where James Joyce wrote Ulysses. Oh geez, oops: I'm lying again. Sorry: you're not diners. I guess, while working there, it became second nature. Those stories, and a dozen others phonier than a character in The Catcher in the Rye, were tossed to patrons thirsty for more than a pint. I heard some of them from other servers, a few from the walking- tour and bar- crawl guides who led their keeps inside, and most from curious patrons who'd picked up the apocryphal trivia elsewhere: travel books, blogs, drunkards at other neighborhood haunts. Everyone was in on it. Here's the truth. There is an entrance at 86 Bedford, but the phrase "eighty-six it" had been in use -- and in print -- long before Chumley's opened. There was also a secret bookcase, but it went to the kitchen. And it's pretty well documented that James Joyce wrote Ulysses in Zurich and Paris. As for the young Fitzgeralds . . . I can't prove they didn't . . . and they were married in New York's St. Patrick's Cathedral . . . but still, sometimes you have to trust your gut, and mine thinks even Gatsby and Daisy wouldn't have boinked in a pub. As one of the walking- tour guides put it, "Writers are known to get drunk and embellish." No one set out to spread distortions. It started innocently. In fact, I believed the tales myself until a fellow employee laughed at one of my questions and asked, "You