Tuesday, 07 June 2005 | Exhale

(Brooklyn, 5/13/05)
While the cab that would take me to the airport was waiting outside, I was on the floor, with my ear pressed to the wood, shining a weak flashlight into corners and beneath furniture. It smelled like something had died in my apartment, and it was important that I find it before I left for Germany. I walked from room to room, deeply inhaling something terrible, trying to pinpoint its location. Eventually I had to give up, or risk missing my flight or making my cab driver vanish.

I haven't had a mouse in my apartment since Jane died, perhaps because I no longer keep a bowl of food on the kitchen floor. But only a day before, I'd thrown out a sack of garbage (out back, where the trash for my building is collected), and just as the bag landed on the ground, I heard a loud, offended squeak, like I'd hit a mouse. It was a confusing moment, as I didn't know whether to cringe, nervously laugh, or apologize. "I'm sorry!" I whispered, and ran away. I felt sure that this was the very rodent that had found its way to my apartment to die.

I thought about the decaying mouse while I was in Europe, and I dreaded the moment that I'd eventually have to open the door to my apartment. (I considered never going back at all, and just finding a nice, new corpse-free home.) I imagined that in my absence, my neighbors would call to complain about the smell, and a forensic team would investigate my place to make sure it wasn't the tenant who'd died. When I returned, however, not only was there no yellow caution tape decorating my door (disappointing), the place smelled like petunias and doughnuts (awesome).