( First, a brief meeting )

Some days Alan can work until dusk without so much as noticing the gradual dissipation of light. Today, if he's not careful, he finds himself looking expectantly out the window, as if night might refuse to fall without an audience there to watch.

[following this]


Timothy Freilicher's arrest, Jose Rosario, Jr's corpse, and the months of frustrated effort as well as the brief burst of luck leading to the production of the two miss the Globe's morning edition. The paper Alan unfolds five minutes past nine contains (save his horoscope, which goes unread) not a hint of the day to come. The city, looking pale and in need of coffee in the weak morning light, is likewise uncommunicative.

Right up until eleven thirty, the day's most interesting feature is the challenge implicit in Paul's remark that a copy of the morning paper is neither a shield with which to repel the tedium of staff meetings nor a tent behind which to hide.

( His thoughts are meandering toward lunch when Shirley raps a rhythm he pegs as I-know-something-you-don't-know on the frame of his door. )