He was awake before I was, feeding thoughts of the novel into me.

“Ready?” DeeMichael shuffled the deck.

“No,” I answered.

DeeMichael proferred the cards. “Draw three cards.”

“I haven’t had my coffee yet.”

“Just draw three cards.”

“Why three?”

“Because I have three in mind.” DeeMichael shuffled and then he cut the deck. “Three is a lucky number, always in threes, all that crap.”

“Can’t it wait until after I’ve peed, drank some water and made coffee?”

“Jesus H, you could have been done already. Will you pick three cards? You’re ruining the mood.”

I cursed him a dozen ways that I’d picked up as a senior NCO and selected three from the fanned out offering.

“Let’s see them,” he said, putting his hand out.

Sulking and dispirited, I replied, “You know what they are.”

DeeMichael beamed. “You’re right, I do.”

I didn’t want to ask but felt the tableau wouldn’t end until I did. “What are they?”

“We’ll finished the card started yesterday, and then — ”

“The one called ‘You’?”

“Did we start another one? Fuck, no. So it has to be that one, right?”

“You say so.”

“Then we’ll work on ‘Untrue’.”

I knew he was excited about ‘Untrue’. Bleedover between the writing and real world had informed me about what was going on. “What’s the third one?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It’s about the Monad, but that’s all I know. Come on, get up, get dressed and take Tucker to the vet so we can start writing like crazy. Hurry, you’re burning energy.”

Sighing, I nodded. “Right. Time to go write like crazy, at least one more time.”