NOBORU WATANABE came riding up at three. Astride his trusty cycle, he arrived with the gentle zephyrs of springtime. I caught the ominous put-put of his 500CC Honda from a quarter mile away. I stuck my head out over the edge of the balcony to see him parking next to the entrance of our apartment house and taking off his helmet. Fortunately, once he removed that white dome with its STP sticker, his outfit today approached that of a normal human being: overstarched button-down check shirt, baggy white pants, and brown loafers with tassels—though the color of the shoes and belt didn’t match.

“I think your friend from Fisherman’s Wharf is here,” I said to my sister, who was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink.

“Keep him company for a while, will you? I’ll finish up here.”

“Bad idea. I don’t know what to talk to him about. You talk to him—I’ll do this.”

“Don’t be silly. It wouldn’t look right for me to leave you in the kitchen. You talk to him.”

The bell rang, and I opened the door to find Noboru Watanabe standing there. I showed him into the living room and settled him onto the couch. His gift for the evening was a selection of Baskin-Robbins’s thirty-one flavors, but cramming it into our tiny, already-stuffed freezer took a major effort on my part. What a pain. Of all the things he could have brought, why did he have to pick ice cream?

“How about a beer?”

“No thanks. I think I’m allergic to alcohol. One glass is enough to make me sick.”

“I once drank a whole washbasinful of beer on a bet with some college friends.”

“What did it do to you?”

“My pee stank beer for two whole days. And I kept burping up this—”

“Why don’t you have Noboru look at the stereo set?” interjected my sister, who had come along in the nick of time, as if she had smelled smoke, with two glasses of orange juice.

“Good idea,” said Noboru.

“I hear you’re good with your hands,” I said.

“It’s true,” he confessed unabashedly. “I always used to enjoy making plastic models and radio kits. Anytime something broke in the house, I’d fix it. What’s wrong with the stereo?”

“No sound,” I said. I turned on the amp and put on a record to show him.

He crouched down in front of the stereo like a mongoose ready to spring. After fiddling with all the switches, he announced, “It’s definitely in the amplifier system, but it’s not internal.”

“How can you tell?”

“By the inductive method.”

Oh, sure, the inductive method.

He pulled out the mini-preamp and the power amplifier, removed all the cords connecting them, and began to examine each one. While he was busy with this, I took a can of Budweiser from the refrigerator and drank it alone.