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I join Roommate Finders of Florida for one hundred dollars. I tell them I want a roommate over the age of sixty-five. They don't seem troubled by the request. Perhaps that fact should have troubled me. A few days later, they call back and say they've found me a roommate in Boca Raton. Her name is Margaret. She is in her mid- to late sixties. She lives in Century Village, one of the largest, most famous retirement communities in the country. It caters mainly to lower-middle-class Jews from the Northeast. I've heard of it before. It's one of these fully loaded communities: swimming pools, tennis courts, a huge clubhouse full of meeting rooms and social events, and more than five thousand condominium units for retired people.

"One question," they ask. "Do you have a problem with cats or birds?"

"Not enough of one," I say.

The night before I leave Los Angeles for Florida, I throw myself a going away party at a tiki bar. A handful of my closest friends in the city show up. After two years here in Los Angeles, I'm still amazed by how few people I actually know well. It's not like it used to be, when we were in our early twenties and everyone would stay out late all the time. We'd all buy each other shots and then vomit together in the streets. Really great times. These days it seems like everyone is staying in; small dinner parties or just crashing out on the couch watching "Six Feet Under." I wonder how much I'm really going to miss any of these people.

For my last night, though, we rage for a few hours like the old days. People give me AmberVision glasses, adult diapers, "Sexy and Sixty" cuff links. We drink pina coladas. Naturally, there are many crude jokes made about me romancing old women. The next day on the plane, I'm glad I got drunk at my party and I'm glad I am hungover. It blunts the edge as my plane descends toward South Florida, as I wonder what the hell I am doing, looking out over the paisley landscape and beginning an early retirement.

CHAPTER TWO

EARLY MORNING IN CENTURY VILLAGE

"Old people, they make young people scream.
Old people, they make young people lay down and die."
--Robyn Hitchcock

Many old people get up early, at around six in the morning. It's not because they need less sleep, as I'd been previously informed. It's most likely because they sleep less deeply, due to decreased levels of sleep hormones like melatonin. It's a gyp, really. You've made it to the time of your life when you can finally sleep in as late as you want, and now your body won't let you.

I've been forcing myself to get up early, like real retirees do. I walk outside at six-fifteen in the morning, and it couldn't feel more absurd. The sky above the greater Boca Raton area is still more black than blue. Outside, Century Village is full of elderly people already out for their day. They are moving at full speed. They are jogging, walking, swimming laps in the swimming pool, ambling around the tennis courts. At six-thirty in the morning, I have seen several men waxing their cars. They are wide awake; they are not sleep-waxing. Melatonin shortage doesn't begin to explain it.

I should have laid a little more groundwork before I came down here. I realize that now. Most people, when they retire, go someplace where they already know a lot of people. My grandparents, when they used to live here, settled near all their old friends from Queens. I remember when I used to come down and visit them here, they'd always go out of their way to make me feel comfortable and relaxed, and to introduce me to everyone.

"You remember Harris," they'd say, "from two floors below us in Rego Park?" Some guy I'd never seen before, with white chest hair sprouting out of his shirt, would swat me on the head. Then we'd all go play bingo together, or go down to the pool, or go out to Denny's. Great vacation memories. This was years before I realized that Denny's is a terrible restaurant.

But my grandparents don't live here anymore. Harris died. I underestimated how different it would be in South Florida without all those people. I think I half expected they'd still be here. I don't know any of the retirees anymore, and the only piece of small talk my groggy brain can come up with is: "Why are you waxing your car at six-fifteen in the damn morning?," which doesn't feel neighborly.

By late morning I end up trying to call someone back home. A family member or a friend. I just want to talk to someone who knows me. With the phone pressed up against my sweaty ear, I pace around the parking lot in front of my condominium, the only place where I can get halfway-decent reception. If I manage to get someone on the phone, he sounds stressed and busy, which cheers me up. It is a useful reminder of why I wanted to come down here to begin with.

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