“I can’t come,” he said. “It’s out of the question. I have a patient I—”

“We’re closer to the Sleep Institute than your apartment is. You can give the Institute Broun’s number, and they can call you here if there’s an emergency. I’d really like to see you, and I want to meet this new girlfriend of yours.”

Another dead silence. He said finally, “I don’t think Annie should—”

“Come with you? Of course she should. I’ll take good care of her while you talk to Broun. I’ll tell her all about your wild undergraduate days at Duke.”

“No. Tell your boss I’m sorry, but I don’t have anything to tell him about Lincoln’s dreams that he’d want to hear.”

Somewhere along in there I started to ache all over. “Then tell him that. Look,” I said, “you don’t have to come for the whole thing. The reception starts at eight. You can talk to Broun and still have this Annie person home in bed by nine watching her rapid eye movements or whatever it is you psychiatrists do. Please. If you don’t come, Broun’ll send me to Indiana in this blizzard to look up nightmares Lincoln had as a kid. Come on, for me, your old roommate.”

“I can’t stay after nine.”

“No problem,” I said. I gave him Broun’s address and hung up before he could say no, and then just sat there in front of the fire. Broun’s cat jumped on my lap and I sat there petting it, thinking I should get up and go lie down.

Broun woke me up. “How long was I asleep?” I said, rubbing my hands over my face to try and wake up. However long it had been, the aches were worse than ever.

“It’s six-thirty,” Broun said. He had changed into a dinner jacket with a pleated shirt and string tie. He still hadn’t shaved. Maybe he was trying to grow a beard. If he was, it was a terrible idea. The grayish black stubble seemed to take all the color out of his face. He looked sharp and disreputable, like an unscrupulous horsetrader. “I wouldn’t have wakened you, but I wanted you to take a look at this.” He thrust a sheaf of typewritten pages into my hand.