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“You don’t owe me anything, Ef.”

“Only my life, baby.”

I stood up from the small table and walked toward the front door of the coffee emporium. People, I felt, were staring at me. I think I was able to walk in a fairly sober fashion but the liquor was getting stronger.

“Maybe so,” I said into the tiny receiver. “But you kept me from crash and burn whenever I called. I needed a woman to be there and there you were.”

She was silent for a moment or two, and I was trying my best to walk a straight line up Eighth. People were moving in sober gaits all around me. I was worried that some cop might see me and bring me down.

“Where are you?” Effy asked.

“Nowhere.”

“Do you need me to come there with you?”

“I love you, Effy” was all I could say.

She gasped over the airwaves and into my soul.

Damn, I was drunk.

It took four blocks to explain that I wanted a new relationship; that I loved her and maybe we could be friends. She told me that at first I saved her from prosecution and then, when I let her in when I was down, she was able to use me like a life raft through her own troubles. Together we had navigated into safer waters.

We disconnected when I got to the front door of my hideaway.

Ensconced in the apartment, I poured another glass of cognac and drank it at the sink. Then I served up another and went to sit on the single-mattress cot that passed for a bed.

The ceiling of the underground room was low. I could feel it pressing down on my head. The room was spinning, but that wasn’t too serious a problem; I could ride that whirlwind too. But there was a certainty in my mind that I was going to die in the morning or maybe the day after. Someone was going to kill me.

I remember feeling nauseous. I thought I was going to throw up and tried to lurch from the bed. But instead I fell sideways into an unconsciousness that contained entire scenarios of me shot, killed, drained of blood, and bunged into a coffin.

The ringer on the temp phone started at a note in the lower register and then climbed higher and higher for sixteen tones. The last, and longest, chime was a little piercing. I know the musical scheme so well because it rang three times somewhere after 4:00 a.m.

The first series of notes reminded me of a stream making its way across the floor of my underground cave. There were fish in there and a mountain lion somewhere above looking to take me down if I tried to drink water.

The second call was a shimmering wall of lights that resonated with the tinkling sounds.

Halfway through the third attempt I sat up straight, snagged the phone from the floor, and cried, “Who the fuck is it?”

“How’s it comin’, King?” Melquarth Frost murmured in my ear.

“Mel.”

“You okay?”

“That might be a little optimistic. But I’m not dead.”

“How’s the room?”

“I expect a big red devil to bang the door down and take my soul any minute. Why are you calling me?”

“You the one texted me your number.”

“It couldn’t wait till the sun came up?”

“I was working on this spring-driven wooden clock from the seventeen hundreds when it hit me.”

“The clock hit you?” I was just talking, trying to keep from throwing up.