He awoke to the sound of the very last drops of a passing storm pattering against the small, single-pane window above the washer and the dryer that stood sequestered across from him in an alcove on the other side of the finished basement. "Rain," he whispered in the half-choked voice of morning. He lay motionless for a few moments trying to hold the remnants of his dream in memory, but they slipped farther into his unconscious with each exhalation. And so he lifted himself up on his elbows and, with one hand, rubbed each eye into focus. By the time he was up and dressed and standing in the kitchen with a small glass of water in one hand and the very end of a loaf of bread, just recently stale, with a thick smear of peanut butter across in the other, the sun was out and shining, the needle on the dial thermometer was climbing just past 80, and faint wisps of steam hung, nearly motionless, above the shrinking puddles of water that had collected in the low points of the driveway.
He passed an idle hour by listlessly drifting from one room to the next and back again. "Here I am," he thought to himself, "Home..."
