Read overnight, and re-read, Robert Taylor's All we Have is Now, a riff, sort-of, on Matthew Sheppard's murder; but, whatever the impropriety of that, full of beautiful, clean, intelligent writing, as was the first book of Mr. Taylor's that I read, The Innocent.

Waking early, as I like to do, and profiting from the neat twelve-hour difference between here and Germany, I called Phil just at 7:00. We chatted aimiably for quarter of an hour or so, exchanging gossip of the good-natured sort about our mutual friends, comparing the march of the seasons: cold, windy, wet, in the 2's celsius (mid-30's fahrenheit) in Koeln; upper 80's here in the daytime, down to the 70's at night--Phil was scarcely sympathetic at my having trouble sleeping. Then, just as we were sort of winding down, while he was telling me about his voice-teaching career, I noticed a purplish slow-moving bug about 3/16's of an inch long crawling out of my bedsheets (I'd neglected for once to make my bed), and as Phil rambled on I reached over and squished it against the mattress. It squirted an amazing several drops of blood--my blood. And as I watched with mounting horror, three or four more bedbugs slowly crawled out of the mattress, which I had strippped of bedclothes and set on edge, and one by one I squished them, staining the mattress with fingerprint-sized splotches of purplish blood-my blood. Briefly, I told Phil what had been happening, and rang off. Then I pulled on some streetclothes and fled. I haven't been back to my apartment yet; not knowing what to do, sick at heart and utterly grossed out. But I must do something soon.