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                James swept his hair nervously to the proper side of his face. He could hear the faint windchimes off his neighbor’s porch. The ching…ching………chingching nearly drove him to take them down again. The cacophony of sounds echoed in his ears. It was a welcome break from the silence, to be sure, but the incessant chiming was not symphonic at all; it was asymmetrical NOISE, which begged to be silenced by the easing of the blustery winds James had decided to work in.

                Maybe I should postpone, he thought to himself, fidgeting with his wrench in a rhythmic series of actions: one spin up, two down, one up, two down, oneuptwodownoneuptwodown. The wrench bottomed out and he found a new pattern, though it was not truly new: two up, one down, two up-

                No, I can’t postpone. Needs to be done. James walked over to his rusty red bicycle hanging upside down in his garage and took it down. Front wheel first, then the back. There was no need to rush and mess up.

                But he had done something wrong. Somewhere between the wrench spinning and the chimes chinging he had forgotten a step. He counted from the garage door to the bike. He backed up. Eleven steps. Right foot first. Go.

                Only one half second off, he started again. Eleven steps. Right foot first. Go.

                That time he had done it properly and could move on.   

                He took down the bike again. Front wheel down, swap to back, off the hook, onto the ground. He loved this bicycle, and couldn’t afford to lose it.

                Six hundred forty-eight dollars plus utilities. Groceries cost sixty-eight. Two thousand one hundred and twelve dollars towards it, his mind echoed repeatedly as he tightened the new wheel onto the sturdy, old frame of Matilda.

                He remembered Matilda. Why had he named his damn bike after her? He never could figure out why he had done so. Of course, a thing’s name doesn’t always make sense at the time. Matilda’s name had come out of the woodwork, freeing itself from the recesses of his mind like a termite struggling through the floorboards. And now he had named it, it couldn’t be un-named.

                What an interesting concept. The un-naming of things. What would life be like if he could un-name himself? A life with no name. No one would ever groan it as he recounted the steps on the sidewalk, or made sure the door was in fact closed after leaving a room. He smiled at this and hung the bike up. Took it down, hung it up. Took it dfown, hung it up. Took it down, hung it up….

                Finally having gotten it the right way with the handlebars perfectly parallel to the garage doors, he went back inside and finished his oatmeal.

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                Riding down along Route 6, his helmet strap securely in place along the line of his chin it so often rubbed raw, James happily hummed along to his earbuds. He loved the invention of wireless earphones. Not only was it far easier to bike with, but he no longer had to incessantly untangle the cords to make the perfectly straight, and make sure there were not kinks in the line. He had wasted so much money on new headphones every time there had come a knot or bend he could not fix.

                James once again thought about the irony of his profession as he stepped one foot off the right pedal, swinging it over the cracked pleather seat he needed to replace to meet his left foot on the left side of Matilda’s frame. A mechanic who had no car. Could make for a very intriguing punk song, or even an entire punk group. The Mechanic With No Car Tour, tickets on sale now. He punched in on the ancient machine, remembering to align his punchcard with the machines left arrow, rather than the right. His boss had skimped this month on getting the right size of timesheets, and therefore they didn’t fit into the machine properly.

                James strapped his too-worn toolbelt across his waist, immediately hopping underneath on of the cars in the air. Honda Accord, 2004. The transmission had gone kaput on the highway.

                At precisely 12:01, James clocked out for his lunch break mind the left arrow. He ate his ham and cheese silently, taking a break every fourth bite to sip on his mineral water. He returned to work at 12:22, taking the least amount of time afforded to him by law, so as to stack minutes against minutes. The hours added up on his paychecks. He had seen the increase when he calculated his budget by the month. Utilities always cost more in the winter, and so he therefore took nine minutes of off his lunch in order to account for the extra twenty two minutes of heat he ran per day in the coldest months of Colorado.

                He worked on rebuilding a car the boss was trying to sell. Many people found themselves without a way to get to work from January to March, as their old four-bangers had crapped out on them. Ubers and Lyfts and other rideshares were fine enough, but nothing beat owning your own vehicle.

                James clocked himself out, waving goodbye to the rest of his coworkers withing the main office building. They politely waved back and returned to the end of day accounting work. James rode home, taking the same route as he always had, sitting on the couch with yet another ham and cheese sandwich. He found it better to never turn on the oven. It was expensive to run, and his method allowed him to check whether it was running half as much as before.

                James rolled into bed at precisely 8:00 P.M., as he had read somewhere that the most valuable sleep came before midnight. He turned off his lamp the customary forty-two times for the Friday evening, and nodded off into a restless yet dreamless sleep.

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