Wednesday morning brought a return to physical normalcy: my head hurt worse than the rest of my body. I think it was light when Lou left but I wasn’t sure. He has the capacity to drink through the night and wake up friendly and energetic. An early career as precinct captain trained him well. I couldn’t have gotten up even if I hadn’t matched him drink for drink. For the first time since the accident we had talked about the family. I had felt comfortable during the conversation, but my sleep was less benign. Lou’s goodbye awakened me from standing hunched over and picking through the splattered remains of a Volkswagen camper, and the sound of his voice filled me with an almost uncontrollable sadness. My goodbye grunt came with my teeth clenched on the pillowcase.

I forced myself out of bed and walked over to the mirror above the dresser. The shades in the room were drawn but even in the shadows some of the facial swelling seemed down. I knew there was some reason to continue inspecting my face, but it wasn’t until I was at the bathroom mirror, looking at the pale green circles under my eyes, that I remembered why. Tonight was Simon and Fran’s anniversary party.

I headed back to bed with a pit stop in the kitchen to put up coffee. I felt thrust into a tempo I used only in emergencies and disasters. I grabbed my head and felt my right temple pounding. I heard Star Trek’s Scotty shouting, “She canna take much more, Captain, she’s gonna blow.”

Everything was coming at me too fast. Snippets from the last six days danced in my mind as I tried to create order out of chaos, but the confusion just grew worse. I couldn’t push the sinister sense of Holmes’ twisted face from my memory. If Holmes authored the beating, it was possible that my unwillingness to back off the case might invite worse. On the other hand, I was probably taking my antipathy to his Volvo much too far.

If they were police. The coffee was perking so I got back out of bed and plodded into the kitchen. My range and comfort of movement had increased since yesterday. I nodded to my reflection in the coffee pot. Welcome back to the land of the ambulatory.

If they were police. It made sense to talk to Phil, and see if he could provide more information, but the idea of seeing Simon and Fran after my Aquarium visit, layered on top of an uncomfortable social situation, made any additional work unthinkable. During my second cup and third cigarette I considered blowing off the party, but knew I hadn’t recently heard from Simon because he expected to see me tonight. I could never answer the phone again if I didn’t show.

I thought I’d sleep the five or so hours before getting ready, but sleep came in snatches or not at all. That the world I had so carefully constructed over the past four years was in shambles clearly contributed to my restlessness. And I didn’t have a shrink to talk with about it.

The time crawled while I fought about whether to get out of bed. I felt guilty about not seeing Phil and promised myself I would visit tomorrow. If I stopped investigating I’d end up adding the past week to my refuse bin of unfinished business; only there wasn’t much room left.

I reached under the bed where I picked up an unfinished roach and smoked, then I got up and blasted myself with a shower. The hot water felt good as I stood there with closed eyes. The grass didn’t hurt either. As usual, there were limits to my ability to tolerate a good thing. I dried off and walked to the closet, pleased with the way my body felt. I turned on the light, opened the closet door, and thought about calling Simon or Fran to find out what to wear, but I doubted whether I could be anything but undepressed anyway. My house had its late afternoon quiet grayness and I had mine: dread about make-nice conversation with people I didn’t like, in a place where I didn’t belong. Conversations with people who were on their way up, or already there. “You manage a building? How many do you own?” No one quite knew what to make of me and who could blame them. Most of the time I didn’t know what to make of myself. I did, however, know what to make of most of them. I wondered if calling myself a detective and wearing the gun would help, but I didn’t want to risk shooting assholes just because I couldn’t stand them.

Eventually the clock’s rhythm grew stronger than my own and I prepared to leave. When I opened the door to the alley to check the weather I saw a pile of neglected newspapers. Besides an invitation to thieves it was more evidence of my life’s unsettledness; I hadn’t even been reading the sports pages. I sat down at the kitchen table and opened them. For an instant I again thought about bagging the evening’s entertainment and catching up on spring training, but the phone began to ring. I stood back up, resisted the desire to smoke more dope, grabbed my jacket, and started out of the apartment. The only thing worse than dealing with shmucks you don’t know, is dealing with shmucks that you do.