When I awoke my bedroom was dim. I could hear rain softly hitting the windows. A perfect day to sit at my desk and write and drink tea. And maybe entertain myself with thoughts of other writers in their garrets all around the world, plugging away at their hard and thankless tasks—suffering for our art, the lot of us.All I had were a couple of hours to kill before picking up Dolly and Jane at their motel in town, where they’d moved after one night with me. Not nearly enough time to develop a good case of rainy day self-pity. I put on a crinkly old yellow slicker and whistled for Sorrow, who never minded the weather or let much of anything interfere with his boundless happiness. He pounded past me, out the door and into the drive, then stopped to look both ways. He chose the lake, beating an ear-flopping lope down the sand path to the reeds, where he sniffed and searched for loons or geese—interlopers in his world—while I stood watching the dimpled lake and listening to the dripping trees behind me.
