Kierk wakes up with an awareness that something is present, some source sitting at the center, warping everything like the Great Attractor, but his minimal consciousness cannot distinguish between modalities so he can only make out that there is a thing attending the stage, a giant object of unidentifiable geometry, and then as the buzzing of the phone drives him open more fully he realizes that this great central thing is pain, that there is an ice pick being driven out from behind his eyes, that everything is exploding and this pain is omnipresent, a brute fact, irreducible. He is hungover. Groping and groaning, he tries to find the buzzing sound somewhere in his bed.

It had been Carmen but he hadn’t gotten to it in time. Kierk considers going back to sleep but he knows that he can’t under this siege, his head is full of marching orders, of things going off everywhere, watercolors splashing against the bone walls.

Before calling Carmen back he’s got to do something about his head. On the way down in the elevator he’s leaning against the back of it like it’s the only solid plane in the entire universe. Then, three donuts and two coffees later and a close incident in the restroom where he ran the water and stood by the sink and debated making himself vomit just to end the nausea, he staggers out not feeling any better, and now on top of everything else he’s full of greasy donuts. Crossing through Union Square Park, Athena and her chisel go to work again. He nearly screams aloud at the sudden tap-tap burst and sits down clutching at his head on a still-wet park bench.

An old lady covered in pigeons on the opposite bench watches him as he fumbles out his buzzing phone and answers.

“What? Sorry. Hello.”

“. . .”

“Are you as hungover as I am? What the hell happened at the end of last night? You and Alex got home okay, right?”

“. . .”

“Is this a joke?”

“. . .”

“How? Where?”

“. . . . . .”

“Yeah I’m here, I’m just—fuck. Are you sure? They reported his name?”

“. . .”

“No, I don’t, I’m in a fucking, I’m in a park. How did it—”

“. . .”

“He fell onto the tracks?”

“. . .”

“Because I have the worst hangover of my life and I’m not really processing this. Are you sure this is true?”

“. . .”

“Well, yeah, okay, that’s pretty sure. And there’s not some other—”

“. . .”

“Point taken. Fuck. That’s just—”

“. . .”

“Do you need anything, are you okay?”

“. . .”

“Well, what should we do? I mean, he didn’t have anyone here, right, no relatives here. Everyone was back in India. He said he had some friends from Oxford.”

“. . .”

“Yeah, that’s fine, let’s meet up. We can get lunch. Is it weird to get lunch? It’s weird.”

“. . .”

“No, thanks for calling me. Talk to you soon.”