We like the girl ’cause she takes a recipe off the back of a can and all of a sudden, crispy tostadas in hand, we’re tucking into thick, hearty, beany chili from a big red bowl. Sprinkled with spring onions and yellow, yellow cheddar, this is a Thanksgiving dinner for happy bellies.

On the way uptown Thursday evening, the trains kept coming just when I needed them, which was something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving day.

When I got to Maud’s, I handed over the beers and said, “So how was the thing? With the guy who’s cool? And hot?” “Oh my god,” she said, “he was so cool, and he was so hot.” So we are thankful for guys who are cool and hot.

We were not thankful for the mouse in Philippe’s house, but we were thankful that Karen is going to lend him her cat.

We were thankful for chestnuts, I suppose, unless we are pregnant, or unless we are Philippe. See, Mathilde said her mother’d said a girl couldn’t eat chestnuts when she was pregnant, or the baby’d be born with stains on its skin. “No chestnuts?” Philippe said. “Oh, can you imagine a world without chesnuts? Please. I haven’t had a chestnut in like twelve years.”

We were thankful, also, for Stéfanie, who moved from Paris to Kansas City, Kansas, and went on a date with a Mormon. Stéfanie is small, with wide eyes, and red-brown hair that flips up at the ends. “It was a double date,” she said, “so I was sitting here, and he was sitting here, and this other girl was sitting on his right. And I was—” We were going crazy. “You call that a double date?!” She went out with a Catholic guy later, maybe in Lawrence: “He parked outside a church and wanted to kiss me,” she said, “but I told him it was too late.” In New York some years after, a Dutchman with follicular issues kissed her at a party. “That night,” she said, “I dreamed that I was bald.” When Stéfanie started talking about Toys in Babeland, Philippe pushed his chair back and stood up. “I have to go,” he said.

What with all the chortling and guffawing all night, I started to lose my voice, which is why, then, I was thankful when the tubs of ice cream were brought out.



I walked home just before two in the morning under stars crisp and bright in the sky for the first time in a week and a half. Today, the blue stretches out like I’m a cowgirl on the edge of the prairie.