Summary

Ira contemplates the wastefulness of the human race and the waste of his own life. He thinks about how he is fifty years old and has never accomplished anything important or even accomplished any of his dreams. He thinks about how his wife seems to take life for granted and wastes her time with pointless detours and distractions, living from second to second rather than looking to the future. He thinks it is another example of her wastefulness when she continues to care for Fiona when Fiona obviously doesn’t care about them. Ira thinks Maggie’s career is even wasteful, caring for people who forget you as soon as you leave their bedsides. He recalls how he hates being dragged into some imagined emergency by Maggie and getting involved only to discover he has been wasting his time and there was no emergency to...