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because the first of the year, as I recalled, had come on a Monday. So if I had had to guess, I would have made it Thursday, January 19. But I didn’t have to guess because it didn’t matter.
    I ate my eggs and sausages, made a cup of instant coffee, drank it, washed my dishes in the ocean, dried them, put them away. I added the empty egg carton to the fire and let it burn itself out. There was a list tacked to the inside of my cabin door, and I read it through, as I did every morning. It was the same list I had made on the plane, the Do Nothing list; I had had to copy it over several times, but I hadn’t changed a word, as though the precise phrasing of the original was catechismic in importance.
    I read a chapter in my current book while my breakfast got itself digested. It was a paperback, The Lives of the Great Composers. This morning I read about Robert Schumann. When he was 34 he developed a profound distaste for high places, for all metal instruments (including keys), and for drugs. He also constantly imagined that he heard the note “A” sounding in his ears. This went on for two years. I learned other things about him, none of which I remembered for very long.
    I put The Lives of the Great Composers back on top of the portable fridge. It was just as calm and clear outside as before, and warmer. I ran three laps around the island, which was about the size of a football field with the corners rounded. I usually ran six laps, which I figured added up to about a mile, and I usually did pushups and sit-ups and such, but on rowing days I limited myself to three laps. My island was a good half mile from Mushroom Key, and that much rowing makes up for no end of sit-ups and pushups and arm-waving.
    I sprinted the last hundred yards or so and wasn’t even breathing hard when I finished. I cooled off in the ocean dried off in the sun, and did all the things I had to do before my trip to the store. My money belt was buried ten yards behind the cabin. I dug it up, brushed the sand off, fastened it around me. I put on underwear and a shirt and dungarees and socks and shoes. I dressed for trips to the store and when the weather turned cold, which it rarely did; at this rate my few clothes would last forever. I took a quick inventory, baited a line with some leftover strips of yesterday’s fish, and finally, with the inside of the frying pan for a mirror, gave my hair and beard a rough trim. There was no point in shaving and no place to get a haircut, but I tried to keep myself looking as little like a wild man as possible. Attracting undue attention was not consistent with doing nothing.
    The boat was small, flat-bottomed, and red. I tossed the oars into it, dragged it across the sand and into the water.
    “Dozen aigs and what-all else?” Clinton Mackey said this to me once every six days, never altering a syllable. This was one of the things I liked most about him. There were around two hundred persons living on Mushroom Key and the surrounding small islands, but it was a rare day when I spoke to anyone but Clint or his wife or daughter. When a man has only one conversation a week, it ought to be safe and predictable.
    “Dozen eggs to start,” I said.
    “A dozen is twelve, fresh from the hens.” He put the carton on the counter. “I swear you must never get out of the sun. Must shine at night where you are, sun night and day. You get any darker, I won’t have a choice of serving you or not. You get any darker, federal government’s gone tell me I got to serve you.”
    This, too, was an invariable part of our conversation.
    “Sausages? Two pounds?”
    “Right.”
    “Oranges?”
    “Still have plenty.”
    “Cooking oil?”
    “Got some.”
    “Cigarettes? Hell no, you don’t smoke. ‘Less you started since I saw you last?”
    “Not yet, Clint.”
    “Cause the Lord said no,” he said. When I had first started coming to the store, Clinton Mackey had tried discussing current events with me. Politics, inflation,