METER READER : Outside Chance : Lupe Roman hustles between houses noting water consumption in Ventura. To hear him tell it, he’s got the best thing going.

Some would say that Lupe Roman settled, that he could have had something better. And maybe that’s true, but a lot of people have something better and are miserable.

Lupe certainly doesn’t figure he settled. In fact, to hear him tell it he has the best job going. You can tell he is no malcontent by watching him hustle from house to house--not walking like your workaday clock-watching deadwood, but running, running as if the numbers on the water meters will vanish if he doesn’t reach them in time.

It’s as though he is paid by the meter, which he is not. Nor does he get to knock off if he finishes his route early. “I just get an exhilaration out of moving fast,” he will say with a shrug. That’s Lupe.

Let some other cheesehead waste away at a desk, shuffling memos and invoices and suffering the slings of office politics. Lupe has been there, briefly, and it made him crazy.

Most of his working days have found him in and around warehouses. Now he jogs the meters and jots the numbers, a task that is arguably the most mundane, monotonous, mindless paying position in Ventura. Never mind, Lupe Roman is content. “I can’t remember ever doing anything I’ve enjoyed more than this,” he will say.

For two years he has earned his living as one of Ventura’s three full-time meter readers. Though he is only 44 years old and midway through his working years, he can’t foresee ever wanting to trade this job for another.

“If it was going to get old, it would be old now,” he will say. “The routes may get old, but the way I do it, it won’t get old.”

On this gray-flannel morning Lupe starts out on Madera Avenue, a nondescript street in east Ventura lined with comfortable homes a meter reader could never afford, not on a working wage of $12.23 an hour.

The houses are but a hammer throw apart, so Lupe’s reward between meters amounts to only a few strides of jogging, not enough to induce a sweat. He prefers the foothills, where the houses are spaced more generously and the terrain puts up a better fight.

The physical demands of the job don’t stretch him, though, so he works out after work--a run, a bike ride or maybe a swim. He has been known to cycle the 12 miles to work from his Oxnard home, run the day’s meter route, then cycle 20 miles on the Rincon and the 12 miles home. On weekends, triathlons beckon. Lupe answers.

“Uh oh, a variable,” he says as he approaches a meter buried somewhere beneath a fierce hedge. If he wanted variables he would have become an air traffic controller. The hedge sets him back only a few seconds. He can sniff out water meters the way aardvarks sniff out ants.

As he dislodges the cement lids of successive meter wells, deftly employing the chief tool of his trade, a thin steel rod, he gets his rhythm: Pull lid, record numbers, slide lid back, kick lid home if necessary, head for next meter. This is a far cry from, say, review files, return calls, testify at sex discrimination hearing, attend sales meeting, lunch with dweeb from Legal.

“No matter how menial the job,” he instructs his four children, “you’ve gotta do it right.”

The simplicity is what Lupe prizes. “Single line,” he calls it--moving from one point to the next in a nice, neat, uncomplicated pattern. And with no one looking over his shoulder. Labor that is even slightly more diverting is unappealing to him. Steelworkers, construction workers, even gardeners; Lupe has watched them. “There’s so much going on,” he will say. “I don’t think I could handle the confusion.”

Worse still would be anything sedentary or cerebral. As a young man, a La Colonia homeboy not long out of the army, Lupe tried a semester at Oxnard College. He couldn’t sit still. “My mind wanders too easily,” he will admit. “I’m a little better brawn-wise than brain-wise. I’d rather do something physical than something where I have to think a lot and figure it out.”

One thing Lupe has figured out, apparently, is Lupe.

From Madera he works his way to Fiesta Street, methodically gliding from meter to meter. He comes upon a meter that is choking in crabgrass. “Another variable,” he says as he wrestles with the offending vegetation. At 5 feet, 2 inches, he is always close to his work. A tall person would need a good back and a longer rod to prosper in this vocation.

The uniform consists of running shoes, white socks, navy blue shorts and a white, short-sleeved, regulation shirt that yields the only sartorial clue that Lupe is on city business. Shades obscure the dark eyes, a diamond stud adorns the left ear, stereo headphones cradle the head. The effect is casual, functional--meter reader de rigueur. Surely this is how most of the Suits at City Hall would like to dress for work, but who among them is willing to read water meters?

Dogs don’t appreciate trespassers, unfortunately, and their objections can be heard wherever Lupe ventures. Once a St. Bernard set upon him, and Lupe--who gets exhilarated moving fast--elected to flee. Beast and prey turned three cartoon-style laps around the prey’s utility truck before the dog’s owner intervened. “Don’t run!” she admonished. Owners of aggressive dogs are always full of helpful advice.

“Ma’am,” Lupe responded, “do I look like a squeeze toy to you?”

Another variable. If it weren’t for the variables, this job would be the occupational equivalent of a coma. Even a man of Lupe’s simple needs might wither in the face of overwhelming ennui. The variables, however, are invariably there to be reckoned with. Overgrowth, weather, dogs, residents, mud, broken meters, trash barrels. . . . “Trash days,” Lupe will tell you, “are the worst.”

Presently, an elderly gentleman approaches from his home. People are often moved to ask Lupe why he runs, he is such an anomaly, but that’s not it this time. The man waits until Lupe has read his meter. Then he asks, “Am I over?”

Lupe reassures the gentleman that he has not exceeded his water allocation. Lupe then runs to the next meter, and the next, and the next. Pull lid, record numbers, slide lid back, kick lid home. Lupe Roman is humming on all cylinders, doing it right and grateful for having the chance to do it at all.

* THE PREMISE: Work In Progress is an intermittent feature about local people on the job.