Actually, it is a Paris café, serving beer, coffee, delicacies and solid hot meals. Hemingway grabs a beer and heads for his favorite table on the edge of the crowd. The Fitzgerald’s wave and beeline toward him from across the room – Scott is affable, he thinks, but he can already tell Zelda is a dark mood. Downing the beer, he waves for the waiter to bring another as he sits. Scott and Zelda land beside him within seconds. Matisse steps around the corner, shuffles down the Montparnasse and raises his cane in greeting.

An hour later, they are laughing and drinking, discussing the politics of the world, the latest literary achievements of their fellows, and dreaming of a “next” none of them can rightly define. Their individual genius, heartbreaks, and confusions flow and ebb through the…