Chekhov Manhattan

Sometimes to tell a story, simplest is best. Here's a tremendous example. Clearly our unseen protagonist is a person who understands the finer things in life: refreshment for the mind in the works of the great Russian humanist, Chekhov, and refreshment for the body in the form of a well-iced Manhattan. Looking more closely reveals that our hero is no wanton sensualist. The pages of the book have been thumbed practically through to the end. The drink has barely been sipped and, depending on the pour, may well not yet have been sampled at all. And yet the glass still retains much of its icy glaze. What might have been the sequence here? Did our reader, having nearly made his way through an entire howling Chekhovian winter, suddenly feel the chill pass through his shivering bones into his very soul? Having felt that deep chill, portent of death, might our traverser of the steppes have experienced the insistent, insurmountable need to reach out for the spirits and the shaker to construct a liquid shelter to envelope him and spare him the agony of the cutting trans Siberian gales? And now, having prepared his defense, where has he gone? Did the remedy come too late? Or has he merely wandered off to check on some unusual high-pitched emanation from another room. A harmless house sound. A beam or wall stud, creaking against the cold. Will the reader return to finish the drink? Or the drinker return to finish the text? We cannot know. We can only ... imagine.