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never heard them, never found droppings, nothing. Then one night I came home late—it was almost two—and saw a couple of them flitting around my floor lamp. And I flipped out. Panic attack, or close to. I almost passed out. I wouldn’t have fled the apartment faster if there’d been a dead body in the room, leaking blood all over the area rug. I hopped in a cab, went to Stacy’s place in the East Village, rang her buzzer, and pleaded with her to let me spend the night. I was crazed. I must have sounded like a lunatic. We were dating, by then we had even dropped the L-bomb, but this was still early enough in the relationship that it could have deep-sixed the whole thing. Who wants a partner who’s that afraid of a measly mouse? She let me in, God bless her, and I climbed into her queen-sized bed, flanked by her two cats—Steve and the dearly departed Joni—and I’ve been there ever since. The turning point in our relationship, really. Because of a mouse.
    When I confessed my musophobia to Rob, our erstwhile therapist, he suggested that the next time I hear mice in the walls, I imagine myself in their shoes. If, you know, they were wearing shoes. I’ve tried that. The mouse I imagine is wearing a leather jacket and a fedora and carries a whip, like Indiana Jones. He’s navigating the warren of passageways in the bedroom wall, trying to find his way out. Rounding a corner, he finds an enormous chamber, like one of the anterooms in the bowels of the Great Pyramid. And in this chamber is a towering pile of mouse skeletons. All of his predecessors, their decomposed arms still scratching futilely to freedom, still searching for the elusive way out, for the Ark of the Covenant that is the portal to the bedroom proper. And that mouse knows his time is up. He knows he’s a goner.
    So here I am, exactly three thirty-three in the morning, the dark night of the soul and all, lying on my back, covers wrapped around me like Kevlar, listening to the mice scratch, and Steve the cat scratch back, and I’m trying to focus on the lead rodent dressed like Harrison Ford, which should be a comical enough image to soothe most people, but no, I’m a wreck.
    I hate being awake in the middle of the night when the kids are asleep. I hate being awake in the middle of the night period , but when I’m not up to fulfill fatherly duties, that really drives me bonkers. It’s like I haven’t had sex in months, and then suddenly I’m in bed with a naked and nymphomaniacal Kardashian sister (preferably Kim, but any of them would do; even Khloé, although she sort of looks like a guy in drag), but I’ve just whacked off, so I can’t get it up. The opportunity is blown—and nothing else.
    Speaking of whacking off and a naked and nymphomaniacal Kardashian sister . . . my wife is in L.A. I have the bedroom to myself. I’m free to make like Bloom at Sandymount Strand. Should I take the situation in hand and fight fear with lust? I don’t often have the opportunity to rub one out right before bed, like I did every day of my life between age twelve, when that seminal gift of the gods was bequeathed to me, and the day I moved in with Stacy fifteen years later. Sweet release might calm my nerves . . . but no, I’m not feeling it. There are two essential ingredients for a climactic climax: 1) a backlog of shall-we-say raw material, and 2) an inspirational scenario to fuel the come on baby light my fire imagination. I beat off six hours ago, so my reserves are depleted. But even that was a chore—my imagination and last week’s Us Weekly (thanks for the memories, Heidi Montag) only go so far. There is nothing happening to feed that part of me, nothing at all. I’m a summer house that’s been shut down for the winter. I’m a fallow field. I’m dull roots and dried tubers.
    Meanwhile the mice keep scratching.
    S TACY HAS VIVID DREAMS ALMOST