He was spending too much time in the car. If this were to continue, he would remember to pack granola bars and graphing paper in the glove compartment.
Richard did not like the chatter of radio and left it off, listening only to the throaty bass of his college-aged neighbor's stereo rattling window panes and mashing indistinguishable melody lines into messy piles of noise.
"You could go to the store," he said aloud. But he didn't need anything, and it was not like him to shop without aim or spend without purpose. It also was not like him to exercise indiscretion and invite strange young women to his home to watch his son. He would remain parked and ready should it all turn south--fires, intruders, disallowed parties. Harm to Phillip would reflect unfavorably on him. A judge in a black robe would shake her head while reviewing his file of psychiatric diagnoses and wonder how it had ever been allowed to pass that he should be granted charge of a child without supervision.
Thirty-two minutes had passed. The woman who lived kitty-corner from him backed out of her driveway in a red Grand Prix and waved in her rearview mirror before pulling ahead. Richard was unsure if she was waving at him behind her or at something he did not see before her, and so he did not wave back.
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