I am reading a marvelous book. I had a feeling I was on to something on page one, and I was hooked by page seven—which is what I told Leonard the other afternoon at Café Regular, when I had the seat by the door for maximum sunlight, and was hooked on page seven, and he came in with a friend and a dog, and asked what I was reading. I didn’t know then he was called Leonard; we exchanged names over large, cold glasses of pulpy orange juice the next time we were in. Also, I don’t remember now what kind of dog made up the entourage, but he was smallish, and glossy black and maybe white. If you held your hand in the shape of a gun and pointed it at him and said, “Bang-bang,” he would lie down and roll over on the scuffed wood floor. I suppose it is possible he was rolling over only to hide the fact that, really, he was rolling his round doggy eyes at this foolishness. He looked as if he could just as easily have been called Max as Chauncey, but I remember only, in the end, that he was called neither.

But.

I am reading a marvelous book. It is John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley, which I picked off my bookshelf because I like a travel, and because of the Cardigans. They have a ditty called “Travelling with Charley,” which sings of a dashing but an ineffectual (and possibly amnesiac) private eye. It is a charming tune, but I realize now it has very little to do with Steinbeck.

Travels with Charley is Steinbeck driving across America in a souped-up camper-truck with space for, among other things, notepaper; a fishing rod; whiskey; a stove for sausages and coffee; and Charley, his French poodle. The book is good to read: sitting cross-legged in my zebra wood chair at home; in bed, with a pillow against the wall; perched on a bench at Café Regular, one leg tucked under me, the other one dangling, and a thick cappuccino waiting on the table; on the steps of Low Library, stretching my legs out in the sun.

I was on the steps of Low Library this afternoon, stretching my legs out in the sun, and reading Travels with Charley when Kevin walked by and said Hullo. We like Kevin, so all of a sudden “Hullo” was a conversation that couldn’t end but with plans for a lunch date later this week.



I hopped the 1 train downtown, then, to meet Maud and Camille in Chinatown. The directions to Camille to meet at Kam Man were like so: the shop is called kam man, on canal between, i think, mulberry and mott. well, it is just west of mott, in any case. the window on the right has porcelain, the window on the left has, like, roast duck. mmm.

It’s like Maud and I have the French tourist thing down pat. Between Motel Mojo and Motel Stellou, we know where to bring the French visitors, and, oh, we know what we are going to order when we get there. At Great N.Y. Noodletown, always the eggplant and the kang kong and the Mixed Seafood in Taro Bird’s Nest. Maud says she has une petite faiblesse for the MSTBN, and we act like I am humoring her, but the secret is that I have une grande faiblesse for it myself.

(The Great N.Y. Noodletangent is, the thing about speaking French to French girls and then Chinese to Chinese waiters is that all of a sudden your tongue is making you speak Chinese to French girls and French to Chinese waiters. It is amusing, but also stupid, because you sound like this: “Attends. Wait. Deng yi xia. Um, li mian, no, il y a...”)

(The other French-language hijink is, “placard” in English is not really “placard” in French. Normally I know this, but today, in the excitement of talking about a protest, it just popped out. Maud tried to explain about pancartes and banderoles, but I got distracted by pancakes and profiteroles.)

Over lunch, Maud started to say, “So I was thinking of bringing my knife on the road trip,” which made me think that maybe she had some other kind of killer road trip in mind that we hadn’t discussed, but then it turned out she was talking about in the case of picnics. Very well. Carry on.

We were hankering after Chinatown Ice Cream Factory ice cream all winter, and today the doors were propped open to sunshine and spring, and the banana ice cream was calling our names. I am pleased to announce, in addition, that the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory does a damn fine job of the black sesame flavor. It is, and this is no small claim, BETTER THAN THE BANANA.

Treats in hand, we walked back to the crush of Canal Street, and Camille led us to Fashion Mall for five-dollar kung fu shoes in all the colors of the rainbow. It was clear to me I needed the pink, but then there was the chilli vermillion, and then it was clear to me I needed the chilli vermillion. (Quit the nitpicking, this is a special kind of rainbow we are talking about.) The store auntie was pleased to find that she and I are kaki lang, and started breaking it down Hokkien-style with me, saying I should buy both pairs because they will inevitably break. I was like, Um, auntie, this is not your best sales strategy.



Poking around in the shops and then standing on the corner of Broadway and Houston pretending to say good-bye gave me just enough time for a stroll through Nolita and the fringes of the Lower East Side before getting on the F to dinner with Juana. Oh, you betcha, with my MetroCard and my twelve-dollar cotton skirt from This Fashion last summer, I can socialite it up anywheres.

It is quite lovely to refind a friend after not having seen them for two years or somesuch. And it is strange, also, because then you see yourself as they must see you, the changes in your person—seemingly imperceptible to you as you live them from one day to the next—suddenly magnified. There was a duck salad, and stories about lives, and then Juana showed me the trick where all the cabs come down Clinton Street.

The walk back to the York Street F train from Brooklyn Heights was shorter than the original in the opposite direction, but that was because that is how it should be. As my grandmother explains it, the way heading out somewhere takes longer because all the birds and bugs and trees and flowers keep asking where you’re going, and you have to pause to tell them. On the way back, you see, they recognize you and wish you well.