest?”
The priest smiled. “I was wondering if anyone would think of it,” he said. “I rather thought you might, Policeman.”
“Think of what?” the soldier wanted to know.
“And what did they do?” the policeman asked. “Did they merely voice the threat? Or did they go all the way and have him arrested?”
“Arrested?” cried the doctor. “For what?”
“Arson,” the policeman said. “Didn’t he say the cigars were lost in a series of small fires? I suppose they could have charged him with two thousand counts of criminal arson.”
“Arson? They were his cigars, weren’t they?”
“As I understand it.”
“And doesn’t a man have the right to smoke his own cigars?”
“Not in a public place,” said the policeman. “But yes, in the ordinary course of events, he would have been well within his rights to smoke them. But he had so arranged matters that smoking one of those cigars amounted to intentional destruction of insured property.”
“But that’s an outrage,” the doctor said.
“Is it, Doctor?” The soldier puffed on his pipe. “You liked the story when the insurance company was hoist on its own petard. Now Archie’s hoisted even higher on a petard of his own making. Wouldn’t you say that makes it a better story?”
“A splendid story,” said the doctor, “but no less an outrage for it.”
“In point of fact,” the policeman said, “Archie could have been charged with arson even in the absence of a claim, the argument being that he forfeited the right to smoke the cigars the moment he insured them. Practically speaking, though, it was pressing the claim that triggered the criminal charge. Did he actually go to jail, Priest? Because that would seem a little excessive.”
The priest shook his head. “Charges were dropped,” he said, “when the parties reached agreement. Archie gave back the money, and both sides paid their own legal costs. And he got to tell the story on himself, and he was a good fellow, you know, and could see the humor in a situation. He said it was worth it, all things considered, and a real pre-Castro cigar was worth the money, even if you had to pay for it yourself.”
The other three nodded at the wisdom of that, and once again the room fell silent. The priest took the deck of cards in hand, looked at the others in turn, and put the cards down undealt. And then, from the fireside, the fifth man present broke the silence.
“Greed,” said the old man, in a voice like the wind in dry grass. “What a subject for conversation!”
“We’ve awakened you,” said the priest, “and for that let me apologize on everyone’s behalf.”
“It is I who should apologize,” said the old man, “for dozing intermittently during such an illuminating and entertaining conversation. But at my age the line between sleep and wakefulness is a tenuous proposition at best. One is increasingly uncertain whether one is dreaming or awake, and past and present become hopelessly entangled. I close my eyes and lose myself in thought, and all at once I am a boy. I open them and I am an old man.”