“I only had one drink,” Dave said. “I didn’t say drunk. Exhausted. Dave—you didn’t know where you were.” He set a Mexican tin tray on the bedside table. On the tray coffee steamed in big brown pottery mugs. Glasses of orange juice stood beside these. In a basket, a yellow napkin covered what Dave’s nose told him were cornmeal muffins. “You didn’t know who I was. Or Amanda, either.” “Kept going too long yesterday.” Dave sat up groggily in the broad bed on the sleeping loft. The leaf-strewn skylight was open. The sky beyond it was blue. Warm air came in. He stretched cautiously, feeling reminders in his muscles of old injuries that would never quite heal. He squinted at the red LED numerals of the clock. “Jesus—noon already? How come you’re not at work?” “I’ll hang around here today.” Cecil said this too casually. In stone-washed blue jeans with many pockets, and a fragment of a white tank top, cut off just at the sternum line, he wandered around to the far side of the bed, and switched on the stereo.
