The sky was blue all day today like fortune smiling on our heads. We are lucky kids, me and Tom and Maud, being out of school and out of work.



Tom called this morning with an invitation to MoMA. “And I have a car,” he said. “So we don’t want to go to MoMA,” I said, “we want to go to California.” But to MoMA we headed, running a red light, speeding across the Manhattan Bridge, idling in traffic, muttering at other drivers, watching the pedestrians at the stoplights.



The new MoMA is cool, people. Really, really cool. Everybody run, don’t walk. Um, also, best to take the subway so you don’t have to pay forty-three dollars to park in a midtown garage. Yowtch. No, but, the space is incredible, what with the cut-out walls and open areas everywhere and the green helicopter hanging out. We furrowed our brows at the Pollocks, we scoffed at a goofy Dalí, we admired Ruscha’s Standard Oil Station series. In front of Leger’s “Three Women,” Tom said, “That’s sexy.” He said, “It’s like a naked tea party.”

Then we were hungry, so we drove down to Chinatown. Viola Wills’s “If You Could Read My Mind” came on the radio, which we like because of the rousing disco chorus. Maud shook her head at me and said, accusingly, “Pop junkie.” “You say it like it’s a bad thing,” I said, then leaned back and sang along: “I don’t know where we went wrong / but the feelin’s gone / and I just can’t get it back. . .”

Waiting for a table at Great N.Y. Noodletown, we looked into the kitchen in the back, where two whole pigs hung from the ceiling. They were being prepared for roasting, I think. A man was brushing them down with glistening. In my mind, I could taste the salty, crispy skin. Our waiter was a round, smiling man like a char siew bao. And the thing is, we are fond of char siew baos as is, but we like char siew baos a lot when they bring us seafood porridge, and sauteed dou miao, and stirfried eggplant with garlic, and beef in black pepper sauce.

We dropped Maud off at the Christmas tree in Washington Square Park after, and then Tom dropped me off in SoHo, where I made a quick stop in Dean and Deluca for a small loaf of cranberry bread and some fancy honey, ’cause a girl likes breakfast. Down Broadway, the evening sky was striped shades of pink like Paul Smith was in charge.

Home, showered, clean, smelling of flowers and white tea.

I’m kind of beat. This is the first quiet moment I’ve had since I got back from Paris Tuesday night. You’d think I’d be used to traveling by now, all these aller-retours in my life, but it is still a lovely surprise to me that I can wake up in one city and go to bed in quite another.

Oh, Paris. They know what they’re doing over there. And a girl sure can get up to a lot in a little more than four days, even with waking up around noon most mornings. In Paris, there was a Sunday walk along the Canal Saint Martin, with its curved wooden bridges round like pumpkins. Round one corner, the Antoine et Lili storefronts winked in pink and green and yellow. On rue du Faubourg du Temple, there was the gorgeous Sixties futuristic silver storefront of Robert et René, butchers, in which the day’s prices are announced in white plastic press-in letters on a black board: bifteacks bavette 11.40; aiguillette 11.40; divers 11.40; hache 7.13. There was a sit-down and a café crème in Les têtes brûlées, poring over some Belgian murder scandal in Paris Match. There was chancing upon the new Satrapi, which is funny and sad and good reading all around. There was staying up till three chatting with Gen, because we are girls, and we like to do so. There was picking out eight small, sweet-smelling clementines at a fruit stand and putting them in a crisp brown paper bag, feeling the comfortable heft in my hand. There was a jaunt through the parc des Buttes Chaumont, watching the ducks like white flecks on the pond. The graffitti on one pavilion read, in Chinese, “She is the luckiest one.” There was the Tunisian patisserie, where it was hard to choose. There was ice skating at the Hôtel de Ville, where Britney was blasting on the loudspeakers, and where there was a lot of falling. “J’aurai des gros bleus demain,” I said to Gab, but the bruises showed up within hours, and, man, it’s been a while since I’ve banged up my knees like this. These are some kind of souvenirs de Paris, all purple and magenta and blue, wholly frightening. There was a surprise visit from Clem, which necessitated delighted screaming down an echoing hallway, and big hugs. There was a Panda. Tuesday morning, there was a last petit suisse with some of Gab’s mum’s mirabelle jam in a blue-and-white porcelain bowl.

Nearing New York, there was the sunset from the plane, the sun orange blazing disappearing. Then there was the city, blurry spots of light through the mist and condensation. My head was pressed against the window, and I realized I was smiling, I was so happy to be home. At one point there was only a pure, smooth blackness, and I couldn’t tell what was sky and what was sea. It looked like we were descending toward water, toward nothing, really, but I didn’t feel too bad about it.