Please, don’t breathe a word of this to my wife.

I have an unusual domestic arrangement. I live and work in Twin Falls during the week, and most weekends I go to Boise where Victoria lives.

But this weekend, she’s coming to Twin Falls. And I’m not ready.

I live in a bachelor apartment, which is to say I live in a dirty apartment. It hasn’t had a thorough cleaning since the Bush administration.

That’s the first Bush.

Mucking out my flat would require, oh, a month or so, and I don’t have the time. So what should I clean?

Or more to the point, what should I move out of sight?

There’s the carpet, of course, with its coffee stains. I could vacuum it, but it’s so dirty it would change color if I did.

There’s the refrigerator, the interior of which contains remnants of foodstuffs of which I have no independent memory.

There’s the kitchen which is, well, disgusting.

And then there’s the bathroom. Let’s not talk about the bathroom.

All of this matters because my wife is, well, fastidious. OK, she’s a neat freak.

For the five years we’ve been married, Victoria has been living under the misapprehension that I occasionally clean out my Twin Falls man cave. That’s not, strictly speaking, the truth.

My strategy in the past was to go to Costco and buy one of their 18-roses bouquets. I’d take those flowers and offer them to my beloved when she arrived, hoping Victoria wouldn’t take notice of her surroundings.

I’ve tried the dust-storm excuse too. “Honey, I left the windows open when I went to work and the darndest thing happened.”

I’ve even used the Billy Flynn technique.

Billy Flynn is a shady lawyer in Bob Fosse’s Broadway musical — and Rob Marshall’s subsequent movie — Chicago. He’s saddled with a client, Roxie Hart, who is accused of murdering her boyfriend and is painfully guilty.

So Mr. Flynn has to, um, distract the jury:

“Give ’em the old razzle dazzle

Razzle Dazzle ’em

Give ’em an act with lots of flash in it

And the reaction will be passionate

Give ’em the old hocus pocus

Bead and feather ’em

How can they see with sequins in their eyes?”

I could go Zurcher’s and get a disco ball, or to Hastings and buy a 9-foot-by-5-foot poster of Brad Paisley (Victoria’s favorite musician) and hang it up on the wall behind the couch.

Morty Seinfeld, the father of the lead character of the classic TV sitcom, used to say that the secret to selling men’s clothing was dim lighting. Maybe that would work.

Or, I could lock the door and pretend not to be home.

All of which is to say that I’m pretty much busted.

But I’m a guy, for Pete’s sake, and hence have no sense of order, much less decorum. Don’t I get a break for that?

You tell me, fellas.

By the way, there’s a pizza box sticking out from underneath your couch cushions.

Steve Crump may be reached at 735-3223. Hear him on KLIX-1310 at 8:30 a.m. on Friday.