JULIAN

I was in the kitchen at six forty-three in the morning because I needed coffee.

I want to be precise about this because the precision is the thing, I needed coffee in the specific and ordinary way of a man who required caffeine in the mornings and whose kitchen contained the materials for its production, and my presence at the counter at six forty-three was the result of that need and nothing else, and the fact that I had been awake since four and had spent the intervening hours in the particular and restless way of a man who was not sleeping was a separate matter entirely and not...