Coffee

I’ve been in the studio until after one o’clock in the morning many nights the past couple of weeks, working on a new album with The Roman Glowlights. On those nights, I often don’t fall asleep until almost three o’clock. Strong coffee with breakfast is part of my daily chemical cycle. Mornings after a late night at the studio, I’m barely able to function until I’ve had a cup. So it was with great disappointment that when the coffee grinder spun down, I heard the sound all too familiar to all cat owners.

It sounds like stepping on a child’s soggy pool toy, over and over, very rhythmically. I can usually avoid scrubbing a big spot on the rug and wasting a lot of paper towels if I can sprint to the scene with a magazine, sliding it under her delicate, whiskered nose before a half can of Purina Country Style Dinner returns to daylight for a curtain call. Cats are usually very much in control of themselves. But when the need to throw up seizes them, they simply stop wherever they are and give in to it.

As a force of habit, I called out “No puking!” as I rushed across the room. I was too late. Ellie was on a windowsill behind my baby grand piano. The area is completely inaccessible. I spent the next twenty minutes squeezing my body back behind immovable furniture, into places that have not benefited from the presence of a vacuum cleaner since the Clinton administration. Without the much-needed benefit of my friend the caffeine molecule in my blood, I twisted and contorted. There are certain kinds of spiders that seek the places that people do not disturb. I fear them. And I saw them. Why did I even get out of bed that morning? I filled a plastic grocery bag with sopping, reeking paper towels. I couldn’t face a trip to the garbage cans in the alley, so I simply tossed the bag out the door of my cottage. I made coffee. But I never quite regained my equilibrium, and all day the front of my face felt the way it does just after you sneeze.

When I left my house for the studio, I was running late and stepped over the bag near my front door without even noticing it. The session went long. The songs are sounding good. Driving home from Montecito and through Santa Barbara at 1:30 a.m., I didn’t see any other motorists. I had to park a couple blocks from my house. The fog was thick. I was cold and tired. When I saw the white plastic grocery bag at my doorstep, I felt almost embarrassed, even though there is rarely anybody near my place. The bag looked stark and intimate in the night. Opossums or raccoons had shredded through the contents. I guess protein is where you find it. I left the mess there on the doorstep to deal with it the following morning. Inside, Ellie was asleep on the gas stove, warmed by the pilot light. It’s all just survival and comfort for her. I kissed her warm ear and went to bed, where I watched re-runs of The West Wing until three.