MY FIRST encounter with Christopher Hitchens was a memorable one. It was February 2004, my girlfriend and I were in the elevator at Hitchens’s Dupont Circle apartment building. We’d come from a swank affair at the Hilton hotel nearby, and had been invited to an after party in the apartment of a dear friend and old colleague. My friend had already informed me that Hitchens lived in his building, reporting with evident pride that he’d met and become friends with the famous journalist. Which only made sense, because my friend is unbelievably well-read and has an obsession with single-malt scotch. One of Hitch’s great talents was that he was an intellectual truffle pig, rooting out anyone in his proximity with an expansive brain or capacious liquor cabinet. Preferably both.
In any event, there he was in the elevator, in the flesh. Since my mother had handed me a copy of No One Left to Lie To as an undergraduate, Hitchens had been one of my favorite writers. Momentarily stunned, I had to compose myself before quavering, “Excuse me, but are you Christopher Hitchens?” Hitchens seemed a bit startled and wary. “You know who I am?” he ventured.
