In the too-bright restaurant there is a Mexican variety show on the plasma TV. The devil and Gene Simmons are meeting in hell. It is at the end of a day with too many blank spots in it.

These days I find my joy with a pair of tweezers, allocate my patience with the same implement. The parking lot is the most beautiful place at work. The guys from the tool and dye makers across the way take their breaks under a makeshift tin pergola. The ladies who work at the bakery next door emerge from parked cars at the end of lunch as their boyfriends drive away. Sometimes it smells like croissants and I can sit alone on the bumpers in the tandem handicapped parking spaces that noone ever uses.

Someone on the radio is talking about the mechanics of acting. I could dearly use a lesson. I am not nearly as proficient as the people I see every day.

I am driving an ungainly large car through suburban streets made strange by winter's early nightfall. I am looking for a floppy boy with dark hair. It is a small comfort that I am passing any number of them, just none the one I need to find right now, the one who has again gotten bored, or frustrated, or impatient, and caused himself to disappear. Back at home the smell of simmering green peppers and anger has made me lose my appetite. The heat comes on, and I start to sneeze. My eyes well up and I go to bed early listening to the local stumbling public radio station. If there has been an accord made in the house, I will not learn of it until morning.