In the morning I padded to the kitchen in boxers, opened the kitchen window, and switched on the overhead fan. How we were going to get through the summer without air-conditioning, I did not know. It seemed to get harder each year. I didn’t think Noah noticed it as much as I did.
I got a pot of coffee underway, flipped on the radio to listen to KUDZU, sat down at the table, thought—briefly—about getting my laptop off the counter and getting back to work on my latest novel.
I wasn’t in the mood for writing. The novel wasn’t going to write itself, unfortunately, and it wasn’t going to be written that particular day either.
Our kitchen table, a cast-off from someone or other, had once sat in a garage where the legs had been chewed by a rodent. One had been chewed so badly it was missing a
