Many years later, I wrote part of this book in my apartment in West Philadelphia, the one I share with my wife. Before we moved here, we’d been living in a terrible, dark building nearby. There were mice and cockroaches. We had to lay traps. One morning, I walked out of my bedroom to make coffee and found a mouse sprawled on one of the glue traps, looking like an adventurer half-melted by acid in a forbidden temple. It squealed a horrible squeal. I googled “What to do about a mouse in a glue trap” and found an article with advice. In my pajamas I walked outside with the mouse and the trap in a plastic bag, and I stomped on it as hard as I could before tossing it in the dumpster.
As for the cockroaches, they made me feel like I was on the verge of madness and transcendence, like G.H. and her passion. At first, I was fastidious, looking for a paper towel to cleanly smash them as they darted around the counter. Then one day they moved into the digital clock in our microwave, and I could see them silhouetted there. The nymphs shed their skins against the glow, left part of themselves behind. After that, I developed the sort of detached practicality I had imagined was reserved for professional assassins in movies. Then, I killed them with my bare hands.