The burning started quickly and he bent over the two-top to scoop ice out of the nearest glass he found.

"My Long Island!" Avril yelled as Viral's elbow knocked his drink into his lap. Monica leaped from her chair, sending it backwards into the knees of the server arriving with her daiquiri. Viral, his eyes closed as he splashed tap water into his face, only heard the crash.

When he opened his eyes Viral's sight was still blurry. The jalapeno juice that had caught his cornea had been flushed, for the most part, by his tear ducts. As he blinked he surveyed the room. The David Blaine Bistro, however, mandated in its handbook that the lights in the dining area remain as low as legally allowable to preserve the illusionist's brand of mystery. Everything further than 6 inches from his face was clouded by shadow. Toward the bank of televisions Viral found the light he needed to better evaluate the return of his sight. As the blur lessened he began to make-out the letters on the ticker beneath Wolf. "Dow Jones drops 2,000 points -- largest one-day fall since 2008," he read. 2,000 points? In one day? That couldn't be right. It was probably 200, Viral thought. He rubbed his left eye with his palm to clear what was left of the floaties.

Before he could finish he felt a hard tug on his elbow. He opened his eye to see Monica standing beside him. Despite its tiny volume, her head had managed to block his sight to the television showing Wolf. She must have been standing very close for her little dome to achieve that kind of perspective. Trying to look around her, he craned his neck, but the pinch on his elbow grew stronger.

"Are you okay or what?" Monica asked, in what Viral had come to recognize as her signature display of warmth.

"Yes, I think so. I can see for the most part," he said.

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"Good. Listen, take your key now and go up to your room to keep washing that eye. I'll send someone up in a bit with some kind of...I don't know, ointment or something."

"What key?" Viral began to ask, but Monica was already snapping at Avril for the packets that she'd stacked.

Viral could hear them bickering, but he tried to focus his mind on getting Monica to agree to his request. Deep within him he reached for the golden lessons of hostage negotiation camp. Be direct, they had told him. Getting what you want begins with stating the parameters of your ask.

"So about the --" Viral started but Monica was already pushing a large envelope into his hand and pulling him toward the exit.

"The room number is 314, like the complex number -- something easy for you to remember," she said.

Monica's reference to his Westinghouse science paper tickled him in his arm-pits, and he felt the succor of sleep calling him from an honest-to-God hotel bed. "314, yes," he said.

Her hands against the small of his back, Monica ushered him out of the David Blaine Bistro and Pub and toward the elevators to the third floor. "Tell Avril I'm sorry for spilling his drink," Viral said.

She shushed him and gave him a quick tap on the bum. Viral all but forgot about the assignment with which he'd been tasked. But when he heard the ring of the elevator's arrival, followed by the clunk of its revealing doors, he imagined a glimpse of Gyn's bosom heaving with disappointment. He turned to press Monica one last time to open Ankur's files, but she was already past the front-desk hurrying back to Avril.

Viral felt the familiar shame of not being picked warm the chamomile still sitting in his belly. Maybe an eye rinse and 12 hours of sleep would give him the juice he'd need to try again. Before the elevator closed, he entered and pressed the button for three. 314 was the room number to which Monica had assigned him; it was an inside joke for the two of them. Maybe she was trying to tell him something, like she had felt what he felt in the stairwell, too. Or maybe, if she'd been in the elevator with him at that very moment, she'd tell him what he imagined she really thought -- you're overthinking things, n----.