There is a scene in The Big Lebowski in which Maude Lebowski, an arch and pretentious artist played by Julianne Moore, talks on the telephone in Italian, laughing and exclaiming "Che ridicolo!" with high ostentation while the Dude, played by Jeff Bridges, looks on, befuddled and not in on the joke. I thought of that scene tonight, which I will get back to in a bit.

I'm house-sitting in a little community I don't want to name, as it's a small place, and Google's reach is wide. Let's call it Tralala, and move on.

Tralala is a beautiful village by the sea, surrounded by mountains. Its eucalyptus-lined lanes are quiet and winding, leading to enormous estates hidden behind tall wrought iron gates and mature gardens. The houses outside the estates have been built up along the hills, one on top of the other, and real estate values are astronomical. The ability to afford to live here gives the residents of Tralala a certain feeling of superiority, as though their breeding, rather than their checkbooks, was responsible for their street addresses. They love to call it "Paradise," and congratulate one another on their outstanding choice of places to live. "We are so lucky," they'll say, "to live in such a beautiful place!" That this beautiful place has no serious museums or theatres is of no consequence. It is beautiful and elite, and that is enough. It is a surreal place, focused on its own navel, certain of its exclusivity, and pleased to keep out anyone not quite the right kind.

I hold a jaundiced view of Tralala, based on the number of lawsuits I witness nearly every day, neighbors suing neighbors over the height of a fence, or the location of that fence, or a tree that was removed, or should have been removed, or that should never have been planted. They sue over the existence of illegally built outdoor showers, the material used to roof a garage, the color a house is painted. "I shouldn't have to look at that!" is a sentence I hear a lot, the speaker indignant over the shade a neighbor has stained his concrete driveway. It is hard to muster sympathy for someone who has chosen to infuriate himself over the fact that a neighbor has painted his barn red, and so I don't. I sometimes get the idea that people in "Paradise" must be very bored. By way of example, I will describe the events of the last day.

I am dog-sitting a sweet little dog whom I'll call Charly. Charly's owners warned me, before they went out of town, that the next-door neighbor hates dogs, and asked me to keep Charly from barking if he went outside. They also warned me that the guy across the street was obsessed with a patch of gravel in front of his house, about ten feet by four feet. "Don't park there," they told me, "he'll wait for you to get back to your car and accost you." That the patch of gravel is technically city property does not seem to matter to this man. He is obsessed with its perfection.

Yesterday, I was outside watering the garden, and noticed that the gravel area had tire tracks through it. For some reason, I felt phantom guilt, even though I hadn't driven through it. I heard the man yell over to his neighbor and discuss a Humvee that had recently driven by. "I think that might be the guy," he said, and grumbled a while. The neighbor and he discussed it for a bit. Later, he parked his own car in the gravel area, to prevent someone from driving through it.

As I was watering, a man and a woman came down the driveway. He was big, and looked like he'd been in the military. He wore shorts, and white socks pulled up high. The woman wore sun glasses and a baseball cap, and walked several paces behind the man, her chin in the air. I kept watering, ignoring them, until he called out to me, "Everything going all right?" It seemed a strange way to address me, and I felt my guard go up. "Yes," I answered, looking away from him. He continued down the driveway. "Was Charly out last night?" he asked, looking at the dog on the lawn. I reached to turn off the water.

"No," I said. He went on to tell me that a dog had barked for hours all through the middle of the night, "and it kept my wife up," he said, gesturing toward the woman, who stood with her arms crossed, looking away from me.

"Charly was not out," I said. I could tell he didn't believe me.

"Didn't you hear it?" he asked. No, I answered, I hadn't. He reacted as if I'd slapped him, reeling away. "I can't BELIEVE you didn't hear it!" he exclaimed. "You must be a sound sleeper not to wake up through that!" I was not about to discuss my sleep patterns with this aggressive stranger who didn't even introduce himself, and so I just stared at him. "It sounded like it was in your yard," he said, which seemed absurd to me. The houses here are built on top of one another, and the yards run together along a creek. I don't see how he could determine on sound alone which yard the dog had been in. "Like, on the other side of your yard," he went on, gesturing. I stared at him.

"What time did this happen?" I asked, and he and his wife reacted like I'd said something ridiculous. "The middle of the night! I don't know... one? Two?" I'd gone to bed at 1:30, and not heard any dogs, but I didn't volunteer that information.

"I had the fan on," I lied, "and the door closed. I didn't hear anything." The man laughed without humor. "Maybe that's what I need to do," he said. "Maybe it is," I said, walking to the other side of the garden and turning the water back on.

"I heard two dogs barking earlier last night," I started, but the wife dismissed me again, waving her hand and tilting her chin higher. She was European, I think, although I couldn't place her accent. It was clear that she considered me an idiot, and that allowed me to let an edge creep further into my voice. "Sorry," I said, letting it be obvious that I was not sorry. The man took the opportunity to be magnanimous. "Oh, there's no need to apologize," he said, perhaps realizing that he'd offended me. I turned my back on him and continued watering. He pointed out the house he lives in, ten feet away from where I was standing. I nodded. The interview over, they left, and I heard them go to the neighbor's house and complain about the same issue. "It went on ALL NIGHT!" I heard him say, before I went inside and shut the windows to block his voice.

Today, I found something on Craig's List that I've been wanting to get for the Keelhauler, so I sent an e-mail. The seller responded. Yes, the item was still available, and located in Tralala. I sent a message back saying that I was unavailable this evening, but that I could come see it tomorrow. I got the address, gave her my cell number, and went off to race.

At the end of the race--around 7:00 p.m.--I checked my phone, and listened to my messages. One was from the seller, sounding puzzled. "It's about 5:10," she said, "and I've been waiting for you to come look at the item." A misunderstanding, I thought, although my e-mail was simple and to the point. "I have obligations tonight," I'd written, "but I can come tomorrow." I called her, and she insisted that I'd said I'd be there today. I apologized--more because I had nothing else to say, but I resented that she was accusing me. "But," she said, "I conduct my business online, have for years, and so... I know I have to just let it go!" I was irritated that she was granting me her goodwill when the misunderstanding had been hers, but decided I'd follow suit. I told her I could come tomorrow, as I'd planned, but she suggested that I come tonight, at 8:30. I agreed. She gave me directions to a place two blocks from where I'm house sitting, but when I mentioned the coincidence, she had no idea where I was talking about.

I drove to her house, which was down a sloping drive. "You'll see my little ...sportscar," she'd said, hesitating slightly before the word "sportscar." This led me to believe that she drives something exotic--a Maserati, maybe, or at least a Porsche. I have a rich friend who drives a BMW Z4, which she refers to only as "the little car," as if she's embarrassed about it.

I didn't see the little sportscar, in fact, all the lights were out, and there was a station wagon like mine in the drive. There was no number on the house, so I figured I could be in the wrong place, but I decided to ring the bell.

A man came to the door, and when I asked for the woman I'd spoken to, told me she'd left thirty minutes before. "Was she expecting you?" he asked. I said that yes, she had been, that we'd spoken at 7:00. I apologized for disturbing him, and called her on the phone.

She picked up the call on the first ring, but there was a period of about fifteen seconds, during which I could hear ambient noise and general conversation, before she said hello. I identified myself, and she gave a dramatic, exaggerated gasp. "I totally forgot!" she said, and came close to apologizing, but didn't actually. "I'm in downtown Tralala, and my dinner is about to arrive!" I could hear her explain to her friends, there in the restaurant in downtown Tralala, a capsule version of the events. She was laughing and laughing, and exclaiming over and over that she'd totally forgotten about me.

I told her I would see her tomorrow, not pointing out that had she understood my initial e-mail, none of this would have happened. She was barely listening to me, laughing and laughing at the absurdity of it all, yet not seeming to understand that she had inconvenienced me, or that most people do not, generally, forget plans an hour after making them. It was at this moment, when she was laughing with her friends and seeming not to notice that I wasn't exactly in on the joke, that I thought of that scene from the Big Lebowski and felt in over my head, not just in the moment, but in the entire town.

In short, I do not have a specific notion of Paradise, but I suppose if I had to define it, I would start with the idea that the people I've described here wouldn't be allowed in. I'd position a guard--perhaps Tom Waits--at the gate, with a clipboard, and he would turn away every pretentious Tralalalian with a tilt of his head and a kindly smile, explaining, "I'm sorry, but you're just not our kind, dear."

It's 11:00 right now. Charly is asleep beside me, and there is a dog barking outside. I cannot tell whose yard it is in.

Star of the day. . .Steve Buscemi