Before leaving the house the next morning for a meeting with my lawyer, Westhaven, I checked my e-mail, and found a dozen messages from Anna, each more wrathful than the last. “I have the number of the police, and I’m not afraid to use it,” she concluded.

Police? I turned off the computer without answering her, and made my way up to see Westhaven, fearful of what I had gotten myself into.

His offices were in an art deco building in Midtown, where the security guard scanned my identification before directing me to the elevator bank, where another guard checked the credentials I had just been issued. I went through a turnstile, then ascended an elevator whose doors opened onto a nondescript office suite of understated good taste. Westhaven’s assistant met me at reception and escorted me down the labyrinthine halls to his office, which was filled with books, diplomas, furniture carefully selected to demonstrate wealth without ostentation, and otherwise all the signs and codes you want from an attorney who understands the workings of the world. That it weighs you by a scale of outward signs. That it holds these things to be who you are and what you are worth. But the signs are false. A sign is not the thing. Both the measure that scale takes and the reading it gives are a delusion. But lives are shaped by it nonetheless. I paid Westhaven’s crazy fees not because he knew more of the law than others, but because he saw more of the world through his own eyes.

Whatever problem I had he always put in clear perspective. And, as I had neared his office that day, I’d begun to have the sense of calm security I always felt there. He saw life, without cynicism or idealism, and so was a counselor of the first order. Learned, yet respectful of what he did not know. Discrete without being secretive. Shrewd but honest. Sophisticated but never condescending. Skeptical, yet open to new possibilities. Conservative without losing consideration for dreams and those who chased them. Intelligent. Modest. Intolerant of fools.

When I entered his office, he was busy at his computer, which looked out over the park, with his back turned to the door. It was eleven fifty-nine on my watch, and at noon precisely he stopped his other task and bounded energetically from his chair to greet me.

“Good morning, sir.” He extended his hand warmly to take mine in a good, reassuring grip. He favored bow ties, and spoke with an easy, Middle American manner and cadence that belied the steel in his eyes, sharp and bright as bayonets, as we chatted amiably.

“You seem well,” I said, feeling a peace of mind to be sitting there that morning.

“I had the most wonderful evening yesterday. My wife got us tickets for the entire Henry tetralogy at Cherry Lane. Last night was Henry V, and as I watched it, I could not help being struck that all true kings be measured by the hardships they face in order to know the full measure of the world.”

“But not all who know hardship become great kings.”

“It is the test of the man,” he said. “With the best of them, I like to believe all is possible no matter what misstep. Those who are not the best, we are probably wise not to be too entangled with,” he smiled, as we settled down to business, “whatever it may seem to profit us. Now, what gives me the pleasure of seeing you today.”

I explained to him the situation with Davidson, which was that I had not been paid, as he took notes.

“Interesting, I do think they owe you an additional payment,” he said, scanning a clause he had negotiated. “With your permission, I’ll contact the production company to see whether that doesn’t get things moving along. If it does not, well, it will. Let’s assume for the time being it was only an oversight they need to be reminded of.” He tapped his hand reassuringly on his desk. “However, that’s only business,” he looked at me. “May I ask you a personal question?”

“Of course.”

“How is everything else?”

“We would be here all morning if I answered that fully.”

“Well, I do not have to be in court today.”

I explained to him the e-mail I received that morning, as he nodded empathetically, although it was impossible to know what he was thinking, or searching for, as he listened intently.

“Well,” he sighed when I finished. “All of it is simply part of human nature. You shouldn’t castigate yourself. Let it wash down the stream, and try not to step in that part of the river again, which you will not if you take it seriously, as you should and do most things.”

“That is good of you to say.”

“I say it because it is true,” he replied, “and I see no earthly reason you should be less than fully happy.”

“What do you advise that I do?”

“Nothing,” he counseled. Real problems do not fire warning shots.

“And people who are unwell always tell us so, if we do not ignore what they are saying.” He looked at me, and wrote down a number on a piece of heavy, embossed stationery. “You may have missed what was being told to you. If you are open to it, you might consider a visit to Dr. Glass, who did wonders for me a few years back when I was going through a rough patch.”

“Is it obvious?”

“To others? No. To me? I know you.”

“All the same, I do not want my head shrunk.”

“Read the saints, then. They will put your mind at rest.”

I took the phone number in any case, and thanked him, agreeing to call the following week about the contract.

When I reached the street again, I reconsidered his advice and saw no reason to resist being helped. I called Dr. Glass’s office. There was an appointment that afternoon, which I took since I was already in Midtown, and I made my way across the park.

When I arrived Dr. Glass had stepped out for an emergency, but her colleague, Dr. Nando, agreed to see me instead. He listened, as I explained why I had come, and immediately suggested some pills for depression. “If Dr. Glass were here she would say it is more complex than that, and you are suffering not so much a mental reversal as enantiodromia, a mind-spirit split, and the only way to heal that is to embrace your deepest consciousness, all of which you know on some level, but which is different from comprehending. That is a question of being. However, unless — what for? — you want to go beating through the metaphysical weeds in search of the roots of your most ancient sadness — ghosts unheard a thousand years — you should just take the pills.”

I declined the pills, thinking to get another opinion before submitting to them, but accepted a prescription instead for something to help me sleep. As I folded it into my jacket pocket, I asked if there was anything else I could do besides the drugs. He told me sport, and “Dr. Glass might suggest you follow your heart, and less your head.”

I left the office, thinking as I walked of all the things they tell you as a kid, which, by the time you are an adult, are supposed to have worked their way inside of you. If they have not, or if you have discovered the things they first told you are insuperable lies, then through this rupture — between what you believed and what you have discovered to be true — everything else threatens to come tumbling out, until your entire being is up for grabs as you try to figure out what to stuff back inside and what to leave down in the dirt of the crossroads. Let the devil take it all.

Westhaven was right; I needed to take better care. He was wrong about Anna, though. The situation did not clear up when I ignored it.

On the way home from the psychiatrist I decided it would be better to get away for a while than to take the medication. I contacted Schoeller to find out if it was too late to join his bachelor party. It was not, but I would have to scramble to make plans.