Evening, 30 April

Henri turned away from the mirror and went to the kitchen. He stared in the ice box for a time, and at last took out some cheese. He ate his cheese with some bread and had a glass of wine. It was all he'd eaten all day. It made him feel less shaky.

Henri went back to his desk and stared down at the papers. He arranged them so that the ones he thought he might be able to make sense of were on top.

So the Anya of the poem was someone or something the Swami had been looking for when he went to the library-like place--was that description that of the library? Henri paused. When had he decided that the repository of his dream was real, that Ramanuja could go there just as Henri did? Henri sighed. He wanted very much to not be alone right now. He glanced at the clock. 11 pm. Too late to politely phone any of his ladies, even for an evening romp. 

Henri pushed back from his desk, and went to his room. He put on his evening suit, boiled shirt front with his ruby studs, and white tie. In the parlor he put on his gloves and coat then went out into the night. He would go out to a club, listen to some jazz, ask some ladies to dance, drink a little 'tea' and feel much better for it.

Evening, 29 April

When he arrived home, Henri was surprised to find the Swami's notes still clutched in his left hand. He put them on his desk. Henri carefully fed Pierre and changed his water and made sure his straw looked fresh enough. Henri's legs felt rubbery and his arms trembled with weariness. He wasn't sure how much of these feelings were physical and  how much he imagined because of his experience.

He took off his jacket and his collar, tossing the celluloid collar away and hanging the jacket on the back of a chair. The shoulders wouldn't lay right, he knew. He should hang it, but he could not make himself care. He lay down on his made bed and stared at the ceiling.

He turned the experience over in his mind. Could it have been real? Could Peter the doppelgänger actually be another person and not some horrible Freudian version of himself? In retrospect, Peter had not really looked that much like Henri. The similarities were superficial: blond hair worn slicked back with pomade, blue eyes, a narrow face... If it had been real these things could all be coincidence. He would not have been struck by such a person if he'd met him on the street. The hair was simple and fashionable in style and the man's clothes were so unremarkable as to be nearly remarkable again. Peter could be someone not a product of a drugged imagination.

He could. Did that mean he was? 

Henri pinched the bridge of his nose. He could worry about it all night, chasing himself (ha!) in circles. Nothing could prove or disprove what he had seen was imagination. He shuddered, thinking again of the horrible, cyclopean thing in the cloak. He had to stop thinking about it, had to get some sleep. He had clients in the morning.

He put his mind to thinking about his ladies, and how he would dress them. It helped him sleep, though the back of his mind still worried and fussed and hoped he would not have nightmares.

April 29

Henri woke feeling queasy and strangely tense. Fractured images of his strange nightmare kept nagging at his attention, but not making themselves clear. He shaved carefully with shaky hands, checked and on Pierre. He put some fresh water and alfalfa in the cage and then went back inside.

Henri dressed carefully, charcoal suit suitable for a hospital visit, primrose tie and orchid colored shirt, peach pocket square. He tucked pearl grey kid gloves in his pocket. The ritual of dressing calmed him as always. He smoothed his hair back with lilac-scented pomade and went downstairs to await the others.

April 25

Henri set the phone in its cradle. Were all police like Delaney or was he special somehow, a perfect blend of man and bulldog? He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. Then he went over to the shirt-front box he'd set on the floor. Pierre looked well enough in his shredded paper. Henri refreshed his dish of water and gave him some more leaves of lettuce and a tomato. He didn't know if rabbits ate tomatoes, but he was low on fresh vegetables at the moment.

First he'd phone his usual handyman to have the fellow come round and build a hutch on the balcony, then he'd go shopping for something suitable for breakfast for both him and Pierre. An extra dollar a week should keep the cleaning lady from getting too upset over cleaning the cage. After breakfast he could go down and open the shop.

He had three appointments that afternoon, pert little Mary R., elegant Daphne S. and old, fat, but rich Hannah W. As always he chatted with them easily, dressed them beautifully, and entertained them entirely. However this time he also probed delicately for information. He wasn't sure if the news was public about M. Whitcombe's death, so he couldn't start conversation sighing about that tragedy and he refused to use Millie's death similarly. That left asking his ladies about parties and other functions they'd attended and getting to M. Whitcombe (and hopefully her swami) that way.

That evening, after looking over his new hutch and--satisfied--settling Pierre into it, Henri went to the library. He was most interested in locating any of the books or essays mentioned in the ashen scraps and trying to find out what the referred to 'planks' might be. He also wanted to look at some history of clothing books and see if anything similar in shape and form to the skin hat had been worn in the past.