KANE NEEDED ALL OF HIS CONCENTRATION TO HEAD HIS truck back toward Fairbanks.

“Eleven o’clock in the morning and drunk as a lord,” he said as he tried not to weave all over the road. “Great.”

He pulled into the big parking lot at a place called Sophie’s Station, wrestled his duffel out of the back, and forced himself to walk a mostly straight line into the lobby. The desk clerk cocked an eyebrow at him, but payment in cash in advance seemed to mollify her. Kane made it to his room, transferred the contents of the duffel into a couple of plastic laundry bags, added the clothes he was wearing, put on the hotel’s bathrobe and called for a bellman. When the bellman showed up, Kane handed him the bags and a twenty-dollar bill.

“If you get these back to me clean by six, there’s another twenty in it for you,” Kane said, or tried to say. The bellman seemed to understand him, took the money and the bags, and left.

Kane walked into the bathroom, shoved a finger down his throat, and spewed coffee and raw whiskey. When he was finished, he rinsed his mouth out with cold water, groped his way to the bed, and collapsed.

Pounding on his door woke him from a dream full of malevolent shadows with beaks and tentacles and naked dark-haired temptresses and blond heroines wearing black ribbons around their throats and not much else. He exchanged another bill for his clean laundry, then sat on the bed for a while and listened to the pounding in his head.

“Irish coffee for brunch just isn’t a good idea,” he said aloud. He rose from the bed, got into the shower and stood under water as hot as he could stand it for as long as he could stand it. He tried to think about nothing, but his mind kept wandering back to images of angels, of Charlie Simms rising and falling on top of Faith Wright, of Laurie smiling at the top of the stairs, of Slade with the two women.

Somewhere in this mess is the answer, he thought. But the answer to what? To what happened to Faith? To why Laurie sent him away? To why religion keeps calling to a man who doesn’t believe? To something, anything, that would make his life make sense?

“Well,” he said aloud, “there’s only one cure for self-pity.”

He turned off the shower, toweled off, and dressed. He put some money in his pocket and tucked the rest into his duffel, then went downstairs to the restaurant. He ate soup, salad, and steak at a table by the window, looking out at the vast darkness pierced by a few pinpricks of light. When he finished, he went into the bar and ordered a glass of Silver Gulch pilsner. The first sip spread through his body like the glow from a first kiss.

He awoke the next morning spread-eagled on his bed, fully clothed. His tongue, as someone had once written, felt like the entire Russian army had marched across it in their stocking feet. He heaved himself up and stumbled to the bathroom, where he drank water until he sloshed. He stripped off his clothes and stood under the shower again.

At least I’ll be goddamn clean on the outside, he thought.

He had no sequential memory of where he’d been or what he’d done the night before. He remembered riding in cabs and shoving bills down the cleavages of waitresses. He remembered arguing with a big woman dressed all in black about whether Bob Dylan was a better poet than Dylan Thomas. He couldn’t remember which side he’d been on. He remembered telling a couple of barflies how his wife had left him to become a hooker and how they’d clucked their tongues and suggested he buy everybody another round.

He got out of the shower and went through the motions of getting ready to face the world. He brushed his teeth and shaved and combed his hair, ate aspirin, put on clean clothes, packed his duffel, went down a flight of stairs, checked out, started his truck, and drove to the library. He spent fifteen minutes checking on something, then got back into his truck and pointed it back down the highway.

He felt, all things considered, like something that had fallen out of a tall cow’s ass.

Not bad, he thought. Two literary allusions for one hangover. Wasn’t he an educated s.o.b.

His head pounded, and it felt like there was an archery contest going on in his bowels. But his mind had that perfect clarity that often comes after a bender. And he no longer felt sorry for himself.

“Today,” he said aloud, “I feel like the avenging angel. I’m the angel of death. And I’ve got a hangover. That’s got to be bad for somebody.”

He slid a Rolling Stones CD into the player, cranked up the volume, and stepped on the gas.