Blake: A Novel The following morning, the American journalist Griffin Reed was at his usual table in the barroom of the Ambassador Hotel, reading Le Figaro. Three archways gave way from the lobby to a local saloon that was a refuge from the tourists. The stained-glass ceiling let in colored light whose delicate hues cast a tone of respectability over the dark-suited men conducting business over croissants and cigars. The waiter brought Reed’s usual café espresso along with a Cognac. They exchanged indifferent greetings, like workers clocking in for the day. The hotel’s location on Boulevard Haussmann, near the office of American Express, had made it a convenient expat hangout where “the most brilliant authors who are writing in English today,” as the press put it, could collect their rejection slips from the New York publishers and then stop by for a restorative drink. Reed figured that’s what had befallen Clancy Hayes, who had come through the arches looking ill. Hayes, employed as a foreign correspondent for AP, had moved to Paris from Illinois to write a novel.
