There is shuffling inside, and I dance about slightly, nerves twisting my intestines. Please be home please be home...How long could it take to walk across an eight by eight room?

The door slides open, and Damien, in all his morning breath glory, stands there, looking at me with a confused, tired eye. His hair is sticking up here and there, and his clothes, not the same from the night before, but close enough, are rumpled and inside out. "Hope I didn’t wake you," I say thickly, surprised at the urge to leap forward and attempt to hug him to death.

"Cherry," he says blearily, rubbing his eyes. "How’d you find out where I... oh well... never mind. Not important." He yawns. "‘Mon in," he says, and I comply.

And I thought artists were slobs... Writers must top them by at least a good fifteen percent, or at least this writer did. His whole wardrobe is on his heater, an empty chest of drawers near by. A paper blob has consumed his desk and the floor below it, most of the sheets covered by less than fifty words. Most were opening lines, or the starts of flat scenes, and in blazing red ink curling and cutting into the margins, notes from the author admonishing himself, jabbing himself, cutting his work to small, indigestible, bite sized pieces. I’m suddenly very glad I’m not a writer. There are no red squiggles on my landscapes.

Damien doesn’t seem to mind the mess he’s dragging me into... With a cavalier sweep, he clears a chair for me to sit on, and begins puttering over the hotplate with a bag of instant coffee and a teapot. I glance around for a clock. There isn’t one.

"Um, do you have the time?" I ask, and he shakes his head.

"Nah... Time’s no use to me, or to anyone, really... I mean, what’s time in a city that’s got synthetic night and day?"

I’m not quite sold on the point, but it doesn’t seem important right now. "So, you haven’t been out this morning?"

"Nah... I’m usually not even up by this hour... whatever it is. Too many suits rushing off to their cubicles. Kills the urge to write."

"Then you haven’t been to the Caper’s, huh?"

He freezes, teapot caught in mid-air. "Uh, no... why do you ask?"

"Because it’s all taped up, police style... The scuffle last night left over a baker’s dozen dead, and even more landed in the hospital. Charlie’s one of them." I wait for a reaction.

He slowly sets down the pot, fiddling with the timer and heat knob, then takes a seat on his single mattress. His face, in spite of the wild hair atop it, looks like a porcelain mask, carefully crafted, and eerily blank. He blinks once, slowly, as if moving through honey, and shakes his head.

"You don’t remember," I say, and he nods, then takes his head in his hands.

"God, Cherry... I should be able to... I remember up to going into the backroom, and then... I was just talking to Amy and..." He sighs. "This is what happens when you fall off the wagon."

"Fall off the wagon?"

"Drinking... I quit it when I got sick, but I seemed to have picked it up again... or it picked me up... But that’s what happens when you hang out in a-- what’s wrong." I was shaking my head.

"It’s not the drinking, Damien. I blacked out too, and I know I hadn’t had anything impressive that night..." He stares at me, his morning fog keeping him too far away from understanding. "I’ve been to the doctor’s. I think they’re having problems with whatever our treatment was. Where’s Amy?"

"I don’t know... Why?"

"Because she’s either in her flat, in traction, or in a body bag."

He bolts out of his bed and rushes past me, rolling my chair aside with a shove. He uncovers a digipad, frantically bringing up the call screen, and punching in her number. It flashes... flashes again... He taps on the metal desk with impatience... Flash... and she appears.

If bad morning hair could seal friendships, we three would be inseparable. Her ringlets look rung, and her make-up from the night before is smeared, bringing dark circles to her eyes and a pale, painted look to her skin. She seethes with irritation. "What?! Haven’t the two of you heard of beauty sleep?"

I cough. "Yeah, and you look like you’re short a few hours. Say, last night, do you remember---" I wince as the she throws off a rude, one fingered gesture and the screen shuts off. I guess it was the wrong thing to say. Damien glares at me. "I guess neither of you are morning people, huh?" He sighs and trudges to the shower.

"She’ll start thinking about it soon, and when she does, she’s going to call back. Next time, I think I’d like it better if she couldn’t smell me through the call. Help yourself to coffee."

I mix myself a cup and wait, picking up some of the rejected outlines and snippets off the desk. A bittersweet sunrise washes over the town, burning off the chill of night, and bringing with its glare, the warning of a hot day ahead... Not bad, I think. A bit heavy, but some people like that. I shuffle through the sheets for dialouge, my kind of stuff. I come up with this:

I’m very proud of myself. I don’t gag. Can you tell my lovelife is short a few cowboys?

Damien reenters the room in all his bath toweled glory, and he sees me rifling through his rejections. "Hey!" he protests, snatching my finds away. "I said feel free to coffee! Not snoop!"

"I wasn’t snooping! They’re everywhere. And besides, you guys ran through my paintings and I didn’t say anything, and we’ve both seen Amy dance. It was your turn." I tap the top paper, the one with the ingénue and her rider. "I thought you weren’t into cowboys."

"I’m not," he says gruffly, stuffing the paper near his printer, conveniently under another stack of papers. "That’s... It’s not something I publish. Cowboys are never in what I publish. I have some integrity."

I go to make a pithy reply, something about not eating integrity, but the digipad flashes, and we both turn to see Amy’s simper. "Guys," she says, her voice shaking, "I... I can’t remember what happened last night..." Damien I look at each other, and I’m not sure now who it was that said:

"We’ll be right there."