The Transformation of Harry Logan

Success and wealth had come young, quickly, and in some ways by accident, tragic and otherwise to Harry. For someone in his mid-thirties he’d done a great deal he knew, but he wanted to do a great deal more. Yet now he needed to deal with the fact that he could be seriously ill. It both annoyed and scared him. He needed to know more from Paul Zuckerman before he started anything new now. He hated the thought of losing the time to doing something to get his health right before he could write again. Moreover, he was essentially homeless. He knew selling was the right thing, that going back to Hamilton wasn’t possible for him, but it did leave him at sixes and sevens as to where next to hang his hat. He needed to find a place to live, a place he was comfortable. Yet he needed to know how ill he really was first and make room for that. It meant changing the contract he’d just signed too since he had to allow for a recuperative period if it was what Paul suspected and he couldn’t find a way to control it until after the book was done. Having to do all that made Harry tired just thinking about it. He wanted to write his book and sell it. He was good at that. This illness business was beginning to overwhelm him and he wasn’t even sure what was wrong yet. He loved writing and in a different way loved selling books. He didn’t want to contemplate having to do anything else and it made him angry that he might. Worse perhaps, he had to do this alone. He had no one really. He had friends surely and people who cared about him but he was without the conventional family most would have for support through something like this. He’d made such a habit of being solitary that his friends expected it of him. Yet now he needed them and he wasn’t sure how to ask for help. He never had. Except with Bill, he held his feeling close. While the loud and annoying and obsessive part of him was largely out of his private life now, it was just outside the door. Balancing any sort of private life relationship and his public life seemed beyond his meager social skills. The past two years were as happy as they were because he hadn’t tried to be more than the public man, except for the pitifully fruitless attempts to convince Anita to love him on his terms. He was enjoying his work. His relationships were facile or flirtatious. None lasted long, meant much nor did he have any expectations of them. He was uncomfortable believing that was all he was capable of but it was what seemed to work. Perhaps there could be more as Bill had said, he didn’t know. He’d have to work at it and after Anita he was disinterested or perhaps afraid to try. He shook himself from his thoughts and looked at the time. It was nearly two now. The long evening—night really—with Caroline and his attempt to sort out his thoughts left him tired. He wasn’t going to solve any of this today he knew, but it needed more thought. There were grown up decisions to be made and only he could make them.