This morning my neighbor announced that he is thinking about moving. It was prompted by my asking if his dog would be okay with a cat if I got one.

“I’m thinking about getting out of New York for a while,” he told me as he squinted at his Mac laptop at a table in our backyard. “I might go to Idaho for a while to my parents house and build a studio apartment in their barn. I’ll save some money, and then probably go to Japan for a few months and paint.”

He continued to tell me that he wants to start living his life in a certain way — six months in New York working hard, and then six months off, painting somewhere else. His girlfriend, a Japanese fashion designer, sat, meanwhile, at his side drinking tea. I don’t know how much she knew about this plan, perhaps it was just coming to light.

“And then what really did it for me was that this morning, I found a bedbug on my bed,” said my neighbor.

I gasped. “A BEDBUG?”

“Yeah, just one. I put it in a jar.”

Then I went to buy a second mattress cover.