[Imagine my thoughts, seeing Trace passed out on his bed, bruised and battered and sleeping. I'd never seen him quite that bad, though it makes sense seeing as how he didn't defend himself against that homeless person. For as long as I have known him, Trace has always found some preternatural way to recover from injury, but I wonder what will happen when it finally catches up to him. He tries to hide his shaking hands from me, but it's hard to read a newspaper when you're flapping the sheets non-stop. On the few occasions I've asked, he's blamed it on the boxing, pointing to Muhammad Ali as an example. I don't understand whether he really is exhibiting the initial symptoms of Parkinson's disease, or if it is just minor delirium tremens. And I won't be able to offer him help until he wants it. Stubborn old man. -Dara]
Woke up, and it felt like someone ran a vacuum cleaner through my mouth. Everything in there was dry, tasted like leather. Sitting up, it felt like someone had my head in a vise and was squeezing it closed. I still felt awful over the red herring. You don't always get the answers right the first time around. I know you're supposed to learn and move on, get a better answer. Doesn't change that you still went the wrong direction in the first place.
Dara was waiting with my mug when I walked into the office. I took a sip, spat it out, asked her if the coffee went bad. She said it was water, same as she'd been waking me up to drink the past couple days. I couldn't even remember that she did that. She said we only had 5 days till the deadline, and I did the math without counting too much on my fingers. I was out a good 2 days.
She'd been doing research on the internets, but she hadn't found anything really new. I told her what happened, fished the paper from my pocket, told her to take them email addresses and get me something I could work with. Ran my hand over my chin, excused myself to go shave and shower and try not to look like a complete slob.
When I came back, she had some more background, and a couple of street addresses. I chugged the water, grabbed my coat. Really wished I had some coffee, but I wasn't in the mood to drink it straight [Trace means sans bourbon, in this case. -Dara].
First guy was a teaching assistant, harmless. Couldn't hardly look me in the eye and speak at the same time. He'd spent all Monday night talking to the bartender, wondering why he couldn't find no one. I told him to lower his standards.
Second guy, Ryan, now he was interesting. Couldn't wait to tell me all about Clara. Hardly opened my mouth when he started rambling. Told me all about what she looked like, how they met, how normally he wouldn't get the time of day from a dame like that. How she took him back to their place Monday night and got intimate.
I had to stop him right there to make sure, and he said he couldn't believe it himself. Nothing special about him, just looked like any other college student. I asked him if he'd ever met Clara before. He pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up, told me he'd tutored her, helped with her communications paper. I asked him how much he'd written, and he just sorta blushed, scratched his hair in the back where it stood up.
Made sense now why she was out and partying and not worrying, if he wrote the whole thing. I asked him when he left her place. He said around 3 or 4 in the morning, snuck out while she was still asleep. Which meant that she made it home that night, and I musta missed something in there.
No comments:
Post a Comment