I lay down for a nap today and began to drift off to sleep. Pretty soon, it seemed like I was hearing the sounds of some very repetitive, tinkling, chiming music, along with the sound of someone breathing, ah . . . ooh . . . ah . . . ooh. Then I thought I knew what it was: it was Harry, in his apartment above me, trying to annoy me by breathing so loudly I could hear it. I began to feel like the walls of my box-apartment were so thin I was hearing bells and chimes from Harry's apartment, listening to his breathing, as if the walls that separated us and boxed me out from the old woman next to me and whoever is on the other side were made of some thin transparent material, just so that I could never be alone, by myself--there was nothing to keep me out of the public eye, ever, so that I never had my own space, my own privacy. I began to grow very disturbed, thinking, "That is his breath--his breath!--my neighbor is breathing so loud I can hear it, just so that he can say to me, 'I see you all the time, I'm always watching and listening: you are never alone.' " And then suddenly the impossibility of all of this dawned on me, and I jumped up with a start, saying, "What the fuck?" I realized what I had thought was the chiming music was the gentle hum of my refrigerator; what I had thought was breathing was water in the pipes being turned on and off rhythmically. I had been asleep, dreaming that I was lying there, the sounds of my apartment turning into something altogether terrible once they had been filtered through that dreaming brain of mine. I got up and thought, "I've got to quit drinking," and went to boil water for a pot of tea.