You can’t hide. This is where you live. In New York.

When you can’t sleep, this is what you should do: what you’re doing now. Sitting up, fretting, jiggling your foot at the end of the couch, thinking of water, then friends, then your next kitten, and the utter humilation of people finding out that you have not figured out too much.

“You seem to have life all figured out,” your best friend told you a few years ago, when you first landed in New York. You have never spoken to that friend again. This has happened a few times. A friend says the wrong thing, and you are sure they didn’t mean to. But you stop calling them. You haven’t officially cut them out of your life. No major pronouncements here. You just stopped picking up the phone and calling him. You know he’s still out there. You have other friends who have spoken to him. They all say the same thing. “He doesn’t talk much.”

Maybe he’s figured out life. I feel like the people who are the ones you don’t hear from have figured it out. And they don’t want to share the secret. So they don’t say much.  Those who don’t know are the ones are the ones who share–and they are always charging for it. Maybe your ex-friend is charging and you don’t even know it. So you call him. Out of the blue. He’s glad to hear from you. He’s still got nothing to say.And you have to force yourself not to say anything either, because he who speaks first….as the saying goes.

Another five years passes since you’ve talked to him. One of your friend calls you to tell you that your ex-friend has died. Cancer. You sigh loudly.

You call his widow.

She tells you everything.