He dragged himself slowly into consciousness and attempted to get his bearings. Sofabed, dark room full of toys, small screaming children... right. Portia's house. And this time he had a room to himself... even if the sad old folding mattress hurt his back more than the floor did the night before.

He couldn't tell what time it was, but it felt pretty early. With Marlone and Jack and Portia's in-laws gone, he might finally have a chance to spend some time with Portia. But there was no hurry; she probably wasn't even up yet.

Somebody repied to the small child's complaint. "You've got fifty fucking toys lying around that you haven't even played with yet! Go play with them and let Reg enjoy his holiday!" All right, so Portia was up. Marsh pulled on some clothes and wandered upstairs.

He discovered as he staggered into the kitchen that it was much later than he'd thought: almost noon, in fact. He and Zephyr had planned to leave right after lunch. So much for hanging out with Portia. Marsh cleaned himself up in the bathroom and settled in on the living room couch to wait for Zephyr.

He didn't have to wait long. Tammy had apparently taken her request to a higher authority, because the first thing Zephyr said when he got down the stairs was, "Maybe I can talk him into building something quickly, but no promises."

"Hey, Zephyr, make brunch!" Portia suggested from the top of the stairs.

Zephyr looked up at her and looked at Tammy. "Hmmm. Should Reg eat or build a toy?" he asked.

"Build a toy!"

"You don't want him to eat? Even if I make... pancakes?"

"Pancakes!" Tammy shouted.

"Yeah, pancakes!" Brit echoed as she slid down the banister.

Zephyr shuffled into the kitchen. Marsh followed him to see if he could help, and ended up setting the dining room table. Could have been worse, he thought. Brit even offered to help him, although she waited until he was done, in impeccable nine-year-old fashion. Portia eventually joined them with the two little ones. Soon after, Reg came down with a small ruler. He instructed Zephyr to make the pancakes smaller than 15 cm in diameter.

"Not a problem, man," Zephyr said in good humor.

When Reg was served his stack, he measured the top pancake several times and muttered, "27.6 square centimeters," to himself. Then he rearranged his pancakes so that the second one was on top and repeated the task. Once he had done it again with the third pancake, he put the ruler on the table parallel to his napkin and picked up his knife and fork.

"How come Reg gets to play with his food and I don't?" asked a sticky-fingered Tammy, who had been admonished earlier to remove her plastic puppy from the table.

Zephyr laughed as he sat down with the last plateful. "I'm sure your mom would let you measure the surface area of your food if you wanted to," he said.

After brunch, Marsh tried one last time to get a moment alone with Portia. But with the four children competing for her attention, it didn't seem likely. He was exhausted anyway; he looked forward to having the next few days to unwind in his own space.

Funny, he thought, how he was only now starting to think of that underfurnished apartment as his own space. He had lived in it for almost three months now, and he was more used to despising it. It represented everything he had lost in the separation. Nancy kept the house, the kids (both custody and loyalty), the joint account, and the untarnished reputation, and he got MARZ Inc. (which belonged to him anyway) and a tiny hole of a studio apartment. It just goes to show, he thought, that the only two things that anyone really possesses are one's decisions and one's sense of self. The company was his decision - resigning from Eureka Custom and pouring his $3 million cut into MARZ had sparked the divorce, after all - and the apartment was his sense of self - sparse and insignificant, but with the promise of moving on to better things.

And after spending three days in the world of a group or nearly complete strangers, he thought it would be nice to sleep in his own couch and eat from his own collection of leftovers again. The only souvenir he'd be taking with him was the basket of cheese.

He threw his things into the travel bag and brought his luggage out to the car. After loading it into the trunk, he went back in for Zephyr's and Reg's suitcases and bags of gifts. The cat in her carrying case went onto the floor behind the driver's seat. As Zephyr helped Reg settle in behind the passenger seat, Marsh hugged Portia and the kids goodbye and climbed into the driver's seat.

Zephyr said his goodbyes and lingered in the driveway while the Muellers hurried back into the house. "Ready?" Marsh asked him after a while.

"Just a sec." Zephyr fidgeted and looked around and finally eased into the car. "Okay, now I'm ready." When Marsh reached for the ignition, Zephyr shouted, "Wait! Just... okay. Now I'm ready."

"You sure?"

"Uh. Don't ask me that, man," Zephyr said.

Marsh hid his annoyance and started the car.

"So," Zephyr said after a couple of minutes, "What do you think?"

Marsh thought for a moment. He smiled politely as he turned onto the main road. "Well," he said, "I think the past three days have been among the most stressful, humiliating days of--"

"You?! What could you possibly..." Zephyr's initially excited tirade died off quickly. Marsh glanced at him quickly to see what had affected him, but he sat slouched against the car door in his usual gloomy but unrevealing demeanor. Marsh hoped Zephyr wasn't going to mope for the entire return trip. Still, it was better than the nervous wreck he'd been on the ride there. Zephyr's emotional extremes were starting to wear thin, and that wasn't a good thing while Marsh was driving. Marsh slipped his Philadelphia Pops Orchestra CD into the stereo to calm his own nerves.

He had every right to feel harrowed, he thought - Zephyr had no right to object. But, Marsh supposed, aside from the unfamiliar dynamics between so many strangers, he really hadn't had it too badly. The Muellers had been kind to him, despite the misunderstanding about his sexual orientation. He could have easily dispelled that by talking about Nancy and the kids, but he hadn't wanted to bring them up. He wasn't sure it would have had a positive effect even if he had tried it.

He didn't know what to make of Marlone. He wanted to dislike her for Zephyr's sake, but his conscience couldn't quite justify that. She tried so hard, and she had been inordinately sweet to him. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? Her husband, Jack, came off as a pleasantly normal guy, but Marsh caught a few of what he interpreted as barbed remarks from him as well. Maybe he was just reading too much into everything. But he could see how much Zephyr resented his mother, and why. In fact, Marsh found out much more than he had ever wanted to know about Zephyr... and about himself, too.

It bothered him that after spending three days with the Muellers and DeCastles, he mostly just felt annoyed at Zephyr. What did he expect would happen if he spent the holiday with someone else's family? It bothered him that so many of the things he learned about Zephyr were pitiable... that Zephyr considered them pitiable. Marsh had admittedly been surprised to learn about Zephyr's pedal deformities, but all he felt now was anger at Zephyr's attitude. And that wasn't right. Zephyr didn't deserve his anger. If the guy wanted to act like a child, that was none of Marsh's concern. Marsh already knew that Zephyr was unreasonable; if they were going to be friends anyway, Marsh should just be his friend.

"It was nice," he told Zephyr. "I had fun. I really like Portia and her kids, and as for the rest of the family... well, everyone's family seems weird the first time you meet them."

Zephyr eyed Marsh. "You had fun?"

"Sure. I got a gift. And I learned some new stuff."

"Sure you did." Zephyr went back to gazing out the window. "Just don't tell anybody about it."

Marsh sighed. "What is there to tell?" And who, he thought to himself.

"Don't screw with me, Marsh. You know what I'm talking about. You found out things I never tell anyone. And I want you to know it doesn't change anything. I can still do my job just as well as I always could, so don't you start putting me under a microscope."

"Oh, come on, Zeph," Marsh grumbled. "I thought you knew me better than that."

"What is that supposed to mean?! I've been through this before and I know exactly what to expect! I'm tired of proving I'm as good as everyone else! I know all the assumptions people make when they find out too much about me. None of them are true, understand? So you can just forget you ever knew any of it, and don't you pull any holier-than-thou crap on me!" Zephyr raged.

"Holier than thou? Look, I honestly don't care. I don't care about your feet. I don't care about your hands. I don't care about your assumptions. I don't care about your mother. I'll tell you what I do care about... I care about MARZ. Okay, so you've got some problems; we both do. But the only thing that matters to me is that, whatever else comes up, we still put everything we've got into MARZ. Zeph, I don't care if you're a half-dead aardvark from the planet Pluto, as long as your commitment to MARZ is real." Marsh looked Zephyr in the eye for as long as was safe while driving. "The company is the only thing that's worth anything to me. I'm depending on you to be just as dedicated to it. Who or what you are doesn't matter beyond that. Does that clarify things?"

Zephyr shifted and slouched further into his seat. "I... geez, Marsh, that's a little harsh."

"Harsh? You accuse me of being judgmental when I'm not, and then when I explain why I'm not, I'm harsh." Marsh sighed, again. "I'm sorry if I'm not saying just the right things. Try to understand what I mean, even if I'm bad at saying it."

"Yeah, I... guess I have the same problem. I used to say I could piss anyone off by accident. But I was starting to think that I could avoid it just by staying aloof. I guess I just... I don't know." Zephyr slouched against the window. "This whole thing was stupid. I'm sorry."

"Me too," said Marsh. After a minute, he added, "You know, I couldn't fire you even if I wanted to. You don't have any reason to be afraid of me. You're one-fourth of the company."

"Yah," Zephyr mumbled.

"Which raises the point that between the two of us, we're only half of the company. Four people are committed to it, for better or worse. None of us has a right to ruin it for the others. Not even me."

"A four-way marriage," Zephyr added.

Marsh considered that. "Yeesh."

"Yah. Yeesh."

****

Rebuilding the wall was slow work. Reg was constantly in danger of succumbing again to the memories that were supposed to be behind the wall. He had to try to distract himself while the Other Voice regulated the rebuilding, but he had to be careful not to increase his energy level too much. It was a very fine balance. Too little energy would allow the memories to regain control; too much would burn him out.

Reg moved from activity to activity. Thinking about work wasn't enough of a diversion, but talking about it was, so he talked about his new ideas to (someone). Then he drank coffee, but that upset his chemistry. 3 helped him regain balance until the next activity. Sex with Zephyr would have increased his energy too much, so he settled for touching and listening. After that, Zephyr was asleep and Reg was afraid he wouldn't be able to distract himself sufficiently, but he was fortunate. He fell asleep before the memories overpowered him.

In the morning just brainstorming for more activities was sufficient distraction. He decided to calculate the areas of whatever two-dimensional shapes he could find, limited by the length of his pocket ruler. That worked pretty well for a while. When he got bored of that (mustn't get bored; boredom was bad) he worked on arranging his possessions in the most efficient arrangement within the confines of his suitcase. That activity was fun to perform. He coaxed 3 into her box and Zephyr led him outside.

But it got more difficult from there. Zephyr strapped him into the seat in the back of the small grey car with the automatic transmission, where he couldn't see the road very well and there was little distraction. The wall still needed significant repair. But Boss-man played some music, which normally would have annoyed Reg, but its distracting qualities were welcome now. The music changed often enough to give Reg something new to calculate without the danger of boredom. After 47:26 minutes, however, boredom began to take hold again.

Fortuitously, the Other Voice announced the completion of the wall 52 seconds later. Then began cleanup. Reg had to take stock of what he had left in his consciousness. He had to identify now. He recalibrated his internal sense of timing and then took inventory with the Other Voice's help. He stated these things to himself:

I am Reginald Ertz. This moment is 1:06:38 PM. This is now. Today is Friday. I have a left, 90 degrees counterclockwise from forward. I have a progressive sliding scale. I have a progressive graduated scale.

He went on and on, covering everything he could identify from home and work and himself, anything that appeared to be relevant. And when he reached the end, he started over.

****

Zephyr turned around in his seat and looked at Reg. Marsh couldn't see. "Do you need me to do anything?" he asked. "Should I pull over?"

Zephyr sat forward again and refastened his seat belt, looking lost. "I don't know." He slouched still further into his seat. "Maybe... maybe he's okay. I don't know."

"Has he ever done this before?"

Zephyr took a long time to answer. "No..." he said in a small voice.

Marsh changed lanes, and Reg's strange monologue ended. "I'm sure he's fine," Marsh reassured Zephyr. Mere seconds later, Reg started the monologue from the beginning.

"I don't know," Zephyr whispered.

"I'm sure he's fine."

After a while, Marsh started to find Reg's ramblings oddly soothing. Reg weirdness was so much easier to take than Zephyr weirdness, he thought.