The sun was slanting through the windows by the time I finished outlining my characters, specifically the character lounging in my Queen Anne at the foot of my bed. Her robe was mine. Her slippers were mine. She sipped the last of my Johnnie blue, swirling the dregs in the old fashioned glass. My mouth tasted like I’d been eating a sweetgrass basket. Come to think of it, my head was throbbing, too.

I stood, feeling the effects of liquor and well, the appearance of an apparitioin. I swayed a little. In a flash, she was at my elbow, holding me with a strong hand.

“Let me help you to bed.”

Her voice sounded smoky, slightly geechee, through her nose, like my friends sounded when they gathered for cocktails and shrimp on John’s Island after their boats pulled up to Rutledge Carteret’s dock at his winter plantation.  I pulled away.

“Wait!” I staggered back to my desk. Scraps of paper looked like a print shop after a hurricane. I rifled through the papers, getting increasingly agitated when I didn’t find the one piece I needed. maybe I didn’t write it down. maybe I put it under something else.

“Shit. Shit. Shit!” I tossed papers on the floor and spun around. Vertigo floated in and siezed what was left of my equlibrium. A hand touched my upper arm, held it again. I rubbed my eyes with my other hand and sank back into the puffy robe. God, this was too much. I’m a fucking writer. A drunk writer, but a writer nonetheless.