Eddie called on a Wednesday.
Aditya had been expecting it — not the call specifically, but something like it.
Lindy had mentioned it casually on a Friday evening while they were eating.
"Eddie called me today", she said, scrolling through her phone without looking up. "Asked if I knew anyone who could help him sort himself out. Business stuff apparently. Maybe life stuff. Hard to tell with Eddie." She put her phone down. "I told him to call you."
Aditya looked at her.
"Why me?", he asked.
"Because you're the most put together person I know", she said simply. "And because Eddie needs someone who won't just feel sorry for him."
She picked her phone back up.
"He'll probably call", she said. "Or he won't. You know how he is."
She said it without weight or worry — the easy detachment of someone who had already done their part and moved on.
He spent three days observing from a careful distance.
Not in any dramatic way — just paying attention to what Lindy mentioned, what she didn't mention, reading the shape of what was happening through the gaps in what she said.
By Wednesday the picture was clear enough.
Eddie had stopped answering most calls. He had missed a second deadline. The book money — never going to last forever for someone with no financial discipline — was running out faster than it should have been. The connections he had made during the NZT window were thinning because he no longer had the sharpness to maintain them and people moved on quickly in New York.
He was reverting. Fully and visibly.
And then Eddie called.
Aditya looked at the name on the screen for a moment.
He answered.
"Eddie."
A pause on the other end. Longer than it should have been.
"Hey." His voice was different from the gathering. Flatter. Less assembled. "Lindy said — she said maybe you could help. With something." Another pause. "I don't even know why I'm calling. She just — she said to call."
"Where are you?", Aditya asked.
A beat.
"My apartment."
"I'll come by tomorrow morning", Aditya said. "Ten o'clock."
Silence for a moment.
"Okay", Eddie said.
He hung up.
Aditya put the phone down and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
'Here we go', he thought.
He arrived at ten exactly.
Eddie answered the door in yesterday's clothes, hair unwashed, the particular kind of hollowed out look that came not from one bad night but from several weeks of slow decline. The apartment behind him was considerably worse than the gathering. The pretence of tidiness was gone entirely — dishes, clothes, empty coffee cups, curtains still closed at ten in the morning.
He looked at Aditya with the expression of someone who was embarrassed to be seen like this and too tired to do anything about it.
"Come in", he said.
Aditya came in and sat down without commenting on the state of the apartment. He had been in worse. More importantly commenting on it would have been the wrong move entirely.
Eddie sat across from him. Didn't offer tea or coffee. Probably hadn't made any himself in days.
For a moment neither of them said anything.
Then Eddie looked at him directly — and even through the exhaustion and the decline there was something still present behind his eyes. A residual intelligence that his natural baseline could never quite extinguish entirely.
"Lindy thinks you can help me", he said. "I don't know what that means. I don't know why she thinks that." He paused. "I wrote a book. It was good. I know it was good because I remember writing it and I remember what it felt like and I cannot — " He stopped. Looked at his hands. "I cannot get back to that. I've tried everything. I can't get back to it."
Aditya watched him quietly.
'He doesn't know what he took', he thought. 'He just knows something changed him and now it's gone.'
"What did it feel like?", Aditya asked. "When you were writing it."
Eddie looked up.
"Like I could see everything", he said. "Like every thought connected to every other thought and nothing was complicated anymore. Everything was just — obvious." He shook his head slightly. "And then it stopped. And I've been trying to get back there ever since and I can't."
Silence.
Aditya let it sit for a moment.
Then he said — "What if I told you I could help you get back there."
Eddie looked at him.
Not with hope exactly. With the careful stillness of someone who had been disappointed enough times to stop reacting immediately to things that sounded like what he wanted to hear.
"How", he said.
"I have something", Aditya said simply. "The same thing you had before."
A long silence.
Eddie's eyes sharpened slightly — just slightly, the way they did when something genuinely caught his attention through the fog.
"How do you have it", he said.
"That's not the conversation we're having right now", Aditya said calmly.
Eddie looked at him for a long moment.
"What is the conversation we're having?", he asked.
"Terms", Aditya said.
He laid it out clearly and without drama.
Controlled access. Eddie would receive a specific number of tablets on a specific schedule — enough to function at a high level, not enough to go off script. In exchange Eddie would work with Aditya's researcher on a project he would explain in due course. He would not seek other sources. He would not tell anyone about the arrangement.
Eddie listened to all of it without interrupting.
When Aditya finished Eddie was quiet for a moment.
"You're not going to tell me what the project is?", he said.
"Not yet", Aditya said. "When you're functioning again."
"And if I say no?", Eddie asked.
Aditya looked at him steadily.
"Then you say no", he said. "And I leave and nothing changes."
He meant it. He wasn't going to pressure Eddie into anything. He didn't need to. The situation was doing that on its own.
Eddie looked around his apartment slowly — at the dishes, the curtains, the general wreckage of the past few weeks — and then back at Aditya.
"Okay", he said.
Just that.
Aditya nodded once.
He reached into his jacket pocket and placed two tablets on the table between them.
"Two to start", he said. "We'll talk again in three days."
Eddie looked at the tablets for a long moment.
Then he looked at Aditya.
"Who are you?", he asked. Not aggressively. Genuinely.
Aditya stood up.
"Someone who can help", he said. "That's enough for now."
He left the apartment and walked down to where the Harley was parked.
He sat on it for a moment without starting it.
The city moved around him — ordinary, indifferent, alive.
'Phase two', he thought.
He started the engine and rode home.
That evening he sat at his desk and opened his notebook.
He wrote his end of day notes.
Eddie — hit bottom as expected. Approached him. Terms agreed. Two tablets given. Three day check in scheduled.
Lindy — pointed Eddie my way practically and moved on. Consistent. Predictable.
Eiben — next move coming. Patricia meeting Friday
Bank — $585642 -- climbing.
He paused and added one line at the bottom.
He asked who I am. Good question. Not one I'll be answering anytime soon.
He closed the notebook and turned off the light.