Walter hadn't blinked in hours. There was the couch, the window, the moving bay ahead, and an empty pack of Camel Filters. The beard was growing. It had been a month. He hadn't breathed in six weeks. His robe was growing weaved into his new layers of skin. He hadn't written in a month either - his longest spell since ever. There was the couch, with him on it, facing the window. To his left the other couch and easy chair sat shiva too. The record player and all Jacob's jazz records were neatly piled back. A few late nights into mornings into afternoons last week Walter had played them and played them, from Sketches of Spain to Time Out and Somethin Else, and then some. Trumpets, jazz snare, that crinkle of the air when the record is done, incessantly, eternally, from last Tuesday til Friday. The room had been a mess. Then - clean and cleaner. Even the ashtray. Then, stale mate. Robe, cigarettes, a staring match with the window and the gentle bay lifting and setting down the boats left out there. The sun crept to the west and Walter allowed it. He sat with his ass on the very edge of the couch so that it fell asleep and woke up in intervals - his legs and arms spread out, his head rolling back and then to the side, and then straight ahead, falling in and out of sleep, hoping to fly up or out or somewhere or down or to Sheol or back in time, wearing black boxer briefs and his Five Island T-shirt. It was Jacob's robe, or rather, the robe Jacob had given him years ago - tattered and frilled, frayed on every seam, still with the belt that held it all together, the belt that now had been pulled out and to the left, the only other soul on the couch. This went on for an aeon.