The scene: a newly drywalled basement in a newly built home in a newly created development in upscale Woodbury. Outside, it is sunny, humid, and breezy. Neighborhood children play on the brand-new lawns. Here in the basement, it is cool and dark and quiet. Total silence; no ambient sound. Except for…

Brush, brush, brush.

I am staining oak trim, together with my two co-workers, who I will call Barnabas and Luigi. We have a lot to do before four o’clock.

Barnabas really seems to wish we had a radio on to break the silence. I am glad we do not. Luigi doesn’t seem to care one way or the other.

There is no time down here. It seems as though it is always two o’clock in the afternoon, no matter how many hundreds of feet of oak baseboard and casing we go through.

Brush, brush, brush.