Cup's Corner -- part 2

From the moment he had knocked on the door at John’s house, everything had taken a turn from bad to worse. Within three minutes of his arival, the door had been slamed shut and he had stomped drunkenly off into the deep dark of the night. Like a moth he had gone to the streetlight on the corner across from Lucie’s house. A light remained on in the house, perhaps the doctor was up reading, but the house was mainly draped in the dark windows of slumber. Feeling ever more incomplete than usual, he receded into the shadows at the corner of the building by the lamp and watched the house and thought.

The night’s wet hours had seeped into his bones and the lone light at the Manette house had long been extinguished before he was startled out of reverie by the sound of a policeman on foot patrol. His mind was feeling unusually weary and he headed off toward his flat for a few hours rest before court. Yet, his mind was still full of the analysis, a rather self-revealing one, that he had untertaken as he stood on that corner across from her house. The thoughts lingered like confused phantasms accidentally left behind after death. Once home, he fell fully clothed on the bed, pulling the covers around him, and was asleep immediately. Love, dressed in the form of a young woman, flitted in and out of his dreams. She was not beautiful to look on, however, as she was wretched with starvation and poverty and was continually sorting through the garbage in order to find anything edible.

The day in court didn’t go well, lacking a solid basis of strategy on which to attack the prosecution’s well crafted assertions. He had retired for lunch to his usual haunt close to the court and a bevy of drinks with which to medicate his now severly unhappy body. The taste of those wines and brandies, although aleviating his physical discomfort, lacked the usual ardor of appreciation. The mental fog that came with them now became a real force to be fought with for the benefit of the poor young man whose future was in their hands. He had subsequently sluggishly missed a couple of good opportunities at possible weak areas of the prosecutions afternoon presentation and the day ended looking rather unhappily on this poor, and he believed innocent, young man. He was resolved that they would be better prepared to help him the next day!

That evening Sidney went for supper at a place near his house and only had a couple of glasses of wine with his dinner. He was already beginning to feel much better, the fog had cleared and the discomfort of his body had melted away during the rigors of the day. He was assembling the case again in his mind as he drank tea after dinner. Suddenly he realized the essence of the weakness in the prosecution’s case and knew how they could attack it. He paid his bill and left immediately for John’s house. That evening’s session was exceptionally fruitful and, by its end, they had planned a startling turn of events that would shatter the prosecution’s attack and prove the innocence of their client. After leaving John’s house, he found himself at the door of the wine bar without really realizing how he had gotten there. Something was impeading his feet from crossing that familiar threshold but all the rest of him was already spiritually inside. As he stood there struggling with himself, even the gates of Troy had never seen such a battle. In what seemed like a turn in the tide, he stepped back from the door. He weakly turned and walked away. With an unsteady tread, he walked home and fell on the bed, this time with the sober exhaustion resulting from the end of several months of debauchery and dissolution.
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