Final exam tomorr. And then it’s all over. Except that it’s not, really, because then I have to write a thesis. Ah. Well, one thing at a time. Meanwhile, exams mean everything else gets pushed to the side for the moment. So far, the list of things to jump on after tomorrow goes:

read freud
haircut
xmas party menu
résumé!!!
chinatown, chrysanthemums for tea
ask jeff for le tigre + the killers
tom, sushi date?
gourmet garage, scharffen berger
call yumei
call ren
call kumix
lemon pound cake mmm aaahh

I was telling Jacq that I needed to very quickly become an expert in the history of nineteenth-century France ’cause of the social and political being such characters in Stendhal and Flaubert, and she wrote back:

french history? aiyah 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc estates then can lah. also, throw in revolution, some louis the 14th furniture, victor hugo, galleries lafayette, are we not done?

What with waking up late yesterday and then having a leisurely deeeluxe breakfast of bagels, cream cheese, a leftover cheese plate, cranberry bread, honeys, and jams, over the kitchen counter with sleepover friends, it sure felt like Sunday.

(The bagels-and-cream-cheese story is, Never did a girl want a bagel so bad and not know it. Maud came over Friday with a thing of cream cheese and a bag of bagels, and we stood by the toaster to eat them hot and perfect, jumping them about in our hands. At one point Maud said, “I think I’m going to have another one, that was so good.” “Here,” I said, “take my half, I’m not going to—no, wait, don’t. I want it.” Because, oh, it’d been months since I’d had a bagel, and sometimes a bagel is just what you don’t know you want, thick and crunchy and soft and smeared with cream cheese and pear jam in one bite, and then cream cheese and strawberry jam in the next.)

We talked about going outside, we talked about holing up in the TV cave, then we cleaned the sink with leftover Coke from the last last last party.



Tom and I took a walk in the autumn gorgeousness after. At the bookshop, he bought me a New Yorker magazine so I could read the David Sedaris story. When we stopped to get some coffee at an Italian grocery, I came out with a big I-heart-NY plastic bag containing a tin of coffee, a bottle of chocolate milk, three things of yoghurt, a box of pumpkin agnolotti, a box of porcini agnolotti, and a bar of Italian hazelnut chocolate. At the video store, looking for a video for Maud, we stood in front of the shelves for ages. “We gotta do good,” Tom said. “We gotta do good.” The “Chungking Express” box said “In Chinese with yellow English subtitles,” which I thought was funny. After maybe half an hour of wandering aimlessly up and down the aisles, we emerged with “Coming to America” and “Step Into Liquid,” maybe the most unexpected selection ever. When we got back home, Maud was alternating between “Moonstruck” and “Point Break” on cable.



And then this morning when I woke up all groggy-like into the grey and the rain and the wind howling down the corridor outside, the realization that I still had a whole ’nother Sunday in front of me made me smile insta-brite into the bathroom mirror.

Slowly, surely, and very quietly, the uneasy frazzlement that’s been bubbling, bubbling, toil-and-troubling inside me for the last week or so is making its way out. I have a bruise on my left shoulder from banging into the corner of the marble kitchen counter the other day as I raised myself up from a crouched position. Washing a murderous tart tin this morning, I sliced into my finger; it is the kind of gash where there is a flap. Just hours ago, moving a table, I rammed my hand into the wall. The bruise over the knuckle is pinker and purpler and larger every time I look at it.

I can’t quite put my finger on what’s wrong, but it’s probably best I keep all my digits close to my person anyway until this cloud passes.

A girl knows she’s doing something right when there are three pies for dessert. Well, two pies and a tart, to be exact, but, come on, sweet is sweet.

Thanksgiving dinner number two got under way yesterday afternoon when Maud and I hit Steve’s C-Town for Savings and loaded up the chariot. We carried everything home embracing brown paper bags in our arms ’cause Maud thinks she is the heroine of some Seventies movie set in New York, or Sigourney Weaver in the beginning of Ghostbusters II, or something. After a couple of blocks, she said, “You know, I bet in the movies the bags are actually empty.”

Home, there was Otis Redding and The Shins and Volume One of The Best Easy Album Ever. There was some kind of unspoken rhythm in the kitchen. We sliced, we diced, we shredded, we blended. We cleaned-as-we-went. We minced, we melted, we whisked, we baked.

Tom showed up with a cherry pie.

(The thing with the pie is, when I talked to him on Wednesday, he said, “Should I bring anything?” and I said, “Will you bake a pie?, ha ha.” Which just goes to show, sometimes you just need to ask.)

Jeff showed up with two foldable chairs and a police van.

(The thing with the chairs is, I don’t tend to have more than eight people over to a sit-down meal. Last night, we were ten, then eleven, then twelve. When Vio asked if she could bring Lorin, I had to ask, sheepishly, if she could also bring a place setting for him. Then I had to call back and ask if she could also bring a stool.)

(The thing with the police van is, I dunno, Jeff came in and said, “Look out the window, I think they’re arresting my driver.” I looked out the window, and two cops were getting out of their van and walking up to Jeff’s car. I didn’t stay to see more than that, but the lights were flashing, red, through my curtains for a while.)

India showed up with a pretty tin of White Persian Melon tea and a pecan pie that had a surprise pumpkin element.

(There is no thing I need to say here about India and the pie except for the girl knows what she’s doin’.)

My cousin Sarah showed up with another cousin, I Lin.

(The thing about Sarah is that she is my mother’s cousin’s daughter. I’ve heard that that makes me and Sarah second cousins, or first cousins twice removed, or second cousins twice removed. No one really seems to know. In any case, it is very nice to discover a cousin you didn’t even know about till maybe six months ago, and then make friends as friends rather than as forced relations.)

Vio showed up with cheese, because Vio brings the good cheese. (She also brought a place setting for Lorin.) (And a stool.) (And champagne.) (Two bottles.) (Mmm.)

Numbers ten and eleven cancelled, which was both too bad and a good thing, because then everyone had a real chair.



Then there was the feeding: lemon zucchini and feta; dandelion and garlic; avocado and shrimp and pink grapefruit; tzatziki; garlicky hummus; a dish of potatoes hot and light and puffy from being roasted with coarse sea salt.

Then there was sitting around.

Then there was champagne for all, and the cherry pie, and the pecan-pumpkin pie, and the chocolate tart.

(The thing about the chocolate tart is, well, it was incredible. Who knew? that if you whipped six eggs till they triple in volume and form soft peaks when the whisk is raised; that if you then folded the result into cooking chocolate hand-carried from France and melted, with butter, in a makeshift bain-marie; that if, then, you poured the mixture into a crust made of flour and sugar and chopped walnuts and pecans; and that if—after your whipping arm has had some hours to rest—you then whipped a bowl of heavy cream into thick, white clouds of delectability to be dished out on the side in generous spoonfuls, that you would have heaven on a silver platter?

No, but really, the thing about the chocolate tart is, Tom said, “I don’t think my cherry pie is very good,” which made me say, “Tom. Please. This is very tasty. What are you, Chinese?” which started a whole thing of the Chinese girls at the table having to explain how Chinese mothers have to be all, “No, no, my cooking is not good, it’s not salty enough, it’s too salty, blah blah blah,” and “No, no, my daughter where got pretty?, yours is so sweet,” which I was surprised no one knew already, because wasn’t The Joy Luck Club and all its delicious exoticism such a hit back in the day? Pearl, ah. . . .

Somehow that led to talking about how Sarah and I are born in the Year of the Dragon, which is so totally hands-down the best year to be born in, and we were trying to explain what makes the Year of the Dragon the best year, but we weren’t getting very far, because all it is, is, it’s just the best year, people, it just is. Prosperity, grace, good fortune, I don’t know, all of it. And when you’re born in the Year of the Dragon, you sure don’t have to know heck about any of the other years. “I was born in the Year of the Sheep,” I Lin said. “Um,” Sarah said, “I think that makes you loyal.” “I was born in the Year of the Horse,” Jeff said. “Oh,” Sarah said, “I think that makes you loyal.”

So, but, the thing about the chocolate tart is, eventually I said, “Oh my word, this chocolate tart is incredible. What am I, not Chinese?”)

Somewhere around two in the morning, it was quiet again. Tom said, “Let’s go watch TV.” We lay down on the pull-out in front of the TV and the boy promptly fell asleep on my shoulder while Maud and I laughed our heads off at Eddie Izzard.

We like the girl ’cause she takes a recipe off the back of a can and all of a sudden, crispy tostadas in hand, we’re tucking into thick, hearty, beany chili from a big red bowl. Sprinkled with spring onions and yellow, yellow cheddar, this is a Thanksgiving dinner for happy bellies.

On the way uptown Thursday evening, the trains kept coming just when I needed them, which was something to be thankful for on Thanksgiving day.

When I got to Maud’s, I handed over the beers and said, “So how was the thing? With the guy who’s cool? And hot?” “Oh my god,” she said, “he was so cool, and he was so hot.” So we are thankful for guys who are cool and hot.

We were not thankful for the mouse in Philippe’s house, but we were thankful that Karen is going to lend him her cat.

We were thankful for chestnuts, I suppose, unless we are pregnant, or unless we are Philippe. See, Mathilde said her mother’d said a girl couldn’t eat chestnuts when she was pregnant, or the baby’d be born with stains on its skin. “No chestnuts?” Philippe said. “Oh, can you imagine a world without chesnuts? Please. I haven’t had a chestnut in like twelve years.”

We were thankful, also, for Stéfanie, who moved from Paris to Kansas City, Kansas, and went on a date with a Mormon. Stéfanie is small, with wide eyes, and red-brown hair that flips up at the ends. “It was a double date,” she said, “so I was sitting here, and he was sitting here, and this other girl was sitting on his right. And I was—” We were going crazy. “You call that a double date?!” She went out with a Catholic guy later, maybe in Lawrence: “He parked outside a church and wanted to kiss me,” she said, “but I told him it was too late.” In New York some years after, a Dutchman with follicular issues kissed her at a party. “That night,” she said, “I dreamed that I was bald.” When Stéfanie started talking about Toys in Babeland, Philippe pushed his chair back and stood up. “I have to go,” he said.

What with all the chortling and guffawing all night, I started to lose my voice, which is why, then, I was thankful when the tubs of ice cream were brought out.



I walked home just before two in the morning under stars crisp and bright in the sky for the first time in a week and a half. Today, the blue stretches out like I’m a cowgirl on the edge of the prairie.

Oh, it’s good when you have a bunch of gift cards and gift receipts burning a hole in your wallet, ’cause then it means you get to make an early morning trip to SoHo before the crowds get there, and come home at lunchtime carrying: half a loaf of exquisite chocolate bread and a loaf of cranberry bread and a jar of marinated feta from Dean & Deluca (thank you, CC); a pair of silver earrings from Anthropologie (it’s a long story, but thank you, Schmio); and a bottle of fancy shower scrub from Fresh you would never have spent real money on (sorry, but thank you, Andrea). The fancy shower scrub is all crushed rice and crushed bamboo and sake and ginseng and daikon radish, and it smells like I will be the highest-priced geisha around. It is printed on the bottle of fancy shower scrub:

In contemporary Asian culture, the importance attached to cleanliness and purity stems from ancient rituals of everyday life. For example, a young samurai bathed in cold rivers at night or stood in prayer beneath freezing waterfalls to cleanse the soul and strengthen the spirit before having to accomplish a challenging task.

I mean, hello, moisture is the essence of wetness.

No, but, really. Who is writing this stuff? More importantly, who is getting paid to write this stuff? More importantly, may I have their job? I am exactly the sort of contemporary Asian they need to write about ancient rituals. I am good at ancient rituals: squatting, sitting with one leg up on the chair at the dinner table, pointing with chopsticks, sneezing adamantly and with flourish. . .

Meanwhile, who wants, while they’re trying to take a nice, quiet shower, to think about a young samurai bathing in cold rivers at night or standing in prayer beneath freezing waterfalls just before he heads out to off someone? Oh, no, wait, is this young samurai played by Takeshi Kaneshiro? Because, then, okay.

Anyway, so what with the gift cards and then also my returning a bunch of je-regrettes to stores, it just goes to show that a girl can go on a shopping trip and come out way on top.

Now me and my contemporary Asian culture are going to go cook a hot noodle soup with tofu and garlic and straw mushrooms while the rain comes down outside.

Aaaaaa I need to go grocery shopping. Last night in the dinnertime hour, I found me hungry and my fridge almost foodless. Scrounging around, I was able to cobble together a small green salad with beets and walnuts and goat cheese, and matjes herring on crispbread. It’s amazing sometimes what a girl can unearth in her pantry.

Meanwhile, the yoghurt I’m having for breakfast right now expired yesterday. Is this a problem?

When I got off the train at Grand Army Plaza this evening, I was tired and lugging a bag of library books, and it was already dark, and raining, too. I was heading up the stairs from the subway station into the cold and wet when someone a few steps ahead of me struck a match against a matchbook. In the momentary smell of that small combustion—a sharp smokiness, acrid, not unpleasant—was contained that Hans Christian Anderson tale of the little match girl. I tucked my hands in my coat pockets and walked home along the park in the rain, and it was quite nice, actually.

Well, it’s just that it’s nice to throw a party because it’s nice to throw a party, but also because then Monday you wake up and everything’s sparkle clean and smelling good from the post-party deep-clean, plus there are roses blooming all over the house still, and leftover gingerbread and walnut spice cake on the counter, all of which point to a good entry to the week.

It seemed like a good idea back in September or October sometime when Kat said, “Let’s throw a Beaujolais party.” “Totally,” I said, so come Saturday night there were wines and chocolate-covered almonds and cheeses and olives and Maud’s gingerbread and these incredible spice and walnut biscuits and thirty-six fat red roses spread out around the house like lusciousness when Maud and Kat and I decided to taste test before the guests arrived. We winced, opened another bottle, winced some more, and then Maud rinsed her glass and said, “Do you have any good wine?” We figured we could just hide the bottle of Lan Rioja when everyone else got here.

And then people got here, and of course it was fine, because alls some people want, like the crazy drunk girl who couldn’t stop feeling her boy-toy’s buttocks, is a slosh fest, in which case, drink up, buddy; and alls other people want is a pot of Stockholm Blend, in which case, well, we like people who like tea.

Kat’s friend Marisa brought us gifts, which turned out to be a bergamot citrus soap and a gardenia magnolia soap from Fresh, which means Marisa is invited to every party from here on out.

Philippe was here for like six minutes.

When I buzzed India in, I thought the security camera showed her with her cake carrier in hand, and, oh, how nice it is to be correct, because then she appeared at the door with a lemon-glazed walnut spice bundt. We like India a lot.

Jeff called, lateish, from another party. “Are you going to be there for a while?” he said. “Jeff,” I said, “I live here. I’m going to be here for months. Get off the phone and come already.” So he did, and then he went to the bathroom and there was a grand clatter, and he poked his head out from behind the door and said, “Nothing’s broken.” But this afternoon when I was cleaning up I found candle wax covering the weighing scale and the underside of the toilet bowl stained red with wine, so I want to know what exactly was going on in there.

When Mika and Jen began to say their good-byes, we ended up looking at comic books and talking for another half-hour. It’s nice when that happens, even if sometimes people need to go because they have a dog at home they need to let out, which makes me think of a small dog standing upright on its hind legs and crossing its two other paws over its crotch. In this thought, the dog is also shifting from one foot to the other, and has a nervous look in its eyes. At one point we (Mika and Jen and I, not any combination of us plus the dog) were talking about a woman with a speech impediment, and I said, “It’s like in that movie, whatever the hell it’s called, the one with the mouse, and he’s coming to America, and it’s like—” and then I sang the song that goes, “There are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with chee-ese.” “I can’t believe you are quoting ‘An American Tale’ to me,” Jen said. “Well,” I said, “I can’t believe I quoted ‘An American Tale’ to you and you were able to identify it.”

George drank wine out of an egg cup (“I’m pacing myself,” he said) and told me about his film, and about being sick while interviewing a mullah in Iraq somewhere: “. . .and I excused myself and was outside making these retching noises, and he just kept on answering the question.”

When there was the great shattering noise followed by the sight of Kat and Jeff crouched down scooping up shards of glass on the kitchen floor with their bare hands, I knew it was time to just walk away and leave well enough alone.

Tom, that deadbeat, never showed, and I said, “Tom, that deadbeat. But he will call tomorrow and be very sorry.” And then I got an e-mail from him today that said, in part: “didn't see you last night, it seemed ok at the time, . . .but i'm feeling the weight of it now, such that I am afraid to call you,” which made me laugh, which is why we always like Tom a lot, even when he is a deadbeat.

Around five, Kat was curled up on the long ottoman. “Kat,” I said, “I’ve made your bed downstairs.” “Mmmm. Innabit,” she said. “You’re ice skating.” “Ummm, okay,” I said, “well, so, I’m going to bed now.” “You’re ice skating,” she said.

I was on the way to school today and already running late when they did that thing where the train sits at the station for ten minutes before the conductor says it’s going out of service because of mechanical problems so everyone please get off. Except maybe they didn’t say “please,” and it probably sounded more like “Brraaazzzhhhhh mechanica—brrawwzzzgh—out of service out of service out of service.” I stood on the platform wondering when the next 2 or 3 train was going to come by, but since the out-of-service one was still parked on the tracks, things weren’t looking good.

And there I was thinking it was going to be a good day because I’d gotten to admire at the gorgeous police horses at Grand Army Plaza.

I transferred to the N, possibly the slowest express train in the world, and we were chugging along in an unremarkable manner when I realized we were going above ground, and, well, sometimes a girl really does have a good day, because the N heads into the city over the Manhattan Bridge, so all of a sudden we were going over the water, steel girders on either side of us, and the Brooklyn and Williamsburg bridges beyond, and Manhattan coming up all building tops like a hundred years ago.

So sometimes you wake with a song in your head, right? And sometimes it’s Rilo Kiley, which is nice, and sometimes it’s Stevie Wonder, which is also good. And the last few days it’s been David Bowie and Queen on “Under Pressure,” which is very good, because that is the kind of song that makes you, the rest of the day, out of nowhere, while you’re simply walking down the street admiring the orangeyellow leaves on the pavement, start grinning broadly and singing the bit about giving love one more chance and about the people on the edge of the night and about how this is our last dance and this is ourselves.

And then sometimes there’s this morning, when I put the coffee on and realized that the line weaving its way through my head was: “My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns, hon.”

(When I told Jason this as we were on our way to a talk at the Maison Française in the afternoon, he said: “You can do side bends or sit-ups, but please don’t lose that butt.”)

I’m not saying it was a bad way to wake up, it was just. . .unexpected.

But I do want to know what’s going on in my mind, exactly. Because the other morning I woke from this dream: I was cooking dinner for a bunch of friends, and I reached over to the shelf by the stove to get a pan. Next to the pan was a bowl of raw chicken, pink and tender. “That’s weird,” I thought, “why didn’t I keep this in the fridge?” But it looked fine and it smelled fine, so I figured, Eh, it’ll be okay. Still, I was wondering how long it’d been sitting there—and then I remembered I’d placed it on the shelf a year ago. But I kept poking at the meat, and it wasn’t rotting or anything, it was this beautiful chicken like I’d just picked it up at the market that morning. And then I realized, with emphasis and certainty and italics, that of course the meat was fine, because—hold on to your hats, people—it was the Body of Christ. And I cooked it with rice, and I served it up, and when I told everyone it was the Body of Christ, some of my friends said, “Gross,” and some of them said it was tasty.

Clearly my head is some sort of vast field with bunnies hopping about, where sometimes the bunnies are like the fluffy white ones currently in the window of the pet store on Ninth Street, the ones advertised in a handwritten sign stuck on the glass pane that reads “Bunnies! $19.99!”, and sometimes the bunnies are the one from Donnie Darko. Mmmurgh.

Well, I finished L’education sentimentale. When I got back from school this evening, I had maybe thirty-something pages to go, and I was all, I know I can finish this tonight. And the phone kept ringing, and it kept being people I wanted to talk to, and I was still, I know I can finish this tonight. When Tom called, I said, “. . .and so I have like eighteen pages to go. . .” and he said, “Doesn’t Frédéric like leave Paris or something at the end?” and I said, “Tom, why are you telling me this?”

So, but, I finished it. And then I just sat there not quite sure what to do with myself. Because after all those moments of gasping, eyes wide open, at every other step—she loves him! she loves him, too! and she! they kiss! he seduces her! all of a sudden Rosanette’s standing there! she’s pregnant! the baby dies! Louise marries Deslauriers! Sénécal attacks Dussardier!—and after all the parties with the tables laden with pyramids of crayfish and silver platters of quail and great bowls of oranges and Champagne everywhere, and after the barricades and the rage and the blood mixing with mud in the street—after it all, it’s just him and her, and it’s night, and she’s older, but he’s older, too, and there’s surprise and fear and desire and regret. And then there’s nothing left to say, and then from the window upstairs he watches her leave, and ce fut tout. And really, after all those hearts broken in the book, it seems like maybe one of them is yours, too.

Oh, that Flaubert, he sure knows what he’s doing.

At eight in the morning in SoHo, the meat trucks and fish trucks unload on quiet cobblestones. A busboy hoses down the pavement outside the Savoy. A gold deer with diamond eyes peers out from behind a thin muslin curtain at The Apartment. Blue dress, pink socks, red coat, the sun warm on my back, the streets are mine.



At Balthazar, a milky coffee, sour cream walnut waffles with stewed berries, and a good, long natter with a dear friend.

Vio called this evening to see if we were still on for the Pina Bausch show tonight. “Of course we’re still on,” I said. “Good,” she said, “and you know, the show’s three hours long.” “Well, well,” I said, and then drizzled some lemon and ground pepper on a quick smoked mackerel snack before I got on the train.

The stage was a white room, with white wainscoting, white cornices, white floors.

There was a girl in a white dress. She had shiny black hair straight down to the middle of her back. She was a ghost, a fairy, she was a pebble, she was seafoam, she was life, she was death.

There was a woman who loved a man for half a minute. There was a woman who talked about eggs in Spain. There was a woman who lifted her skirt to her knees to reveal bright red shoes, and then she danced suspended in the air. There was a woman who was fire, a snapdragon, an exclamation point. These were all the same woman.

There was a man in a sharp pinstriped suit whose dance had the quick movements of an experienced tailor, measuring, measuring. In his fingers you could almost see a guy with thick glasses and silver hair and deep wrinkles on his face, a yellow tape measure around his neck, a stub of white chalk in his hand. This one I liked because it seemed to suggest that maybe Pina Bausch had been inspired by watching an old man at his craft, and I liked that maybe you could see the blueprint of her creation.

There was a woman who drew an O on a mirrored panel and said, “This is a hug.” She drew an X and said, “This is a kiss.” She drew another O. “Hug.” Then another X. “Kiss.” O X O X. “Hug. Kiss. Hug. Kiss.” She bent over and drew on the floor in chalk. “Kiss, hug, kiss, hug, hug, hug, hug.” She sat on the floor and drew Xs and Os around her. “Hug, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss,” she said. She smiled. “Imagine,” she said.

Ah, Singapore. I just phoned The Chocolate Box to try to place a delivery order to a morose friend:

“Hi, I’m calling from New York, and want to find out if I can order some truffles from you to send to a friend over there?”
“Yah, can, but I’m not too sure how we can do it.”
“Uh?”
“Yah, I’m not too sure about the mode of payment.”
“Well, I’d give you my credit card number.”
“Yah, we can’t do that. You have to come down here and present your card.”
“Oh. So I can’t actually order from here and have you deliver.”
“Yah, no.”
“Um. Ooookay. Thanks.”
“Yah.”

I don’t know if that’s as good as or better than the time I needed an emergency manicure (long story involving what turned out to be so a non-date with a guy who turned out to be so married): I went to the Seiyu girl in Bishan Junction 8, but she couldn’t do it because she had another appointment in five minutes, so I said, “Do you know if I can get it done anywhere else around here?” and she said, “Why don’t you go outside and see?” Oh! Thank you! (Bow.)

Waking up at seven on Sunday is not something I think of doing often, but there I was this morning, measuring, chopping, mixing, for a couple of loaves of banana bread. And whaddya know, it’s not so bad, after all, waking at seven to bake while the sun rises, and to have your house smell delightful for a good few hours.

After a solid month of friends in town, the sudden emptiness was churning in my stomach when Maud arrived with the Sunday Times and a plump brown bag of spicy chai. It was a sign of things to come, because then everyone else showed up to brunch bearing gifts, too. From Kat, a bunch of dahlias deep pink like happiness. From Jeff, two massive chocolate-chip muffins and two massive apple muffins. From India, a silver bracelet of pink hearts. From Jason, The Cow Who Fell in the Canal, which—I’m just flipping through; I haven’t read it in its entirety yet—starts by introducing Hendrika, an unhappy cow living on a farm in Holland, and ends with her munching grass in the pasture with a red hat on her head. I see, also, that there is a two-page spread that pictures a bunch of Dutch dudes piling cheeses into pyramids in the town square. This book can only be good. (I will say, though, that Jason said he’d picked it up from the top of a newspaper box on the way over, and now that I’ve just put it down I realize my hands are beginning to itch.)

Jeff made us Bellinis and Kirs while I put together a sweet potato pasta with fried garlic and shaved parmesan. I looked over from the kitchen at one point to see everyone spread out on the ottoman, on chairs, on the floor, reading the paper. On a list of things that feel good, that scene makes it up there with the things that feel very, very good.

Then we ate, oh, how we ate, and there were stories told, and gossips gossiped, and laughs laughed, and utensils gestured in a way that would make my mother shudder and say, “I never taught you that.” There was a pear ginger crumble and chrysanthemum jasmine tea as the sun set. We danced to Andy Williams singing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” We lit a skinny candle and a fat candle.

When it was all quiet again, I deep cleaned the house, and then I deep cleaned me. I go to bed in a cloud of wild pansies, which is what every Sunday ought to smell like.

We woke up to the sky blue like eternity.



In Dumbo, the Manhattan Bridge peeked out down cobblestoned streets, framed on either side by nineteenth-century industry. A wedding party was having its pictures taken on the Fulton Ferry Landing. The wind lifted the bottoms of chiffon dresses pastel like summer, while the bride shivered under a puffy coat in between takes.



The dogs were shades of coffee in the Hillside Dog Park. There was loping, there was gamboling, there was quite a bit of butt sniffing. There was a small white dog off like a rocket. There was a Rottweiler sauntering like handsomeness.

We were on the way to the Guggenheim yesterday when it occurred to us that we were hungry. Following which, it very swiftly occurred to us that we needed to abandon ship, where “ship” was the vessel that is the F train, because art is art, but soup dumplings at Joe’s Shanghai are something else altogether. We headed down Grand Street with its Vietnamese restaurants and its tantalizing roast-duck aroma in the air, hanging a right on Bowery with the scent of char siew baos hot and sweet through icy raindrops. And, my word, xiao long baos at Joe’s Shanghai are never a bad thing, but xiao long baos at Joe’s Shanghai when it’s wet and cold outside, well, that’s just heaven. And heaven sure knows how to set out a feast for girls like us, with a mound of garlicky dou miao, which I’d been craving for weeks now; a couple of unexpected turnip cakes; and a dish of crispy pork chops with pepper salt and a soupbowl of Chinese-restaurant-regulation-style sweet and sour sauce in a shade of red not of this world.

I was sitting on the ottoman yesterday morning in my pyjamas, leaning against the wall, a French dictionary on my left, an English dictionary on my right, L’education sentimentale on my lap, when Andrea said she thought she might head to Coney Island. Maybe thirty-two minutes later, our faces were washed, our teeth were brushed, and we were both on the F train to the end of the line, which was a good thing for some of us who are visiting from Singapore, and whim and madness for others of us who needed to be at school, in the complete opposite direction, in a couple of hours.

But here’s the thing about Coney Island. Sure, it’s great in the summer, what with the sun and the rides and boardwalk chock-a-block and the hot corn-on-the-cob and the swirly soft-serve ice creams in pink and green. But come November, when it’s coldish and the clouds are coming in over the coast, when the Cyclone falls silent on its normally rattley wooden slats, when the dull metal gates have been brought down over the food stalls, there’s still a something in the air—something faded, something quiet, something that’s a hint of a something.



We shared the boardwalk with the seagulls—one who stood out for being unkempt and extra mean-looking, and at least two for being bigger than my head. I reckon it’s that steady diet of fried clams and candy floss maintaining their figure.



Stevie Wonder was on the speakers at Nathan’s, and it was very warm under the heat lamps. A ruddy woman with three round children ripped a hamburger in half with her bare hands. Over on the right, by the mustard and ketchup dispensers, another woman carried a Wayne Thiebaud tray lined with hotdogs.

The sun came out, shyly.

After days of the sun rising over the park, glowing through the trees, to technicolor days of sharp blues and bright reds and crisp greens, this morning there was rain falling from a white sky. There will be coffee and toast for breakfast. There will be Lou Reed, and Romeo, and Juliette.

We were at The Crooked Tree tonight with hot apple ciders and a crème de marron crêpe between the two of us, and it was warm and candle-lit, and I was fighting to keep my eyes open.

I have been waking before the alarm clock every morning this week, which is nice because, man, I hate the sound of that alarm. Sometimes I think I need to get one of those Japanese ones I used to see when I used to transit at Narita, the one where it’s like, a Japanese fisherwoman yelling at you to wake. I’m gonna say that again. A Japanese fisherwoman. Yelling. At you. To wake. It’s possible that that would still be better than the zzjhaaee-zzjhaaee-zzjhaaee of my current alarm clock.

In any case, the thing about waking up before the alarm is that it seems to suggest that, glory be, I’m finally getting enough rest, and my body is waking me up when it’s ready for me to wake up. But that just doesn’t make sense, because I can’t have gotten more than six hours of sleep per night this week. Which is what leads us to The Crooked Tree after midnight, cradling a mug of hot apple cider in my hand, and wanting little more than to close my eyes and put my head down on the table.

It seems like ages ago I was waking before the alarm this morning, rolling over and stretching, good and cat-like, on candy-striped flannel sheets. I smiled into my pillow. I was thinking about a boy.

Sometimes, when you have an hour and a half to kill between a class and a talk, you go to the library to get some work done. Other times, you go to the library, sit on the shiny linoleum floor in an empty corridor with a cup of hot English Breakfast, and spend the hour and a half laughin it up on the phone with Jeff and Maud and Jeff again and Tom.

The Jeff again was because when I got off the phone with Maud, there was this message from the boy—“Okay, dude, I know I just got off the phone with you but things just took a brilliant turn up. I took a trivia quiz at work last week and my prize was a DVD of ‘New York Minute.’”—and, clearly, that kind of message doesn’t go unreturned. “Dude,” I said, when he picked up. “I know!” he said. “I wanted to see that when it came out,” I said, “and I just never got around to it.” “I know,” he said, “I asked you to go see it and you said you were already planning to go with Jason, and I asked you like three times and you kept saying you were going to see it with Jason, and, look, Jason was such a deadbeat that you guys never went.” “Jeff,” I said, “I like that you just don’t let go of shit.” “No,” he said, “I don’t.” I tried to make him bring it over Sunday. “Please.” “No.” “Jeff.” “No.” “Come on!” “No. . . . Maybe.” So we’ll see.

Tuesday, after staying in all afternoon and reading a hundred pages of Flaubert—

(The Flaubert story is, After my party last week, I found a stray umbrella in the hallway. “J’ai gagné une ombrelle,” I said to Gab. “Pas une ombrelle,” he said, “c’est un parapluie.” “Oh, yeah,” I said, “je lis trop de Flaubert.”)

—a girl feels good leaving the house as the sun sets, walking toward the pale blue and skinny clouds west of Ninth Street.

In Chelsea, as I headed for Printed Matter in the almost-bitter almost-winter wind, the Matthew Marks Gallery was a lightbox on a darkened street. Inside, an installation of Paris postcards blown up to larger than human size, a couple of baguettes the size of the Eiffel Tower the size of the Abbesses métro station entrance the size of a cup of black coffee; a woman-sized woman and a dog-sized dog, both made of giant seashells, in the middle of the room; umbrellas hanging from the ceiling, Magritte-style, in purple and green and black and white. Not part of the installation but part of the scene, a fifties grey metal desk and a fifties grey metal chair and a young grey art-world dude with the barest hint of a hello. My heels on the poured concrete floor echoed round the room.

Down the street at Comme des Garçons, Andrea and I entered through the egg-shaped glass door—very Mork and Mindy. The clothes were in turns stylish and crazy, and then there was the pair of gold mary-janes, and then there was the rhubarb-sherbet perfume.

It was time for tea after, because we like tea, and what’s not to like at the Wild Lily Tea Room with its goldfish pond a hollow in the concrete floor, the large dried green chrysanthemums floating on the water, spindly sculptures of spidery beauty; its cute Japanese waitgirls with their transparent colored-plastic aprons and thick legwarmers and hair up and down at the same time; its collection of teacups, including the dainty blue Staffordshire with a curvy rim and a flower printed on the inside; its lychee tea, just sweet enough and just strong enough, in a glass pot, the stewed lychees collected plump and white at the bottom, waiting to be pierced with a long fork.

It was warm in there, and the lights were low, and the scent of steamed dumplings was delicate in the air. And we probably would have stayed, had we not had somewhere else to be, and had that somewhere else not been, O happy day, the Union Square Café. Oh, Union Square Café, how good you are to me, what with your ricotta raviolini with lettuce and slippery mushrooms and your genius sprinkling of fresh mint;—

(Oh. Mushrooms. Maud lent me a dictionary the other day, and this is not just any dictionary, people, it’s a Nouveau Petit Larousse Illustré from 1947. There’s a brown dandelion drawing stamped onto the front of its muted orange cover, where it says “Je sème à tout vent.” Where the fat spine has cracked from years of thumbing through the book, seven small bronze staples hold it all together. Inside, fine engravings on yellowed pages, just pages and pages of marvel—parts of a house; gymnastic exercises; Hindu art; things to measure with; vehicles, from a pram to a tilbury to a dirigible; choke holds; Louis XIII style; Louise XIV style; Louis XV and XVI style; natural calamities; mollusks; the products and animals and peoples of Asia. And in color there is a page on champignons: the fairy-tale-like Amanite oronge; the spotted Amanite tue-mouches; the gently blushing Hypholome; the uneasy green Lactaire vixqueux; the stout Bolet tête de nègre; the Truffe, a malcontent, uneven blackish lump tucked in a corner at the bottom of the collection.)

—your Chatham cod crispy and flaky and salty in all the right ways; your—and I’d known it would be mine from the time I’d made our table reservation at noon—banana tart hot and sweet under a golden carapace of caramel. When Andrea tried the tart, she said, “Do we need to order another one?” “No,” I said, “if we order another dessert, it’ll have to be a different one, because everything else on the menu looked incredible, too.” Then I had another forkful of tart. “Okay, no, wait,” I said, “okay, order another one.”

On the train home, Andrea couldn’t stop admiring some girl’s shoes. I told her to post a Missed Connections, but she just laughed.

Winsome is a sparkle bird on a golden branch.

At the Magnolia Bakery today, the sweet, sweet smell of sweet was in the air, and the cupcakes were in bloom.

We were in the Village, Andrea and I, walking up Bleecker in the sun, so of course I said, “Oh, yay, this means we can go to Marc Jacobs.” “Do we want to go to Marc Jacobs?” she said. “We totally want to go to Marc Jacobs,” I said, “but we can’t buy anything, we can only touch, and when we leave we have to make this sound,” and I made the sound—softly, helplessly, regretfully, dejectedly, and in a minor key: “Mmmm. . . .” We went to Marc Jacobs, and there was a dress and a dress and skirt and a shirt with buttons and a bag and the most gorgeous white jacket with white frills just so, and I touched, and I held things up in front of me, and then I started walking around the store making the sound, very quietly, but still.

As we headed south and east, kebabs sizzling and smoking on the grill announced a serendipitous street fair on West Fourth, whereupon there was a vintage metal pin of a horse for some of us and a seven-dollar sausage for others of us.

(The horse story is, while I have been known to have two or three conversations going at the same time, sometimes it is hard for me to even have one. “And sometimes,” I said to Maud the other day, “if I really need to say something, I have to close my eyes so I don’t get distracted.” She snorted. “It’s like I’m a horse,” I said, “a goddamn horse with goddamn blinkers.”)



There were snacks a-plenty in Chinatown, including a $1.25 plastic box of turnip cakes just off the griddle, hot in my palm, with chilli sauce and sweet dark sauce. In the back of the little shop, a woman strained tau kwas out of large barrels. Outside on Mott Street, Andrea and I stood, eating, eating.



We walked toward NoLIta under streaks of peach and pink in a pale blue sky.

Later, after the duck confit, when the macchiato and the perfect lemon tart were no more, it was time to follow the stars and Houston to the F train. And the thing is, it’s nice to have a brilliant day out, but it’s nice to get home after a brilliant day out. And it’s very, very nice, when you get home, to unpack your tote to find three little cans of curry paste (green, red, and karee); some dark chocolate and orange confiture in a faceted jar with a label in turquoise and gold; and a bottle of pickled beets, deep red like promise and secrets.

Everybody likes a little movie theater, and everybody likes a little movie theater that’s just a jaunt down the street in the neighborhood, so’s y’alls can go watch the first screening of the day, the day “The Incredibles” opens, settling down in the soft purple seats, kicking your shoes off, and putting your feet up.

Later, on a day when the sky, too, is incredible, everybody likes to go up to the roof for a coffee and the Statue of Liberty waving from beyond the rooftops. On the deck, you stand on a red bench in your red coat, and the wind plays with your hair.

When he reaches his arm out to you and pulls you in, you close your eyes and breathe deeply, cigarettes and the sun and the cool of a fall afternoon.

For reasons of a hello, a good-bye, a hello again, and a happy birthday, we laid out the strawberries and grapes, the dried figs and dates and apricots, the fruit bread, the chocolate-covered grahams, the hunk of Manchego, the quince paste, the sparkling wine, the dark chocolate fudge cake topped with colorful skinny candles. We turned the lights down, we rolled up the fuzzy rug, we shoved aside the sofa, we hooked up Gab’s music hard drive. We made a toast: “So, hello, Andrea, who arrived today from Singapore—” “Yaaaayy.” “—and good-bye, Gab, who leaves tomorrow for Paris—” “Aawww.” “—and the other hello comes later, when Jason arrives from Texas, and happy birthday, Rachel,” and then we sang Happy Birthday. And then there was dancing like feeling good, and there was feeling good like dancing.

(The only bad vibes were when Jeff said, “There’s an angry neighbor at the door,” and I said, “Really?” and he said, “Yes,” and I said, “Really?” and he said, “Yes,” and I went to the door, and a woman who would be played by Kathy Bates in the movie version of my life—wait, who would play me in the movie version of my life? And can Jude Law play every guy I’ve ever dated? Or even every guy I know? Or, heck, just every guy?—was standing there, and she said, “Hi, I live above you, and I have all my windows closed and I can still hear everything, and I have to be up at five-thirty tomorrow for work, so I’m sorry but would you turn it down?” And I thought to say, “Five-thirty? Sucks to be you,” but instead I said, “Oh, yes, of course, sorry,” even though ten-thirty, even on a weeknight, doesn’t seem like inconsiderate timing. An hour later, she was at the door again, and she said, “I called the super, and he said I should call the police if it’s still a problem, but I don’t want to call the police, so would you please?” and I said, “Um, okay, sorry,” but the thing is, we’d turned it down so much I couldn’t even hear the downstairs music from upstairs in my own apartment, so I wasn’t sure what else I could do to help her out. Maybe I’ll bake her a loaf of banana bread tomorrow.)

When “Kiss” came on, I went upstairs to India and Tom and said, shimmying, “You guys, you’re missing it: U don’t have 2 be rich 2 be my girl / U don’t have 2 be cool 2 rule my world / Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with—” and India and Tom said, “Oh, this is much better than Prince.”

This was, of course, before we were all looking around saying, “Where’s Tom?”, before Gab went and found him asleep on the floor in the study, a torso and legs emerging from beneath two pillows in lilac unicorn pillowcases. I leaned over and rubbed his tummy and said, “Um, Tom? Can I call you a car to go home?” “No,” he said, muffled, under the pillows, “I’m just, this is, this is good, I just wanted something, something chill.” “How’s the tummy rub?” I said. “That’s good, too,” he said. And then Gab said we should maybe give him a blanket, so we did.

This was, of course, after we were all looking around saying, “Where’s Andrea?”, before Tom went and found her asleep on my bed. “I went into your bedroom to maybe take a nap,” he said, “but Andrea beat me to it.” “Well,” I said, “you could go make better friends with her.” “She’s sprawled out diagonally,” he said, “there’s just no way.”

And then it was 2:22, and Jason and me and Maud were the only ones up to make a wish.

It was a sweet morning with sleepover friends stumbling out from basements and backrooms, me and Andrea and Tom and Gab sitting at the table with breakfast and sunshine. And oh, how we breakfasted, with muesli and walnut-raisin toast and fruit bread and smoked salmon and orange juice and a pot of very strong coffee and a pot of very strong tea.

(The fruit bread story is, the extra loaf of fruit bread had been carefully wrapped in wax paper and was sitting on the counter to go home with Maud, but she said, “You don’t have any left after your party, and the way you were talking about it before, about having some for breakfast, toasted and buttered, there was a something in your eye, and I really think I should leave this here for you.” And this is why we like this girl, because when she is right she is so right; because, my word, this was the kind of fruit bread that was baked with whole dried figs and apricots and fat dates, so that when you cut a slice, especially if it is a slice that cuts through a fig, it has a cross-section of scientific exquisiteness, all those tiny seeds enclosed in a dark circle; and then, really, the toasting, and the buttering, and, oh, mmm.)

When I emerged from the shower later, the boys, smokes in hand, had the windows open to the day.

When you wake up at seven, there sure are a lot of things you can get done, like bake two loaves of bread with figs and dates and apricots so the house smells like heaven.

“Happy new president,” I said, getting off the phone with Tom. “No, wait, Happy same old stupid.”

Today, still, I am winding down. From what exactly?—well. Sometimes a girl takes a day off, and sometimes a girl takes three days off. And it’s surprising, really, what a girl can get up to taking three days off. Thursday after class, I put in what one would call, if one were Chinese, which one is, an yi su session at the library, working my way through Biffures for maybe a couple of hours. One thing, as they say, led to another, and Sunday night I was stumbling home through the crunchy leaves on Ninth Street in a pair of gold shoes, the clasp on the right one broken, its thin strap helplessly flopping about my ankle.

So:

Thursday evening, sometime in the eight o’clock hour, the weekend began when we hogged a corner of the bar at Frank’s, me and Tom and Jeff and our triplet glasses of chianti. By the time we showed up at Mogador, we were Maud and Gab and Tom and Tom and Jeff and me at the best table in the house, snagged through the French-girl connexion. And all too soon there were small bowls of hummus and beets and roasted eggplant in front of us—

when we were looking at the menu, Tom said, “Don’t they bring you little dishes of food here?” “Yes,” I said, “but you have to ask for them.” “You mean order?” he said. “Um, yeeess.” “So let’s,” he said. “Well,” I said, “yes. Let’s.”

—and a lamb tagine with apricots and prunes, the kind of lamb tagine that you order almost every time you go to Mogador because it is so, so good—and, truly, you do, every now and again, think that maybe you need to try something new, but then you remember how desperately tasty this lamb tagine is, all savor and sweet and couscous, and then you can’t even see anything else on the menu, it’s all just collections and arrangements of letters, so that by the time the waitress comes by to ask for your order, with glazed eyes you can only ask for the one thing.

Hours later, after the mint tea, sweet and toothpastey and quite pleasant; after the rhubarb-and-strawberry crumble and the warm chocolate cake and the cappuccino; after our having finessed, like so many fourteen-year-old boys, various French-English translations of various genitalia-related terms; after Maud having discovered that the switch on the wall behind her head could send the ceiling fan spinning wildly in jerky revolutions; after the boys shouting down our idea to road-trip in a Mini; after so much chortling and thumping on the table and falling over; we were sitting outside on the patio, ready to leave and not ready to leave. There were smokes, and a photograph project, and people walking by on East Eighth Street saying “Reagan’s grave has just been violated!” and “Why don’t you come over and we can make out for old time’s sake?” and “Whoo! Whoo! Whoooooo!”

And then it was one in the morning, and some of us had already left, and some of us were yawning. “Let’s move,” Gab said, so we did, a cold hand in a warm hand till the end of the block.



Friday morning I woke to the grey, and, on the phone to Maud, I said, “I am so not in the mood to do any work today.” “Of course you’re not,” she said. “It’s Friday.” And somehow, her saying it, her putting it out there sanctioned the books shut and shoved aside. It was like I’d been given a stiff golden ticket to ride a golden rollercoaster, screaming with glee as the wind whipped through my hair.

There was an excursion to the Empire State Building, then, because why not. Now here’s the thing about going to the Empire State Building. When you’re at the top, it’s some kind of marvelous. But to be at the top, you have to get to the top. And getting to the top means from the get-go being inducted into a labyrinth that winds upward from the basement, elevators and stairs included, building employees barking at you all the while from all sides—to go here, to go there, to put your bag on the X-ray machine belt, to take a tour, to have exact change, to stand at the black line, to smile for the camera, to go through the security arch again, and—inexplicably—to keep moving and not look out the window from the eightieth floor. (The tip is, it helps if you’re with a Gab, who has a small bag of chocolate in his pocket and hands you jolly M&Ms to keep your spirits up.) Ultimately, though, you find yourself on the eighty-sixth floor, and you feel the wind on your face from a door open to the observation deck, and, even through the faint grey of an overcast sky, New York City from up high makes you quicken your step.

There were rooftop gardens and rooftop pools; there were small buildings perched on the tops of big buildings; there were treetops like bunches of broccoli, except in red and yellow instead of deep green. There were sirens floating up on the wind; there was a plane landing at LaGuardia; like a spy movie, there was Thomas flashing his lights at us from his Midtown apartment, non mais c’est cooool. Eventually day became dusk and dusk became night: the lights came on all over the city—the bluewhites and yellowwhites of offices and apartments; the small red and white halos of traffic coming and going; the Pepsi-Cola sign and the Colgate Clock and, like beauty, like sparkle, like tapdancers in shiny shoes and spangled tophats, the Chrysler Building—and then the lights were the city; and my fingers, jammed into my jacket pockets, were numb from the cold; and still we were there, mesmerized, seeing everything and nothing.

Later that night, I’m not sure what possessed us exactly, maybe it was Empire State Building–related exhilaration, it seemed clear to us that embarking on a cheesecake-baking frenzy was not only possible but necessary.

(Maybe it was just, we wanted to celebrate the new moule à cheesecake. Maybe it was just, we like cheesecake. In any case, the moule à cheesecake story is, we were at Crate and Barrel, and we were marveling at the variety of kitchen whatsits and thingamabobs and doohickeys, and Gab picked up a candy thermometer, and it was shiny silver with a smart red-and-white dial on which one of the markings read “Caramelize,” and, well, it was candy-related. And we admired it, and we admired it, and finally I said, “Okay, put it back.” “Really?” he said. “Yes,” I said. “Am I really putting this back?” “Put it back.” “. . .” “Put it back.”)

Midnight saw me and Gab setting off on the adventure, smashing graham crackers and pecans for a crusty crust, and then spending the next hour and a half peering hopefully through the oven window. It wasn’t exactly the kind of adventure Blaise Cendrars might have undertaken, he of—so I hear—the tiger-battling in the jungles of Africa and all, but really, at the end of the day, this girl would much rather have a cheesecake than a tiger in the kitchen.

And it’s a funny thing about a frenzy, because by the time the cake came out of the oven at two in the morning, it seemed neither possible nor necessary to stay up any longer waiting for it to cool before digging in. Uh, which is not to say we launched an immediate attack: “Cheesecake for breakfast?” he said. “Cheesecake for breakfast,” I said. Tucked deep under my down comforter, I fell asleep enveloped in the sweet, warm scent of baking.

Like the luxe life, there was cheesecake waiting and a pot of Stockholm Blend when we woke.

And then, and this is a true story, I made another cheesecake. You hardly ever think you’re going to be baking two cheesecakes within twelve hours of each other, but, oh, how we smile and embrace life and its little surprises. And cheesecake number two was gorgeous because of having been baked with a mind clear from a sound sleep, and cheesecake number two was soon riding on a bus with me and Jeff and Dana and a happy bag containing red wine and sparkling wine and a thick glass container of strawberries macerated in orange juice and orange zest.

Nobody who is anybody doesn’t like riding a bus, and Jeff and I totally heart the B61 because it takes us good places, like Schmio’s in Williamsburg or Tom’s in Long Island City. And the B61 goes up Bedford with its crazy cool Polish shopperies that made me want to get off the bus right then, especially outside the Polish confectionary with its chocolate boxes decorated, all Eastern-European chic, with photographs of big red roses.

Now you know and I know that I know how to throw a party, but Tom, Tom knows how to throw a party. Because we got to Tom’s, and Vio was cooking up a storm (a lasagne storm) in the kitchen, and shortly after, having handed the boy his presents, I was put to work making a vinaigrette for the megasalad. When Maud came by later with a bag of Halloween candy, Tom said, “Oh, cool, I told Claire I was gonna get candy, and I forgot, and now I can tell her I—” “No,” Maud said, “you cannot.”



We were rockin’ it Long Island City–style, then, with The Beach Boys and Zap Mama, and sometimes we danced (well, one of us danced), and sometimes we smoked (well, one of us didn’t smoke), and sometimes we put out Tom’s joint ’cause it smelled crazy. Mostly we sat around the big table, some of us upon others of us, almost, squished on the soft red sofa, and it was good times enough that alls we could do was slouch about and soak it in. There was a very large grinning pumpkin, and a tire-bouchon named Charles de Gaulle, and a gladiator so thin the lions would’ve snubbed him, and a boy working on his French nasal tones: “Tellement. Tellement-tellement-tellement. Tellement. Vachement.” There was food like comfort, and always an open bottle of wine, and the fine mist obscuring ’most everything outside made it so it was like we were all of us collected, cozy-like, in the warm circle of a deep old tree trunk.



We realized a grim moment of reality when we reached the bottom of the bonbon dish, but then Gab excavated a couple of pints of ice cream from the freezer, and the fun began anew. At the end of the night, Tom ordered us a white car fancy like white horses to take us up to Harlem. Like I said: the boy knows how to throw a party.

Sunday morning an aria woke us up, and the sun was shining down One-hundred-thirty-sixth Street like a welcome and a kiss. Because some of us are kids, we turned down Maud’s offer of an energy-packed strawberry-banana-yoghurt blend and reached for bowls of cocoa puffs and pink Frankenberry cereal. Then we were about to be late, so we quick-stepped, bleary-eyed, round the corner to the Abyssinian Baptist Church, where, ha-ha, we’d forgotten that the time had changed in the night, so we were now one hour early for the nine a.m. service. Um, yeah, ha-ha.

We got it right the second time, though, and then there was a gospel choir, and an organ, and stained-glass windows, and fanning with church bulletins, and palms open and raised. And the preacher preached; and people said “Mm-hm”; and an oldish gent in a grey suit in front of me sang loudly and clearly and strongly.

There was smothered chicken after, in a pleathered booth in Miss Maude’s Spoonbread Two, with a small tower of candied yams, sweet and orangebrown, while Thomas exalted the all-American unlimited coffee refill. And then the sun was calling, and we stood outside and made plans to head for the park. It turned out, then, that “plans to head for the park” meant sitting about in the cool of Maud’s apartment, lazy and content, the day floating by on cottonwool clouds.

Gab and I were heading to the subway downtown in the evening when the clasp on my shoe gave out. I guess that’s just what happens when you take a pair of party shoes with delicate straps and a dainty heel, and make them walk you around downtown Brooklyn and Long Island City and Harlem over the course of twenty-four hours. Crouching down on the sidewalk, I failed a quick fix. “Ça va, princesse?” he said. “Si si non non,” I said, “c’est cool,” and I made a silent apology to my feet.

And then there was the downtown train, and then there was Brooklyn, and then there was home; and then a hot hot shower, and sleep welcomed, soft like the night.

Sometimes you just don’t feel like doing anything, so you don’t. And if you are lucky, you have a sofa to stretch out on all afternoon, sloth-like; you read selections from the Sunday Times; you watch the clouds drift by; Maud brings out fragrant tea and leftover cheesecake to dig into with a spoon, and you both plan a spring driving trip around America in a Mini. The day sounds like Lisa Ekdahl and Blossom Dearie and João Gilberto and Marvin Gaye, and, as the sun sets and the light dims and your eyes begin to close, and as Gab covers you with a blanket and tucks a pillow under your head, the thought flickers in your drowsy mind that sometimes it is so simple for everything to just be good.