Thursday afternoon my supervisor at my temp gig tentatively suggested I come in for a half-day on Friday. “But I don’t want you to have to turn down a full day’s work elsewhere,” she said.

“A half day would be lovely.” I said. “I don’t mean to be unprofessional,” I said, “but I have a party to plan.”

Having work is nice—I do enjoy the whole charade of it, putting on a shirt with buttons, sitting tall and straight in an Aero chair, having somewhere I have to be. I can see how I might tire of this within a couple of months of steady employment, but for now it feels good.

But, so. Having work is nice, but getting to leave work in the middle of the day is very nice. At a quarter to two Friday afternoon, I was set free into the clear day. The bus on Plender took me back to my ’hood, with enough time yet to chat with the cheese man.

“This is a lunatic cheese,” he said, holding out a slice of something. I have said this before, and I will say it again: my mind is a sieve, which means I have now forgotten the name of this cheese I told him I would remember—which means the next time I’m in, I will have to say, “May I have some of the lunatic cheese, please?”

“This is a lunatic cheese,” he said. “It is made by a woman in Ireland. She is a bit of a loon herself. She is crazy as a blue flute.”

“As a—”

“As a blue flute.”

We love the cheese man. Between slices of Saint Gall and Mongomery cheddar, he told me about a book that came out last year, called Blessed are the Cheesemakers. “It is a slight read,” he said, “but the portraits of cheesemakers are quite accurate.”

“Oh,” he said, then, distracting himself from the chatting, “I have just done something very silly.” And here he showed me where he had tried to charge my card for twenty-three thousand pounds of cheese.

’Round the corner at the hole-in-the-wall panino place, the panino man in his striped butcher’s apron made me a midday snack to fortify me for party prep. “I don’t know what I want,” I’d said. “The mackerel,” he’d said. “Perfect,” I’d said. “No,” he’d said, then, “the chicken escarole—” and here he’d closed his eyes at the sheer wonder of the chicken escarole. “With ham,” he’d said, “and cheese.” “I’ll take it!” I’d said, and soon he was letting the fragrant rough-cut basil fall from his fingers. The sun was coming straight down Macklin Street through the thick glass windows, and the cobblestones looked like shining water.



“Please come to my housewarming party,” I’d e-mailed a couple of weeks ago. “We like a warm house, and I haven’t figured out how to turn on the heat yet.”

And they came, from five p.m. to eight to nine till I lost track of time, they came and made merry, and all was warm and good. It turns out—I wasn’t sure, after two years in graduate school, calling my own shots schedule-wise—that one can hold down some sort of job AND throw a fairly bitchin’ party. It just takes a little planning, is all, and if there is one thing I can do, it is plan. You can ask my mother about this one, for she believes I am such a master planner I should go back to Singapore and become an Office Manager. Thank you, mother, for the encouragement. Reach for the skies, that’s what I say too.

Tangent about my mother—I was talking to her on the phone this afternoon, and in the middle of my saying something about something, she said, “OH! Man U has just scored a goal.” “Thank you, Mowmy, for your full attention,” I said. “Look,” she said. “I have even muted the commentary on the TV.” “If I didn’t care about you at all,” she said, “I would just get off the phone and go and watch the football.” She is a paragon of motherly love, this one.

But, yes. Turns out if you bake the lemon tart and the chocolate tart the night before, making an extra shortcrust pastry for the keeping, all you have to do the next afternoon is make the bacon and mushroom quiche, and put together the butternut squash–chickpea-rocket salad, lay it all out, accessorise with cheese and fruit and various little bowls of chocolates and sugared almonds and other sweet whatsits, and turn the lights down low.



IJ girls know a thing or two, which is why IJ girls show up early enough to have two slices of quiche EACH before anyone else arrives. Several neighbourhoods away, Grace must have felt the diminishing quiche in the air, because she called to announce her imminent arrival. “Mon amour,” I said, “I hear you are coming with a gay Scotsman.” “I am,” she said, and then promptly rang the buzzer downstairs, coming up with Philip, and bottles of wine, and a gift box of Ferrero Rocher. “Oho,” I said, for that was what was required, “you are spoileeng me wit zees Rocher.”

There was Sylvia, who invited me to her company’s launch party, where there may be Champagne; Akira, who is not Japanese; Ricky, whose band we will go see perform in a couple of weeks; Seung Yun, who is making me want to go to Barcelona the day after I get back from Paris; Antony, who seemed to get drunk very quickly. Antony hung out by the stereo most of the night, and kept us going with Lauren Hill, and Wham!, and the Cardigans, and the Eels. The Strokes, Saint Etienne, Scissor Sisters, No Doubt. “I am very impressed at your CD collection,” he said. “I have not met a girl with such a cool collection in a long time.” Being the sort of boy who says “I am the best dentist in London”, he also said: “Who taught you about music?” “I took a class,” I said. “There was a syllabus, and appendices.” “But also,” I said, “I am not here to impress you.”

But the thing I was not about to say was: “I listen to Bright Eyes and Hank Williams because I was in love with this boy. There were those late New York City nights we walked arm-in-arm, and there was something beautiful about the ambiguity of it all. The lights were always haloed, it seemed, and I remember how the smoke came curling out of his mouth when he had a cigarette.” I was not about to say: “I listen to Manu Chao and Stevie Wonder and João Gilberto because I was in love with this other boy. I remember the long, sweet summer days, and I remember trading grins across the big dinner table, and I remember standing on a Brooklyn rooftop watching the yellow buses go by.” “I remember,” I was not going to say, “that one afternoon when his arm brushed against mine, I felt hot all the way up to my shoulder.”

By the end of the night, there had been wine spilled, and chocolate smeared on the wall, for it turned out I had invited monkeys to my housewarming party. Grace was eating the salad straight out of the serving bowl, straight from the serving spoons. We were smoking in the kitchen by an open window, shivering in the chill of early morning.



This afternoon at Bar Italia, the waiter with the architectural spectacles said: “You were not here last week.” “It’s true,” I said, and inside I was pleased that they had noticed. On the way home, I stopped at the corner shop for a Guardian. “You are late today,” the newsagent man said, and his dark eyes disappeared with smiling. “Normally you come in the morning.” “Man,” I said, “I woke up so late today,” and inside I wrinkled my nose with a childish glee. This weekend, we have had a housewarming, followed by a home.