Man of the House

What interests me here is the narrator's understandable preoccupation with his own reluctance, in both motivation and behaviour -- the reader (at least, this reader) is as interested in those of the scantily referenced procurer of assistance. Absences do for the imagination what abstinence does for the addict

Incidentally, I was also struck by the use of 'cuff', suspecting there might be more than a hint of irony in its association with improvisation, given the level of 'rehearsal' implied here?