“I’m telling it, aren’t I?”

Jessica lowered the mug slowly from her lips, and those intense, secretive eyes stared deep into his. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

Raphie ignored her and instead poured himself another coffee, adding two sugars, which Jessica—sensing his mood—did not protest. Then he filled a Styrofoam cup with water and shuffled off down the corridor again.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

“To finish the story,” he grumbled. “And yes, that still doesn’t answer your question.”

Man of the Moment

WAKEY WAKEY,” A SINGSONG VOICE penetrated Lou’s drunken dreams, where everything was being rerun a hundred times over: mopping Lucy’s brow; plugging Bud’s pacifier back into his mouth; holding Lucy’s hair back as she threw up; hugging Ruth close, her body relaxing against his; then back to Lucy’s heated brow again; Bud spitting out his pacifier; Ruth’s smile when he’d told her he loved her.

He smelled fresh coffee under his nose. Finally opening his eyes, he jumped back at the sight that greeted him, bumping his already throbbing head against a concrete wall.

Lou took a moment to adjust to his surroundings. Some of the visions that greeted his newly opened eyes in the morning were less comforting than others. Rather than the mug of coffee that at that moment was thrust mere inches from his nose, he was more accustomed to the sound of a toilet flush occasionally as his wake-up call. Often the wait for the mystery toilet flusher to exit the bathroom and show her face was a long and unnerving one, and, on a few occasions, Lou had taken it upon himself to disappear from the bed, and the building, before the mystery woman had the opportunity to show her face.

On this particular morning after Lou Suffern had been doubled up for the very first time, he was faced with a new scenario: a man of similar age was offering him a mug of coffee with a satisfied look on his face. This was certainly a new one for the books. Thankfully, the young man was Gabe, and Lou found, with much relief, that they were both fully dressed. With a throbbing head and the foul stench of something rotting in his mouth, he took in his surroundings.

He was on the ground. That he could tell by his proximity to the concrete and the long distance to the open paneled ceiling with its wires dripping down. The floor was hard despite the sleeping bag beneath him. He had a crick in his neck from the position to which his head had been rather unfortunately lodged. Above him, metal shelves towered to the ceiling: hard, gray, cold, and depressing, they stood like the cranes that littered Dublin’s skyline, metal invaders umpiring a developing city. To the left, the new addition of a shadeless lamp was the guilty party behind the unforgiving bright white light that wasn’t so much thrown around the room as it was aimed at Lou’s head, like a pistol in a steady hand. What was glaringly obvious was that he was in Gabe’s room in the basement. Gabe now stood over him. The sight was familiar, a mirror image of only a week ago, when Lou had stopped on the street to offer Gabe a coffee. Only this time the image was as distorted and disturbing as a mirror at a carnival, because when Lou assessed the situation, it was he who was down here, and Gabe who was up there.

“Thanks.” He took the mug from Gabe, wrapping his cold hands around the porcelain. He shivered. “It’s freezing in here.” His first words were a croak, and as he sat up he felt the weight of the world crashing down on his head, another hangover for the second morning running.

“Yeah, someone promised to bring me an electric heater, but I’m still waiting.” Gabe grinned. “Don’t worry, I hear blue lips are in this season.”

“Oh, sorry, I’ll get Alison right on that,” Lou mumbled, and sipped the black coffee. He had taken his initial wakening moment to figure out where he was. His first sip of caffeine alerted him to another problem.

“What the hell am I doing here?” he asked. He sat up properly, attentive now, and studied himself for clues. He was dressed in yesterday’s suit, a crumpled, rumpled mess with some questionable, though mostly self-explanatory, stains on his shirt, tie, and jacket. “What the hell is that smell?”

“I think it’s you,” Gabe said. “I found you around the back of the building last night throwing up into a trash bin.”

“Oh God,” Lou whispered, covering his face with his hands. Then he looked up, confused. “But last night I was home. Ruth and Lucy; they were sick. And as soon as they fell asleep, Bud woke up.” He rubbed his face tiredly. “Did I just dream that?”

“Nope,” Gabe replied chirpily, pouring hot water into his one mug of instant coffee. “You did that, too. You were very busy last night, don’t you remember?”

It took a moment for last night’s events to register with Lou, but the onslaught of memories of the previous night—the pill, the doubling up—came rushing back to his mind.

“That girl I met.” He aborted the sentence, both wanting to know the answer and not wanting to know at the same time. A part of him was sure of his innocence, while the other part of him wanted to take himself outside and beat himself up for possibly jeopardizing his marriage again. His body broke out into a cold sweat, which added a new scent to the mix.

Gabe let him stew for a while as he blew on his coffee and took tiny sips.

“Was I alone when you found me last night?” A loaded question.

“Indeed you were, very alone. Though not lonely. You were quite content to keep yourself company, mumbling about some girl,” Gabe teased him. “Seemed as though you’d lost her and couldn’t remember where you’d put her. You didn’t find her at the bottom of the bin. Though perhaps if we cleared away the layer of vomit you deposited, your cardboard cutout woman may have been revealed.”

“What did I say? I mean, don’t tell me exactly, just tell me if I said anything about—you know. Shit, if I’ve done something, Ruth will kill me.” Tears sprang into his eyes. “I’m the biggest fucking asshole.” He kicked away the blanket on top of him in frustration.

Gabe’s smile faded, respecting this side of Lou. “You didn’t do anything with her.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Lou studied him then, warily, curiously, but also with trust. Gabe seemed to be his everything right then: the only person who understood his situation, yet the one who had put him in this situation in the first place. A dangerous relationship.

“Gabe, we really have to talk about these pills. I don’t want them anymore.” He took them out of his pocket. “I mean, last night was a revelation, it really was, in so many ways.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly, remembering the sound of his drunken voice at the end of the phone. “I mean, are there two of me now?”

“No, you’re back to one again,” Gabe explained. “Fig roll?”

“But Ruth.” Lou ignored him. “She’ll wake up, and I’ll be gone. She’ll be worried. Did I just vanish?”

“She’ll wake up, and you’ll already be off to work, just like always.”

Lou absorbed that information and calmed a little. “But it’s not right; it doesn’t make sense. We really need to discuss where you got these pills from.”

“You’re right, we do,” Gabe said seriously, taking the container from Lou and stuffing them into his pocket. “But not yet. It’s not time yet.”

“What do you mean, not yet? What are you waiting for?”

“I mean it’s almost eight thirty, and you’ve got a meeting to get to before Alfred sweeps in and steals the limelight. Again.”

At that, Lou placed his coffee carelessly on a shelf and jumped to his feet, instantly forgetting his serious concerns about the peculiar pills and failing to question how on earth Gabe knew about his eight thirty meeting.