She’d fallen asleep the night before at her desk in the study and awakened from a dream of Micah Harpe, all three-hundred-plus pounds of him, crashing through the picture window and spraying her with shards of glass, slamming up against her desk and scattering papers and cigarette butts everywhere and then laughing, leering up at her, saying, troubles, counselor? and she rode that sudden wakefulness for a moment like a bucking steer. Then Alan walks in from his shower wrapped in a towel, carrying a manila file folder, drops the folder on the end table and asks her not to let him forget these briefs tomorrow, please. Sure, Alan, thanks, no problem. It took him a full two minutes to really see her there, pale as chalk, and yet another to ask what was wrong. “Dream,” she said. He glanced at the desk littered with paperwork. “You been down here all night?” She yawned, nodded. “So? How’d it go?” “So I think I’m screwed without Micah Harpe, that’s what it comes down to.”
