So that’s all I was doing—reading and playing backgammon. I can afford such a lifestyle because I’m a writer. I’m not a hugely successful writer, but I’m my own boss. I’ve written six books—three novels and three essay collections—and at the time of the trouble I had roughly six thousand dollars in the bank, which is a lot for me. I also had a few checks for movie work coming in down the road.

By my economic standards it was a flush time. I had even paid my taxes early, at the end of March—it was now mid-April—and I was just trying to stay sober and keep a low profile in my own little life. I wasn’t doing any writing, because, well, I didn’t have anything to say.

Overall, I was being pretty reclusive. I only talked to a few people, primarily my parents, who are retired and live in Florida and who call me every day. They’re a bit needy, my senior citizen parents, but I don’t mind, life is short, so if I can give them a little solace with a daily call, what the hell. My father is eighty-two and my mother is seventy-five. I have to love them now as best I can. And the only other two people I really spoke to were the two close friends I have, one who lives here in New York and the other who’s in Los Angeles. I have a lot of acquaintances, but I’ve never had a lot of friends.

One night a week, I did leave the apartment to go see this girl. It was nice. I guess you could say that she was a friend, too, but I’ve never really thought of the women in my life as friends, which must be a flaw. Her name was Marie and we would have dinner, maybe go to a movie, and then we’d get into bed at her place, never my place, and the sex with her was good. But it wasn’t anything serious. She was twenty-six and I’m forty-two, and I retired from being serious with women a few years ago. Somebody always got hurt, usually the girl, and I couldn’t take it anymore.

Well, I’ll shut up now about all this. It’s not my drinking problem or my finances or my dead love life that I want to talk about. I only mention all this as some kind of way to explain why I had too much free time on my hands, because what’s really on my mind is this trouble I got into because, as I said, I was bored. Bored with backgammon and bored with reading and bored with being sober and bored with myself and bored with being alive.