Non mais these fancypants dinners have got to stop; I’m not the lady president of Veuve Clicquot. Still, when a girl’s dressed up nice and she’s got a dinner date leading her to La Bottega at the Maritime Hotel, whose portholed exterior she’s only ever admired from across the street, well—it’s wallets to the wind, innit? The restaurant was walls of white tiles and Cinzano bottles, and the pizza oven glowing with promise. After the seared tuna and white beans, and the gnocchi al funghi, there was time and space yet for a fluffy tiramisu and—once the short-skirted waitress worked her way out from getting lost in the list of caffes doppio, lungo, and ristretto—a foamy cappuccino, lovely and bitter.

After, we were walking down Hudson when the bright lights of a glass-box store window beckoned us over for a close-up. Holy crap, it was Woof Spa, um, a spa for dogs. A spa. For dogs. It was absurd. It was brilliant. We couldn’t look away. The lobby was clean, spare. A couple of preppy Jack Russells hung out in the window. Front and center, each of the two black leather ottomans—

(you know I want to say “ottomen”)

(oh my word, come on, surely there exists, somewhere in the world, a very large furniture store called Ottoman Empire?)

—hosted a fluffy dog, asleep. Like a game of hide-and-seek, one also sheltered a fluffy dog asleep underneath, a careless paw peeking out. A gumball machine held candy-colored capsules of doggy treats. A brown-skinned man mopped the floor.