Finally, oilcloth, soft bristle steel brushes, and silicon lubricant, removing dust and easing friction in the moving parts of my many firearms. The most time-consuming of the tasks, and the one to which I applied the greatest effort. Not for love of the things, but out of appreciation for the fact that any one of them was significantly more likely to save my life than even my most luscious tomato plant or most vibrant Murakami acrylic.

Done with my chores by afternoon, I was able to settle into a deck chair and contemplate those tomatoes and what wine I might drink with a plate of them doused in balsamic vinegar. For a moment I considered the possibility that the tomato plant might be more vital to me than my arsenal. The further possibility that those weapons posed more danger to me than they deflected. It was not a new thought.

I pictured myself, menaced by foes, brandishing a tomato.

A phone rang in the house.

A business phone.

“Welcome to My Nightmare” as ring tone.

I allowed myself to finish my exercise in visualization, picturing a bowl filled with bullets floating in a vermilion sauce of unknown origin. It was unappetizing. No, things were as they should be with me. My values in place. Such as they were.

I went inside, letting the tinted green glass door sigh closed behind me, my ears registering the slightest change in pressure as it shut. The song continued to play, Alice Cooper telling me he thought I’d feel like I belong in his nightmare.

Right at home.

I stood at the Dadox cube table, my face reflected in the chrome surface, framed top and bottom by the eight phones laid out in neat rows of four. From this angle, looking down, the recessed ceiling lights highlighted perfectly the strip of thinning hair running back to front on top of my head.

I made a mental note to shift the table so to diminish this effect, knowing the change would set off a chain reaction of furniture moving as I tried to keep the room in balance.