Tap-tap-tap. Samuel drummed the pen against his temple, as if this pain would somehow replace the torture laid out before him. Even worse he had to face this agony with the realization that it was self-inflicted. There was no one else to blame, not even someone on the sidelines cheering him into something he might not otherwise do or exerting pressure with quiet disapproving looks. He wondered how Jilly was doing.

Sprawled across the desk in his humble office were the contents of a file, a file he’d asked to be given him. To his dismay and delight it was his pleasure and supreme discomfort to sign an array of legal documents to procure the lease on the office next door. It was all part of a big plan, the big plan he was in the process of rapidly alternating between loving as a means of forward progress and salvation, and despising as a pipe dream and a fool’s errand. But staring at the papers and beating himself, however lightly, with a pen were not going to make the papers go away any sooner.