It was just one bloody thing after another Saturday morning, first the spitting rain, then the pissing rain, then Bubby’s being closed for brunch, sorry for the inconvenience. Jeff and I found each other at Five Front, where one table then the next then the next were leaning and wonky, and where I misheard every other thing he was saying. Somehow, over coffee and chocolate chip waffles, the knot of a day undid itself, and all of a sudden we were grinning and adventuring up the hill, heading for, hold on to your seats, the new Target on Flatbush. Well, it’s not new new, but I hadn’t been there yet, even though maybe three or four of my friends e-mailed me this past summer to inform me, with great excitement, of its opening.



Target was great from the get-go. Two floors of oh-yes-please, with a trolley escalator in the middle. Right at the entrance, shelves and shelves of plastic crap, all going for a dollar each: a space laser water gun. A Pop Rocks “secret chemicals” kit. Lots and lots of books on abdominal exercises. A magnet that said something like “I like when I’m right. Which is always.” We turned left to wander and cackle in the aisles of greeting cards, where we found the treasure that read, on the outside, I mithed your birthday, and then, on the inside, Thit! Had I known someone with a lisp, that card would’ve been in our cart so fast. Upstairs, we tried on clothes in the little boys’ department. I wrangled on a T-shirt, then Jeff had to help me get it off ’cause I couldn’t breathe. “What size is that?” he said. “I dunno,” I said, and then discovered it was an XS (4-5). “I guess I’ll go a size up?” I said. “Maybe you should start with a medium and work your way down,” he said, kindly.

Really, the whole expedition was an exercise in self-control. Okay, true, by the end of the day, I was the proud owner of a new pair of white pleather shoes with pink trim from the childrens’ department, among other nondescript day-to-days, like a box of Ziploc bags on sale. But may I point out that with rectitude I’d turned down

a bunch of Hello Kitty paper napkins;
a box of “The Incredibles” cereal, in Incrediberry flavor;
a red camisole with pink polka dots;
an orange T-shirt from the boys’ department that said “Asheville Kickers” and had a screen-print of a sneaker with wings (in fact the size-medium fit); and
a pink and green canvas tote that said “You can find me dancing.”

This last one was the hardest to turn my back on, ’cause (a) you really can find me dancing, and (b) let us recall the jute tote that CC and I found at Abercrombie and Fitch some years ago, on which was printed a picture of a jaunty toucan and the witticism “Jamaica me crazy.” I walked away from that bag then, and how I je regrette to this day.

Welcome-back-to-New-York continued Saturday evening with Maud and Tom and a pot of chicken stew, life is warm and cozy that way. Then we settled downstairs to watch “The Day After Tomorrow,” made good only because we were watching it downstairs instead of in a movie theater, so’s we could yell at the television. (Yah, I know the fact of being in a movie theater doesn’t stop some people, but we are not those people.) Tom identified his least-favorite subplot. Maud kept gunning for the wolves. Me, I was eyes on Jake Gyllenhaal.

Tom left before we could put in “The Terminal,” which was the smart thing to do, I guess, because “The Terminal” was about twelve times worse than “The Day After Tomorrow.” There were like three points in “The Terminal” when we thought the movie was going to end, and it just kept going on and on and bloody on. Maud, j’accuse.



We lazed about Sunday morning with the understanding of cake in the air, and then there was cake for reals at the Ladies’ Tea in Carroll Gardens. Cake is cake, and we like cake well enough, but cake for reals is a Sauternes-cumquat cake, an apple-spice cake, a chocolate thing, gingerbread, a chocolate tart with candied clementines, a pumpkin pecan pie, and a sour cherry and pear pie. Any horizontal space in the room not already occupied by cake or, like, a bottom attached to someone eating cake, was occupied by tea. There was a sugar high, then a sugar low, then there was crunching and munching on salted radishes cold and bitey straight from the fridge.



Leaving India’s, I took an experimental drag on Maud’s cigarette. The girl rolls her own, so sometimes the fag looks like maybe it involves something a little more wicked than tobacco. Two boys in grins and twinkle eyes and baggy jeans passing us on the corner said, “Ohyeahmm-hmIwannasommadat.” Then, like boys in grins and twinkle eyes and baggy jeans, they laughed, “Huh-huh-huh.”

The smoke in my mouth tasted of sweet and burning. It reminded me of a boy from once upon a time.