In the absence of cats, first, check the windows and door to the fire escape. Chant Simone, Jean-Paul, Simone, Jean-Paul, while flinging open the bedroom closet and shoving aside kitchen chairs.

Try to think what he would do in the absence of cats. Pry lids from cans of tuna. Roll a ball of yarn in front of the TV. In the sudden, inexplicable absence of cat toys, shake a box of wooden matches.

Pace the kitchen’s chipped tile while your armpits dampen. Unbutton your white coat. Flatten your body against the carpet and burrow halfway under the bed. Press speed dial 4, stop, then say, “F it,” and hit the call button; when it goes straight to his voicemail (wtf?), leave a frenzied, rambling message about the absence of cats.

In the absence of cats, try to remember the last time you noticed their presence: last night—no, this morning—lounging on your pathology text while he sermonized about the superiority of Canadian universal healthcare. Shove the book from the futon. Obviously, no cats.

Feel your chest tighten in the absence of cats. Rub your fingers together, say, Here, kitty, kitty, kitty, and other generic things you imagine people say when faced with the absence of cats.

Dial his number again. Try their names again.
​
Begin to notice the absence of other things: the wireless printer, the framed Matisse, two entire shelves’ worth of Continental philosophy. The phone hits the carpet. Rush back to the closet. No Converse or cashmere sweater, no sock monkey tie dangling from the shelf. Stagger now, stricken, to the bathroom. The Scope. The beard oil. Half the washcloths. And there, under the window, confirmation of the absence of cats: the absence of their box.

The bull always tries, every fight, to find that safe spot in the sand that he believes will provide courage or some kind of dusty comfort when the time comes: the querencia. This place where one can be grateful: at least you’re not a donkey painted to look like a zebra in Tijuana. The bull paws the ground until it looks like that stretch on the sofa where the cloth is crushed, where one always goes to sit down and read a book. Around five o’clock in the afternoon. A light bulb flickers off to the side, a flash of sequins, almost. But it’s not enough to get up for and fix, not yet. One more moment, please. Because, for a moment, in this fine blank space, triumph seems possible—it’s happened before (bulls have been pardoned for their bravery; bulls have killed the matador). And it’s happened more than once. So maybe. But then something else appears, occurs, and one is forced out, all of sudden, to another place in the world, like leaving Arles for Seville, even though the sand is similar all over the ring: we know this. And so does the bull: you can’t fool him.

“The mind is a city like London,” said Delmore Schwartz. All gray matter and roundabouts. Bits of conversation with characters, vaguely familiar, walking too slowly, unsure of where to go next, pulling out their A-to-Z guides, trying to reacquaint themselves with how to get around, although how could you forget that, now hurrying to arrive at some chip shop by lunchtime. Curry stick and turkey patties and other difficulties. Someone is looking erratically at the fantastic architecture someone else erected centuries back and thinking: I could never do that. Before the drizzle draws attention. Details too trivial to mention on old brick buildings grab bystanders, possibly foreigners who like to practice talking. Don’t forget your French. Look left. Stop and make a note for future reference. Sirens moan while tubes turn hot and convoluted, but one has to continue. Keep calm and carry on no baggage through the afternoon sometimes turning, like the river, grim. Mind the gap between the asphalt and the water, the city and its story, history and literature: these fragments have been. And then the ruin, that is, collapse on the sofa in the lounge (come through!) in another winter with memories of minor poets. Tea might help the stomach. This tea tastes like the Thames. Didn’t Keats work at that hospital around the corner? But no matter, that is, no more. The sky turns pink and white, streaky as bacon, and will go dark by four o’clock, when the yellow sparkle of Canary Wharf lights up in the distance like a mini Manhattan. Sequins over the skyline all of a sudden, and time for dinner. Bubble and squeak, the day disappears. More work for tomorrow, more work. Cranes sway by the river. Time to trawl through the mud like memories. They have a group that meets. Scavenge roman coins, shark teeth. Something else to remember. Something else might be discovered. Or constructed. Before all the scaffolding comes down, and no one gets hurt. Even though the way out is not clear-cut. (Lamb Walk is not a shortcut.) But one goes on, doing his bit, trying to figure out what it is, while wishing for no worries, no knife attacks. But that’s all right, so many closed-circuit TV cameras. Someone will catch something eventually. And really: why can’t the mind be a city like New York?

He hadn't expected to hear the whoosh, hadn't expected the sudden surge of energy in his body's response: skin tingling, fingers twitching, breath gasping in short pants. Orgasmic, as he'd think of it later, grasping for the right word and knowing he hadn't found it. Couldn't and wouldn't ever be able to describe, even to himself, the total sensuality of that moment when the sound, a gigantic expellant, filled his body to such a degree that his eyes closed, hands clenched, toes curled, as if trying to hold it within himself, keep it fast to indulge the feeling, pure feeling—make time stand still.

​How long he hovered at the edge of the yard, inhaling smoke and sirens, crackling sparks and flames brilliant against the spring night, he never knew, although he would try long weeks to reconstruct that time, wanting to understand his total surrender to a sensation unlike any he'd experienced in his fourteen years, as glass shattered in discordant peals, curtains wafted in billows of orange and red, roof and walls collapsed into a seething pyre, and all that was left of his early childhood was a charred rocking horse with a painted smile his mother could not bring herself to part with, and a long forgotten Tonka toy whose tires had melted with the heat.
            
 Later he would wonder how much of the scene he actually saw that night, how much was false memory acquired from TV and newspapers, national magazines even, so brilliant was the blaze.

He remembers feeling cold, doesn't know how or when the shivering began, but it did. Remembers the first impulse to run up to his room and grab a sweater; remembers a body, arms, hands, blocking his way, pulling him back as he headed across the lawn, running to speed his circulation, teeth chattering despite the heat from the flames. Remembers the voice, deep, authoritative, "Keep back, keep away." And then another body, another set of arms and a woman's voice, young, he thinks, "He's in shock."

And then he's sitting in an ambulance he hasn't seen arrive, a foil blanket like the ones he's seen in mountain rescues on TV, draped around his scrawny frame; a mug of something steaming in his hands. And he realizes he's lost the moment, knows it will not return, although he closes his eyes to make sure, just for a second. That is all he needs to feel the lurch of disappointment.

Through the open ambulance doors he sees the house breathe its last, lingering breaths that will be gone tomorrow; watches the blaze, enormous, funereal; the onlookers—neighbors, police, firefighters, passing strangers—watchers as at a deathbed, accompanying a loved one to the threshold of departure, and no further. Tomorrow they will carry on with their lives, talk of this for a day or two, across breakfast tables, in coffee shops, gyms maybe. And then they will forget.

But not he. Tomorrow he will think about his parents, wonder what he could have done, should have done. Tomorrow his fingers will skim along the surface of the matchbox in his pocket, linger on its perfect corners, feel the coarseness of its striking edge. And he will wonder.