I made it to my feet again and brushed my teeth for half an hour or so. I stepped into the shower, turned it on. I stepped back out, removed my clothes, and got back in. By the time I finished, it was almost dawn. Three Tylenol, and I fell on top of my bed, hoping that whatever I had upchucked contained all those things that made me afraid to sleep.

I dozed on and off for the next three hours, and, thankfully, no one came to visit. Not Jenna, not the Hero, not Curtis Moore’s foot.

Sometimes, you get a break.

“I hate this,” Angie said.”I...hate...it.”

“You look like shit too,” I offered.

She gave me that look and went back to fiddling violently with the hem of her skirt in the back of the taxi.

Angie wears skirts about as often as she cooks, but I’m never disappointed. And for all her bitching, I don’t think it’s as painful for her as she pretends. Too much thought had gone into what she was wearing for the result to be anything less than “Wow.” She wore a dark cranberry silk-crepe wraparound blouse and a black suede skirt. Her long hair was brushed back off her forehead, pinned back over her left ear, but tumbling loosely along the right side of her face, cowling in slightly around her eye. When she raised her eyes from under her long lashes and looked at me, it hurt. The skirt was damn near painted on and she kept tugging at the hem to get comfortable, squirming in the backseat of the cab. The sight, all in all, wasn’t hard to take.

I was wearing a gray herringbone double-breasted with a subtle black crisscross pattern. The jacket was tight where it hugged my hips for that cosmopolitan look, but fashion designers are usually kinder to men, and all I had to do was unbutton it.

I said, “You look fine.”

“I know I look fine,” she said, scowling. “I’d like to find whoever designed this skirt, because I know it was a man, and shove him into it. Turn his ass soprano real quick.”

The cab dropped us on the corner, across from Trinity Church.