FIVE.

    Nothing much happens.

    I listen to the radio so often that the news has become a sort of blur. Mostly I love the voices of the announcers, their perfect pitches soothing me as I change lanes next to big rigs and tricked-out Mercedes on the 101. Occasionally I am distracted from my reverie: the traffic officer reports a scantily clad woman receiving a breathalyzer on the 5 southbound and the talk show host pulls a sound bite from a Bukowski reading about a similar incident 25 years ago. A thousand baby shoes are scattered across lanes on the 134. One day I see hundreds of tiny cobalt blue bottles on the freeway but no one mentions it.

    I like to keep the radio on. It keeps me from talking to the cat too much. Oh yes, Fanchette, oh yes I say. The voices on the radio are louder than the subtle murmuring from the apartment next door and help to overcome the hum of motors in the street below. I can still hear the quickthud hammering and sizzling saws through and through. That can't be helped. The construction workers cling to the rooftop with temerity, wielding their tools in defiance of the sun, which beats on them. The building is taking perilous shape: a skeleton hunkering on the corner, bony shoulders raised to the sky.

    Nothing much happens except when things happen quickly and without warning. I expect everything to be like that; grayness and then a fury of color. Certain things seem like hints to me: clues in a complex mystery I sort in my mind, rearranging pieces like in a puzzle.