I sit on the deck and watch the leaves of the pitusporum and jacaranda waving in the breeze from the west, gentle, off the ocean. It doesn’t get any fresher than this; not in southern California. I take a sip of coffee, brewed through the strainer basket. I’m out of filters. I can’t tell a difference. The wind dies down, just tickling the top of the jacaranda.

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It’s Wednesday. I need to go to the bank. I need to buy fish food and AAA batteries for the TV remote. Later.

This is the hardest part. Getting the idea for a story is one thing, almost fun. The best part is watching somebody read it, if you know it’s good. But the hard part is starting to write. I have the idea: What if a guy leaves home to go to the bank, and then …You know. But then I sit down with a notebook and a pen – or at the computer – and think, OK, how do I start this?

I panic. It’s like diving into the deep end, kicking off the bottom, bubbles spewing from your nose, and the surface has turned solid, frozen over. Trapped. Out of air. Maybe the only way out is back down, through the drain.

Sometimes it helps to write down the way it is right now: The wind, the coffee with fake sweetener and French vanilla creamer; the crows flying over, cawing; the late sun turning the clouds over the channel pale pink.

The bank is closing in twenty minutes, then the pet store too. I get up and set my mug and spoon in the sink. I cross the balcony, hearing the sparrows flittering in the spare branches of the magnolia, and go downstairs to the garage. My black BMW waits in the garage like …

Wait. I was on the deck, not upstairs. I’m not even at home; this is a single story house. And I damn sure don’t own a BMW. Even if I did, they don’t wait in the dark like anything but a car sitting there in the dark.

The black BMW crouched in the dark garage, exactly like a hunting tiger doesn’t.

High School English! Idiot.

I go out to the street and got in my old blue pickup, with the oil drip that got it banished from the driveway, and the weak speakers that annoy my brother. When I get to the bank, it’s closed, and I remember that I don’t have any fish.