Words can be treacherous — and in becoming a writer you are making yourself permanently subject to their treachery . . . which would make of it a horrendously repellant career of choice — except for the fact that words can also be a great deal of fun.
One fun thing they can do, for instance, is allow you to create characters whose sheer existence is, in itself, literary homage. I wrote one story — not one in these pages — with a character who was direct homage to a character in a series of stories by Asimov, for instance.
A bit of that comes into play, in the following story: homage, although to quite a different literary character, by quite a different writer.
There once was someone who thought the main character of this story, whose name is Benny Fogg, was really, really Mark Rich.
That someone was wrong about other matters concerning me. Maybe he was right in this case, though.
Which would be a little embarrassing — but something I have no choice but accept, if true.
In any case, while I should be occupying myself with more lofty, erudite and earthshaking matters, of which there are no doubt no end, I do nurse the hope of writing more Benny Fogg adventures, someday.