So I was banging around the kitchen, halfway through the increasingly annoying 45-minute excavation procedure of finding the little steel disk that would prevent the ground beans from blurping up out of the espresso maker a second time (it was under the 0% balance transfer offers on the plastic storage unit, 8' from where any espresso maker part has ever lived), and the rest of the day was exactly like this too, when I heard my iPod, which I keep in shuffle mode out in the living room, start playing an ambient piece, and a few seconds later, I heard Mac say "Fwy-fwy!" and again, "Fwy-fwy!"

A fwy-fwy, as Mac is happy to remind you, is a bug with a light. We've been seeing them on our way home at dusk for the last week or so, near the shrubberies on 66th Avenue. We used to have them around our building, but all the shrubs got removed. (Can you say bioluminescence? Very good!)

So I went and stood where the living room starts and stared at him. All I could see were two little bare feet sticking straight out on the couch, next to Mommy.

She said, "Did you hear what he said?"

"He said fwy-fwy."

"That's his impression of the music."

"It was mine too," I said. "When I wrote it."


Ambience 11