I sit in my air-conditioned apartment through the heat of the summer, the window closed to the elements. Around 6 p.m. the sun shines through the solitary western window, and I can see how much cigarette smoke is just sitting in the air, polluting it, covering everything like the mist of a cockroach bomb; and I know that it's no wonder my cat has a hacking cough to equal mine. My cat. My cat ought to have died long ago, but I have a feeling six years from now he'll be just living the same lethargic, napping life he's living now. I got him ten years ago from the pound; the vet said at the time he was around six years old. He was infested with tapeworms, ear mites, fleas. He doesn't seem to age in the face or coat--just in the joints; he can't jump up on the table sometimes. He still fights--I think he must be bitter about his neutering because every time a female comes around and starts to do that mating call--wahh! wahh!--he'll jump down and attack her. It's all very savage, the life of a cat. I have a feeling he gets the bad end of these fights. And now the sewage is backing up into my dishwasher; the dishwasher leaks water so I never use it, only now this gray-black water is backing up into it, so that I have to bail it out into a bucket with a cup to keep raw sewage from covering my floor. My father is my landlord; he's got too much to deal with right now to worry about it, so I guess I'm on my own. I'm too lazy to call somebody about it; I go through my day, sleeping through most of it, smoke some cigarettes and drink my daily four pots of tea--and look, now it's 9 p.m., and it's getting time to bail out the dishwasher; too late to call anyone now. I cannot imagine the father I would make.