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.