Saturday we continued reacclimating and reacquainting ourselves with this place, this life put aside for three months. There was brunch at Bar Tabac, there was ice cream in Washington Square Park, there was walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, the sky hazy and pink with evening. Behind us, the Empire State Building, catching the sun, glowed red.



At Jeff’s in the Heights, a cocktail shaker in the shape of a penguin, a colander of plastic vegetables, a miniature Oscar Mayer weinermobile, and a fondue party. Man, was there a fondue party. The boy has not one but two fondue pots, whatever those things are called, and we dived into both. First cheese, then chocolate. Over wine and Donna Summer records, Maud discovered Jeff’s kangaroo hand puppet and made fast friends. For the rest of the night, each of her statements was puncuated with a wave of the paw or a perfunctory nod from the kangaroo. It was funny, and then frightening, and then both, and then she fell asleep on the sofa.

Sprawled on furniture and the floor in the dark, Kat and Jeff and Maud and I, we looked at the constellation on the ceiling and we listened to Jeff’s stylish songs and the Americans told the foreign girls about ghostly games played at slumber parties past. “. . .and you can’t look in the mirror when it’s dark—” “Stop it!!” “—or else you’ll see—” “Stop it!!”

Then there was the midnight walk along the promenade, the Brooklyn Bridge lit up like beauty, and then there was falling asleep in the car home, and then there was home.