If you're the sort of person who is only interested in the outside of things, or stories about people who change the world, you should stop reading now. This is a story about the inside of things, and about a man who decided not to change the world.

Still with me? Okay, the first step is to imagine this man in his natural environment.

"Okay, pull 'er in. Further. Further. Stop." Frank Sloan held up both palms to underscore his command, even though the silver Volvo had already eased to a halt. "Full detailing today?"

Gerald Aster slid from behind the wheel. I never learned Aster's story, but judging from the scars on his wrists and the limp, it's a good one. He went to sit in the waiting room while Frank cleaned his car top to bottom. He was in no hurry; he had a book.

Frank wasn't in a hurry either, but he was already in motion, pulling the clipboard from the workbench and fixing a new checklist in it. Frank had been detailing cars for over a decade. He still used the checklist.

Frank wasn't slow; he'd written the checklist. Frank was, above all things, methodical. He was detailed-oriented, a fact he often worked into a joke about how that was good, because he was in the detailing business. It wasn't a good joke. I didn't say it was. Frank isn't a funny man. But almost everyone laughed when he said it, because Frank delivered the line with such zest.

Zest kept Frank from being dull. It redeemed him, giving his methodical soul a sort of immanence. This combination had made him hideously bad at dating, but good at marriage. True, his history left him forever convinced that he didn't deserve his wife, but since Kathy believed the same about him, it worked out okay.

More to the point for this story, the combination also made him a fine auto detailer. By the time you'd worked your way through my digressions, Frank had already worked through stage one of the checklist, the external inventory. He'd made a note to ask Aster if he wanted Frank to contact a body shop about the ding in the left rear fender. Frank isn't cool, but he is nice. He does referrals at no charge, and doesn't expect to be thanked. I know!

Stage two: internal inventory. Trust plays a big part here. Whoever Aster was, with his slender book with the captivatingly foreign letters on its spine, he trusted Frank to go through his glove compartment, look under his car seats, shake out the rugs, sort the papers in the door pockets, and in general examine all aspects of his traveling personal life. I wouldn't be comfortable with that either. I mean, have you seen my car?

Most detailing breaks down where the stages of the process meet. Is the trunk part of an internal or external inventory? What about the wheel well where the spare rests? Detritus accumulates daily. Do you vacuum places people will never see? Do you polish them? Bounce, inspect, and re-inflate the spare? Most people don't, not even most professional auto detailers.

Yes, you're ahead of me. You already know Frank does, and that he has a separate section on the checklist for the trunk. He inspected each of Aster's keys for wear or damage, then opened the trunk.

Mr. Aster had three shopping bags in the trunk. Their contents cost more than my house, but they don't enter into this story at all. Since the bags were his responsibility, but not his business, Frank unfurled a square of carpet and set them safely to the side, where they rested while Frank's soul was torn asunder.

He didn't see it coming. He'd taken out the trunk lining and hung it on the rack, to vacuum after inspecting the spare and cleaning the well.

Frank removed the pressboard support covering the spare. He set it where it wouldn't get damp or dirty. He turned to remove the crowbar that crossed the spare like a decoration on a coat of arms.

Or what he thought was the crowbar. When you think about it, any confusion on Frank's side is pretty unexpected. By the time you've been detailing cars for ten years, you know a crowbar when you see one. So imagine it this way: when Frank reached for it, he was sure it was it was a crowbar. When he picked it up, it was a sword.

Frank know cars, and Frank knew crowbars. But he didn't know swords. He held it angled awkwardly in front of him, just above his little pot belly and pointed at the shelf that held the wax and buffers.

Frank looked around. He was alone. He looked through the glass half wall into the waiting room. No one was looking at him. And he had a sword in his hands.

Hands. He'd lifted the sword with one hand, but somehow his left hand had joined his right, wrapping around its hilt with tactile avarice.

Frank touched his wife gently and often. They both liked that, but it was nothing like this. His palms were dry and roughened from regular exposure to cleaning products. They kissed the wirecoil hilt, molding to its every curve with a lecherous flexibility. Did the heat flow from the sword to Frank's hands, or from his hands to the sword?

I don't know. That cup has passed me by. I know what happened, but I never touched the sword myself. Never felt myself openly possessed by a hunger for domination. Never felt the hand of fate.

Consider Arthur. No, there hasn't been an Arthur in this story, the Arthur. The King. There really has only ever been one. Arthur was meant to be king of Britain. But he had tutors. Mentors. A mission. Frank had an auto detailing business in Longview Washington, a full schedule of cars to clean, and a ranch house in a quiet neighborhood. And he had the sword of destiny in his hands.

Frank glanced at the clock. Barely visible through the blood haze coloring his vision, it still saved him. 10:43. He was behind schedule. Frank walked over to the square of carpet dedicated to keeping other people's possessions safe. He set the sword down.

Have your hands ever been hungry? Have they been empty, so empty they growled like the belly of a poor man? Maybe, if you've lost a child to an accident or disease. If so, then you know what Frank's hands were like now, as he turned, trembling, to take the spare from the trunk. He was afraid of it, because of what had happened when he touched the crowbar, but the tire was the next thing on his checklist. Frank lifted it out of the car and began his inspection.

Cold rubber is neither gold or destiny. Frank's hands spasmed in painful rejection of the substitution. They fumbled, momentarily more like flippers than hands. Frank checked the tire's inflation and tremblingly inspected its rim.

The tremors worsened as Frank vacuumed the well. When he picked up a can of soft polish for the metal portions of the interior, he dropped it. It rolled to the edge of the carpet. Where the sword stood, angled casually to the side like a Louisville Slugger.

As if. It angled arrogantly, an aristocrat among Americans. It angled in languid menace, a prostitute in a city of soldiers. Temptation flashed down its hammered length to dance upon its razored edge. Frank picked up the can of soft polish and turned back towards the car.

It's hard to know what felt worse for Frank. Was it worse when he turned his back on the sword, knowing it stood there, angling for him? Or was it worse completing each task on his detailing checklist? Most days, completing tasks gave Frank a sense of warmth and satisfaction. There were fourteen items on this portion of Frank's checklist, and every time he finished one, he was one item closer to having to touch the sword again. Polish wheel well, check. Vacuum interior rug, check. Check. Check. Check.

Frank felt like he had been cleaning this car his entire life. Frank felt like time was just racing along. Neither feeling was accurate. Frank kept to his schedule, and in less than an hour, even leaving time for the trunk to air dry, it was time to put things back in the trunk.

The spare's support rack went in smoothly. Dully, even. Next came the spare. Frank gave the tire its final ritual bounce. It was, he feared, in perfect shape and ready to be returned to the well.

It was time for the crowbar. How far can three and a half steps be? An eternity. How much can one both want and fear to take those steps? I pray to God I'll never know.

Frank knows. He took one step. He took a second. A third. The little half step that brought his toes to the edge of the carpet. He reached for the crowbar, then picked up a towel instead. "Got to make sure my hands are clean," he said. His words hung in the air like the blatant lie that they were. Frank turned to see if anyone had heard him.

Was it better to be reassured that he was alone with his temptation? Or would common embarrassment have dulled the edge of lust? Again, I don't know.

I do know that Frank reached out to pick up the crowbar like it was a common crowbar. There were no further hesitations. He just reached, lifted, and moaned.

The crowbar was once again a sword. No, the sword. If there is just one Arthur, there is just one sword. This was the sword, the one found sheathed in rock or glimpsed backlit and shimmering as it is held aloft by the ivory arm of a water nymph.

It's the sword we all see ourselves holding when we dream of winning the day, getting the girl, and conquering the world. Except that instead of imagining himself holding it, as he had when he'd whipped twigs through the air as a boy, Frank held it in his hand.

And it held him, transfixed in an aching, luminous, vision of conquest. Frank swung the sword through the air. He could feel the edge bite the air, feel its disappointment that the air was not a neck. He imagined- no. He knew what it would be like to ride to victory. He felt the jar as sword thunked into the body of an enemy, the rasping hesitation as he pulled it from between two vertebrae. He felt the sword warm with the blood it spilled. Frank held it aloft, and watched the blood hang on the point, run down the blade, and drip to the garage floor.

With the sword above his head, Frank heard the cheers of an adoring crowd. They loved him for freeing them. They thanked him for feeding their need for vengeance. They worshipped him for being better than they were- and the eyes of more than one maiden in the crowd offered Frank a reward. He was no longer just Frank, he was Frank the Great. Frank the First. The Frank.

At ease with his greatness, Frank let out a great sigh and allowed the sword fall to his side. More blood ran along its length, dripping to form a small pool on his otherwise immaculate garage floor. "Have to clean that up before I take the throne," he thought.

Have to clean that up. Was salvation ever attained in more prosaic tones? I think not. "Have to clean that up" is a tedious, meticulous, boring phrase. It was, and I mean this as praise, not insult, also Frank's inner self expressing itself. Frank was not just detail-oriented, being detail-oriented was Frank. How much blood did Hannibal shed? How about Genghis? Or even Charlemagne? Rivers.

How much would it have mattered that there was a dried smear on a garage floor in Longview Washington when Frank was King? Little. Would it matter at all? No. No, it wouldn't, except it was Frank's responsibility. He had pledged his word- he had pledged his self- to do his job. It was not destiny. It was something duller, but infinitely finer. It was responsibility.

To clean the pool of blood from the floor, which was no larger than a Kennedy half dollar, Frank had to put the sword down.

There was only one place for it in the garage. Frank turned and walked back to the trunk of Mr. Aster's Volvo. He placed the sword in the crowbar's place atop the spare. It didn't quite fit, and it wasn't happy about being there. Frank had to jostle it to get it to stay. Now when he touched the sword, he didn't feel lust or glory.

When Frank and Kathy had been dating, they'd gone for a swim in a mountain stream down in Oregon. She'd already entered the water and he stepped back from the stream for a minute to watch her. That would have been fine, but one foot landed in a beer hive made from the mud of the river bank. Frank's right leg caught fire when a dozen bees stung him at once.

Now when he touched the sword, instead of the hungry glory that had been his, Frank felt that burning again. This time it was in his hands, and there were no stingers to put baking soda on. They just stung.

They stung as he wet a sponge and cleaned the garage floor. They stung as he rinsed the blood from the sponge. They stung every second as he finished the trunk, then finished detailing the car.

Frank's hands stung as he prepared the paperwork for Mr. Aster indicating precisely what was done to his car.

Aster glanced at the checklist, then limped around the car. "Very nice work indeed."

"Thank you."

"Anything out of the ordinary?" Aster asked. His eyes flicked to the moist patch on the floor, to Frank's hands, then to his eyes.

"Nothing to speak of."

"Good," Aster said. "I like your work. Will you be able to do it all over again in six months time?"

Frank glanced at his hands. Anything that hurts that much should leave a mark, but his hands were just his hands. He was the only one who knew about the fire. "Of course," Frank said. "We'll make you an appointment here, and I'll detail the car again in six months."

Aster nodded, got into his car, and left. Frank waved one burning hand, and went on with his routine. And that's really the end of the story. Isn't that the dullest thing you've ever heard? I thought so. Now, if you're one of those people I warned not to read the story early on, you're probably still here. Nobody likes to admit they are only interested in the outsides of things. So if you read on, and found that I really was telling the truth- nothing happens, and this guy really is a boring everyday slob-here's a reward for you to make you feel better about soldiering on.

Frank first detailed the car with the sword in the trunk over seven years ago. Mr. Aster kept his appointment six months later. He's been in every six months since that time. The sword is still in the trunk. Frank has tried wearing gloves, and he's tried wrapping his hands with electrical tape. What he hasn't done is asking anyone else to detail that car for him.

When I ask him about it, all he ever says is "I wouldn't feel right asking another man to do work I wouldn't do myself."

Can you imagine anything stupider? To torture yourself every six months? To know you could get out of it, but do it anyway? To know you could take a grander reward, but not do it? Bah.

Except. Except. Except. Except for three things. First, if Frank takes the sword, Frank changes the world, and it's hard enough just to maintain things. Second, Frank knows who he is, and taking the sword would change him. Third, whether it is due to a magic sword or not, men like Frank pass up easy conquests every day. Remember those shopping bags? Now think about the people you know who have passed up great, wonderful, impressive things because they weren't theirs. Shoot, you might even have done it yourself.

Now ask yourself, you who is interested in the outside of things and changing the world, where is the magic really found? Is it in the sword? Or is it found on the inside, where you keep your word? I'll leave that as a question for you and every working man in the world to answer, every goddamn routine, boring, working day of the year.

The End

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