The cryptic talk can end now. We've moved. It's been a busy month. Regina saw an ad on Craig's List for a house in the neighborhood we want. We responded to the ad. We saw the house. Four days later, we signed the lease and found someone else to take over the lease at the old house. Two weeks after that, we were sleeping in a new zip code.

Yes, we're paying a little more a month. And yes, we only have one bathroom now, as opposed to the three we had at the old place. Also, because of various weird angles, we couldn't fit our sofa through the door and now we have to sell it on the Internet and buy a new sofa.

But the house is twice as large. Regina's studio is twice as large, and so is my office, which is in the basement. It has blue walls, XM satellite radio, Direct TV, and a private garage entrance. They're going to have to airlift me out of my Lay-Z-Boy when I die down here.

I no longer have to step over my dresser to get into bed at night. We no longer have to share our backyard with the neighbors who live in the house behind us. There are no more serial-killer-style ice-cream trucks playing "It's A Small World After All" and "Turkey In The Straw" at full volume from 3:30 to 7:30 every PM. The air doesn't always smell like paint thinner here. There's no more drag racing down our street. Packs of mean-looking dogs don't roam the streets at night.

In the old neighborhood, we lived next door to mean old sisters who spoke to us once in 18 months, and who were always in their dusty backyard, asking their stupid, ugly dog if he "wants a pepperoni." Here, a kooky lady, somewhat less old, ran over to us in her sundress on moving day, squealing with joy at our arrival. Then she gave us half a package of frozen garlic bread. She'd eaten the other half already.

The other day, our new neighbor sat in her backyard, spraying a straw gardening hat with hideously stinky varnish. She did this for two hours. And the other day, she and Regina were chatting when she suddenly lifted up her skirt. Regina gasped.

"I have shorts on!" she said.

So this isn't some gated suburban escapist sinkhole. The day after we moved in, Elijah and I took the dogs for a walk. We passed by an house that, 50 years ago, would have had a Raymond Chandler heroine peering through its bay windows, smoking a cigarette, wearing a red velvet dress.

"What's that in the bushes?" Elijah asked.

I looked.

"It appears to be two dead roosters," I said.

"Oh," he said. "Who put them there?"

"I don't know," I said, not wanting to tell him that they were probably in a cock-fighting ring 12 hours ago, and that dead cock-fighters sometimes get tossed out of moving cars by their angry, drunk owners.

"Well," he said. "That's nature."

"True enough, son," I said.

"Things die in our new neighborhood," Elijah said. "And I like it."

In the evenings, we hear crickets, and wind chimes, and a gentle, wispy breeze blowing through the trees. I keep waiting for something to pierce the quiet. Helicopters don't count. You can hear those anywhere. But where is the screeching motorcycle, the sound of a bottle breaking, or something that could just as easily be a gunshot as a backfiring motor?

Actually, I know where.

But we don't live there anymore.

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