Editor | personal assistant

The third day, Christene sells a crate of my old books to Half Price Books, picks up my dry cleaning, ships some packages, checks the mail, prints photos from a CD, drops another box at the thrift store, takes more trash to the transfer station, and brings me a latte. Then she sits at her laptop and starts typing my contacts into a database. I sit at my desk and write. When I leave for a classroom party at my daughter's school, I feel like part of me is still working. I'm wondering whether Christene could be a semiregular help around the house. I wonder whether she'd consider changing her name to Gerald.

After Christene leaves, I realize I've done about an hour's worth of paying work and six hours of "Action, Reference, or Trash." I'm seriously failing at this outsourcing thing. But all my drawers are organized. Would my editor, who's just e-mailed to ask for the story­ I owe him, be impressed? Nope. Would he be impressed if he knew that I stay up late turning business cards into electronic­-­address-book entries? Nein. That the next day, Saturday, I spend my free time applying "Action, Reference, or Trash" to more boxes and files, and that, in the process, I find my own birth certificate and my parents' wills? Not likely. I'm hoping that turning in this story early will make up for it.

PARADISE LOST?
About halfway through the Week of Ge­rald or his Reasonable Facsimile, I wonder whether my dream is permanently shattered. Can I go back to dreaming of the perfect personal assistant, knowing the difficulty of managing that mythical person? If not, might my psyche be permanently damaged?