44

It's 5:00 a.m. I woke a few minutes ago to the familiar sound of Charlie wretching and vomiting. Charlie is my 13 year old cat. He has a sensitive stomach, and last night I fed him a brand of cat food he had never eaten. I knew he would throw it up eventually. He throws up so frequently, often in the middle of the night, that I have become attuned to the sound. When I hear it, I wake suddenly, bolt from my bed and rush to stop him from throwing up on the carpet. Only about 30% of this house is carpeted, yet he almost always throws up there, rather than the hardwood which is much easier to clean. This morning I didn't reach him in time; the area rug in the living room was his target today.

Anton Chekhov and F. Scott Fitzgerald were both 44 when they died. When I was in my 20s and living in NYC, a friend and I used to note the writers who had died at 44. There were many, though at this hour I can only recall the two. Back then, I was far from 44, and my own mortality was beyond the horizon, a rumbling so faint and distant that I heard it only in the middle of the night, as I lay awake in my bed, unable to sleep.

Gramercy Park, Upper East Side, Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn -- 2nd Avenue, Sackett Street, Court Street, 4th Place, Carroll Street, Union Street -- Manhattan again, Chelsea, W. 51st Street. These were my addresses during my 16 years in NYC. Sixteen years that ended four years ago, on a Saturday morning.

Was I ever really there? Those years seem unreal to me now, as I sit in this rented house in Boise, Idaho. It's dark outside. There is cat vomit in the living room.

I am 44 years old.

Today I will buy a notebook and start that screenplay.