I thought about putting the rice in the microwave and mixing it with the duck sauce, but did the dishes instead. Then I emptied the wet grounds from the coffeemaker, ground some fresh beans and put them in the hopper and filled the reservoir with water. The linoleum in the kitchen was gritty so I sprayed window cleaner on it and gave it a mop. Then I got the vacuum from the hall closet and ran it over the brown wall-to-wall semi-shag.

I really do take care of the cleaning and the cooking.

Then I sat in the canvas directors chair in the living room and cycled through the 157 TV channels a few dozen times without watching anything for more than two or three minutes at a time. Then it was close to six. The sky was still bright and the air hadnt started to cool yet and Id gotten a little sweaty cleaning, so I unbuttoned my shirt and walked around the apartment. I rearranged some books on the shelves that covered two of the livingroom walls. Chev had borrowed a couple of my biographies, Houdini and Groucho, and put them on his shelf, and put some of his volumes of ReSearch on mine. I put them where they belonged. Then I stood there and flipped a few pages of one of his back issues of Gearhead and looked at the clock, but it was just a few minutes after six now. I put the magazine back and went in the bathroom and stared at the tub and thought about cleaning it. It was gonna be a biiig job and I didnt feel like it. But I thought about it for awhile.

I looked at the clock again. Just a few more minutes had passed.

It would be getting busy at the shop soon. I could walk over and give Chev a hand shooing out the kids and keeping the drunks in line. I could go down to my parking space in the driveway and uncover the 510 I bought last summer and take the boxes of parts out of the backseat and the trunk and start working on it. I could turn on my computer and play a game.