We like birthdays around here, and this girl’s been known to make a birthday last a couple of weeks—at the very least. With not one but two birthdays to fête this past weekend, the days have been chock-full of birthday festivities, and, oh, you’d better believe we’ve only just begun.

Birthday weekend kicked off Friday night at Kat’s. I showed up at her place and was saying hello to Matthew when his hand went to his hip and he said, “Wait, is that my phone?” “No,” Kat said, “it’s just your crotch vibrating.” “Oh,” he said, “my crotch always vibrates when I think of ’stella.” Dude sure knows how to sweet-talk a lady.

We walked over to Gramercy Tavern, where, as if it was my birthday, I got taken out to dinner in style. There were scallops and mushrooms, there was monkfish and pancetta and red cabbage, there was a caramelized banana tart with cashew-nut ice cream, there was a silver carafe of coffee laced, enticingly, with cinnamon and cardamom. There were unexpected little treats that appeared at the table throughout the night: white bean purée and salsa verde crostini, cod roe and slivers of fingerling potatoes, a delicate pannacotta with lemon sorbet. At the end, there were even, to accompany the bill, muffins packed to go—“For breakfast,” the waitress said. Oh, the bill, there was so totally a three-hundred-thirty-something-dollar bill that was so totally taken care of by not-me. Thanks, Kat’s parents!

Saturday night was made for Danny’s Skylight Room on West Forty-sixth, where everyone is in love with Blossom Dearie. We scored a table, me and Maud and Hector, in the back of the old-timey cabaret room with the dim, cozy lighting and the mirror walls, next to a guy in glasses and a roundish middle who introduced himself to Hector as “le roi de New York.”

Under the purple lights on stage, it seemed, at times, that Blossom Dearie had pink little-old-lady hair. It wasn’t unbecoming, it went with her pink little-old-lady voice. She sang about ladies who lunch, about a drag queen named Bruce, about a surrey with a fringe on top, about giving him the ooh-la-la, about taking a liking to you. At no point did she say, “Thanks, we’re Sausalito.”

We were standing outside for smokes and a chat after the show when Blossom Dearie walked by us on her way home. “Okay,” she said, in response to nothing, “good night.” “Merci,” Hector said. “Yes,” she said, and, holding the fabric of her skirt between her thumb and index finger in order to raise the hem ever so slightly, headed up the stairs to her apartment just next door.

“Joyeux anniversaire numéro un,” I said to Maud, then headed for the subway, where, like it was no-one’s birthday, the F train home was the mass transit ride from hell. The train was doing that thing where it stops. It just stops, not because we’re at a station, not because it’s about to run over someone working on the tracks, it just stops. And it stands, and it stands. A homeless guy made his way up to the front of the carriage: “Hep me, hep me, I don’t have a gun, I don’t have a knife, I don’t bother women—not that I’m a faggot. I’m a bum.” He eventually made it to the head of the car where, after maybe twelve minutes of motionlessness, he decided he’d had enough. “ALRIGHT!” he shouted into the silence, then turned and walked back down the length of the car. “Hep me, I don’t have a gun, I don’t have a knife....” The schlump of a man sitting next to me reached into his jacket pocket, eased out a goodly-sized bottle of gin, and took a swig from it.

Sunday morning I woke up before the alarm and baked a chocolate tart to Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd while the sky lightened outside. There was a sage sausage off the grill pan and raspberry jam on sourdough toast while the sweet nut tart crust cooled in the fridge and the house filled with baking smell.

In the afternoon, the Harlem street was scented orange blossoms for a birthday tea. Maud’s neighbor across the way was naked except for his thong again, but that wasn’t a special celebration so much as a daily performance. In the sky north of us, a plane climbed into the blue, its silver bullet exterior catching the setting sun and glinting orange.

(The plane story is, well, not a plane story so much as a Zeppelin story, wherein, at some point during the afternoon, I tried to describe a Zeppelin en français: “C’est un truc dans le ciel. Genre, pas un nuage, pas un avion, pas un oiseau. Oh, pas un ballon. C’est, jeez, genre, un truc. Dans le ciel. C’est, um, ovale.” People, you cannot say I don’t try. You just cannot. And, anyway, the thing is, I don’t know that I would’ve done a better job in English.)

(I’m also just now remembering that when I was trying to explain about being so over some dude, I said, “Non mais, c’est cool, lui il est dans le passé, et moi, je bouge dans le futur.” This incited Jazon to ask if I was drunk, but not long after this the boy was telling us about this movie, “LadyHawke,” apparently one of his favorite movies once upon a time in his life. Something like, there’s a couple in love, but a wizard puts a spell on them so the woman’s a hawk in the day and the guy’s a wolf in the night. Crap. Something about, like, Matthew Broderick being a hero monk, I don’t know. Jazon, lov, hello, are you drunk?)



Inside, with the radiator on high, I was down to a tank top and hanging out the fourth-floor window into winter.

Inside, there was tea in little golden cups, the lazy afternoon carried by India’s raspberry linzertorte, sweet, crumbly perfection with slivered almonds and powdered sugar on top.

(The chocolate tart, well, it sucks when a chocolate tart is subpar, but it really sucks when a chocolate tart has been known, in the past, to be way beyond par, and this time you’ve just presented it as a birthday present in a beaut red tart dish, and you’ve been looking forward to tasting it all day, and you lift a morsel to your mouth on a fork, and all you taste is its overwhelming subpar-ness. When we are dealing with that level of suckitude, you consider putting down your fork and walking out—and, furthermore, because it’s you who’s responsible for the subpar, you can’t even slam down your fork and storm out in protest, you have to sneak out and shut the door quietly behind you.

The gorgeous, deep brown was flat somehow, not sweet enough, not chocolatey enough, I don’t know what exactly, and I even used the good chocolate this time. On the train later, India said the flavor was missing a roundness. She suggested that maybe I’d put in too much chocolate (ten eager ounces instead of the eight the recipe called for), which surprised me, because this is the possibly the first time in the history of the world that too much chocolate has proved itself a problem.

Well, there is only one way to find out what the chocolate problem was, exactly, and clearly this means there exists another chocolate tart in my very near future, and maybe this time I’ll follow the recipe.)

Inside, we popped open a bottle of Champagne, and I felt the blush spreading warmly beneath my skin as I sat on the sofa with my legs curled up under me.

O, I am fatigued. And, really, all I’ve been doing, when not out and about being out and about, is being in and on hourlong phone calls catching up with old friends.

Last night, I’d said to Maud, “I can’t do anything social next week.” Following which, we decided: Mogador dinner on Monday, “Blade Runner” and cheesecake on Tuesday, Chinatown on Wednesday, cannoli in the Bronx on Friday, party at Tom’s on Saturday. I don’t even think that list is completely accurate, there is so much we need to do, this is what happens when French boys are in town. On se keep in touche.

I stepped out to get some eggs for a chocolate tart I’m baking (of course I had every single little thing I need except one egg). It had snowed in the night. On the lightly powdered street, the footprints of a rather large man and a very small dog.

For reals I am not even kidding a little bit when I say that in a few minutes some people are showing up to photograph my house. When I mentioned it to my mother on the phone this morning, I said, “…yah ’cause at one of my parties a couple of months ago a friend of a friend who works for a style magazine said she wanted to do a story on my place—” and my mother said, “InStyle? Oh, I read that at the gym sometimes, it’s quite high-class—” No, mum, no no no.

Anyway, it’s not a sure thing, the girl’s coming to take some pictures and chat, I don’t know, about my exquisite taste or whatever, and then eventually the higher-ups at her magazine decide. But still!

So, but, anyway, I just want to say, it is very clean in here, and it smells nice.

It’s wicked out there: gorgeous and clear, while the wind with a devilish grin barrels down Ninth Street.

The radiator clicks and ticks. I’m reading about a voyage to Africa. I might have a cinnamon biscuit.

There’s a shop on Seventh Avenue called Russo’s, but it wasn’t till recently that I realized it was called Russo’s, because the first thing you see from the outside is FRESH MOZZARELLA painted on the awning, and, really, when you see that sort of thing you realize it is an invitation and you should just go along and not ask too many questions. One sunny weekend morning when Tom and I were poking around the ’hood, I popped in to get a tin of coffee. The boy stood outside for a smoke, and I came out with two boxes of fresh pasta, a bottle of chocolate milk, and a handful of Italian chocolates. So you see what kind of place this is.

This morning I pushed open the door, heading for some yoghurt, and left with six sage sausages, six chocolate petits suisses, a hunk of Spanish goat cheese and a box of roasted artichokes.

The way the artichokes came about was, I’d pointed at the bowl on the counter and said, “What’s that?” and the guy behind the counter said, “Roasted artichokes.” “Oh!” I said, “may I have a couple, please?” “You’ve never tried them before?” he said. “No,” I said, and swiftly, wordlessly, he picked one up in a paper napkin and handed it to me. And it was garlicky, and it was artichokey, and it was good.

I resisted the shelves of assorted cannoli today, but I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.

Because I have a meeting with my thesis advisor tomorrow and should be writing up an outline of some sort, of course all of a sudden I am overtaken, with a manic intensity, by the very pressing need to scrub my bathtub. I think I’m a pretty good housekeeper, but there are these stubborn little spots of mildew here and there around the edge of the tub that refuse to go away no matter what I do. Bastardos!! This evening, in my windowless bathroom, a fruitless once-over with Professional Strength Tilex Instant Mildew Stain Remover was followed by a session of Anti-Bacterial Soft Scrub with Bleach Cleanser (Hazardous to Humans & Domestic Animals), and then, with gritted teeth, a bout of Comet Heavy Duty Cleaner with Disinfectant. Each time, after I washed off the foamy suds, the mildew remained. Bloody bloody bloody. It’s as if I’d said to the mildew, Buh-ring it, and then the mildew looked me back in the eyes and said, Oh, it’s been buh-rung.

What was that thing again about the best laid plans?

Tom and I had it all worked out yesterday: the chocolate-fueled study session, the fancy sushi dinner, the rockin-out rock show at Town Hall. And then slowly it all unraveled, and we couldn’t get hold of each other, what with one in the shower, and one in the computer lab, and one’s cellphone not working, and on and on. At one point the phone-tag voice message from the boy was: “This is ludicrous. Well, it’s not really Ludacris, it’s Tom.”

(The fancy sushi dinner story is, we wanted to fancy it up sushi-style at Sushi Yasuda, but when Tom got all forward-thinking and called ahead to make a reservation, they said they could only offer us a strict one-hour window between six and seven. Non mais, non: A strict one-hour window is no good for a boy and a girl who have been known to shut down a joint, so he gave them what for and we took our sushi business elsewhere, where elsewhere, last night, was the Irving Place Yama, which has always—except when, surprise!, you show up and it turns out they are closed Mondays (or Thursdays) (well, whatever it is, I’ve never been able to keep it straight) (you see why it is a surprise)—been good to us. I got the bill at the end, ’cause of Congratulations-on-starting-school-Tom, and, after grateful thanks, he said, “I’m gonna get you back so hard you won’t know what hit you.” “Are you going to get me with fish?” I said. “Yes,” he said.)

We hopped the N train to the neon wilderness of Times Square, where the part of the night that totally didn’t unravel was the Bright Eyes show, oh, Conor Oberst, you sure know what you’re doing. We got to Town Hall in the middle of the Tilly and the Wall set, but stayed in the lobby to watch the kids milling about in their indie rock uniforms instead. Then we went in the hall briefly when Coco Rosie went on, and, Coco Rosie, I just, I just, I don’t know, maybe I’m speechless. Between the crazella-voiced mental-hospital girl and the loopy opera girl and the hunched-over guy in the dimestore Native American feather hat, yeah, I think I’m speechless. Tom tried to give them a chance, but then we stepped out for bourbons and Cokes. Holding out the cup to me, Tom said, “Want some?” And I declined, but because the boy knows something about me, he said, “It’s sweet.” And soon I had my own.

And then we prank-texted Maud with the preprogrammed messages in Tom’s new phone—(“I love you too,” we said. “Who is this?” she texted back. “Hugs & kisses,” we said.)—and then we started to play Ms. Pacman on my phone, and then the lights went down, and then there was cheering, and then, well, oh, Conor Oberst, you sure know what you’re doing. There was a girl bassist in a little pink dress and a red sparkle guitar, she knew what she was doing, will someone teach me to play the guitar already? And there was Mike Mogis, who sometimes got to play a wild blue guitar, and he knew what he was doing, too. And Jason Boesel, well, he was on fire. I don’t know how he does it, Conor Oberst, how he hears all of it in his head, how he wraps the city into a country tune, how he folds the night sky into a song. We sat when the show was over, and then we sat some more. Then I came home and played “Lua” while I brushed my teeth, and when I woke up in the mousey morning today, I played “Lua” over toast and coffee.

Yesterday at dusk the park was very white and very quiet. In the dimming light, the overwhelming whiteness seemed almost cerulean, but maybe that was just because I was singing along to “Blue.”

We were making plans for tomorrow, Tom and I, when we will take Forty-third Street by storm. We are a cute boy and a cute girl, which is reason enough to celebrate with yum and yay.

When I told him I was going to be at school in the afternoon, he said maybe he’d head up there, too, so’s we could study together in the library. “I don’t want to bribe you into hanging out with me,” I said, “but you know I always have chocolate in my bag.”

“I ate all the chocolate you gave me,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “You were meant to. But I have more.”

“I will call you tomorrow,” he said, “to tell you that I will come meet you on campus.”

Well, huzzah!

Snow stories.

On the corner of my street early this afternoon, it was like Snow Feeder Frenzy or something, is that a Playstation game? There were four megatrucks with megascoopers attached, all taking turns lunging toward the snow barricades. Rarr! Now instead of a length of snow-covered curb, there is a length of slush-covered curb, at the end of which is a very, very large pile of snow. It is as high as a bus, that is how large a pile of snow it is.

The snow on the monument at the Ninth Street entrance to the park has fallen such that the Marquis de Lafayette appears to be wearing a delightful fur stole. It suits him well.

Crunching deep footprints through the snow in the park in pink cowboy rainboots is like making my way across the thick, sweet frosting on top of the largest cupcake in the world. In front of and all around me, the icing sugar landscape of Long Meadow stretches far and away like the bakery of my dreams.

Under the black tree next to Dog Beach, someone has made a snow bear. He is reclining ever so slightly, and the smile on his face suggests he is thinking, quite serenely, about, perhaps, a roast snow rabbit dinner. The someone who has made this snow bear has also labeled him, in proud, standing-up snow letters at his feet: BEAR.

It is certainly very nice to put the books aside in the middle of the day and take a walk through the Slope before falling happily into a crêpe lunch with crêpe desserts. The restaurant is empty enough so we choose to sit in a sunny spot while the hot buckwheat crêpes keep a-comin’. This is why friends coming to visit gets an A-plus.

(The tangent is, the crêpe lunch was had at Moutarde, and the moutarde story, and maybe this is only funny to two people, is, once upon a time CC said, “Is moutarde ‘mustard’?” and I said, “Yes, and coutarde is ‘custard.’”)

In from the snow, glorious, glorious. The apples of my cheeks are pink like I’m a porcelain doll model on an Anna Sui runway.

We sat in the front windows in our pyjamas, Lurlene in the one on the left and me in one on the right. Outside:

a dog in tight brown curls and a pink coat didn’t want to go anywhere. He spread out his front paws and clutched desperately at the soft snow.

a rotund bulldog ambled down the sidewalk. If he were a mogul he’d be known about town by his initials. Those initials would be R.W.

the cherry on top, a girl all in red perched on a large mound of snow.

two kids lay side by side in an inflated rubber ring while their father pulled them along behind him. One small and one smaller, they looked up at the sky while the sun came out.

Lurlene thought maybe we needed some hot chocolate to go with the snow. Surprising even me, I unearthed five kinds from my pantry. “We could taste test them all,” I said. She didn’t say no.

With her flight canceled and a snow day at hand, Laureen and I headed uptown and wandered around MoMA, where there is a woman with a baguette on her head. Oh, Salvador, why.

Lunch on a snow day called for going to the midtown branch of Joe’s Shanghai three blocks up, where xiao long baos awaited. Funny thing about the midtown branch of Joe’s Shanghai: the Chinatown clamor is exchanged for Smooth Jazz and the clinking of silver cutlery; the rattan steamer is opened to reveal six xiao long baos instead of eight; there is no plate of sliced oranges to accompany the bill at the end, but you may pick a pink mint from the crystal bowl downstairs on your way out.

All afternoon the snow was falling and falling and falling, and midtown was quiet, for once.

Back in Brooklyn, it was clear we needed soup. “Maybe a bean soup?” I said, jumping about a can of habichuelas rosadas in my hand. And, like that old stone soup tale, not too long later there was a clay pot of pink beans, carrots, kidney beans, red onions, potatoes, and ginger bubbling on the stove, and chunks of raisin-pecan toast for dipping, because why not.

When I asked what “kasha” is, the woman behind the counter replied with such matter-of-fact dourness—“Buckwheat.”—that I thought it best to order one filled with sweet potato instead. Next door, in from the biting cold, we settled into our seats at the Landmark Sunshine and cupped hot knishes in our hands. Then the dimming lights, and then that singular warm magical coloring—like the secret golden glint of a stealth pistol; like the sunlight coming in from the garden, and dust in the air, and hope in a cotton dress in the doorway—of a Jeunet.



We hightailed it across Houston after, the wind pinching at our cheeks. At ten on a Friday night, Pink Pony is mullets galore. Spiky mullets on skinny girls, and four tables in a row of hip young things looking like they play in the same band; O, we love the Lower East Side. Over the bustle and the comfortable crush, the room sounds like “The Tide is High” and “Just a Gigolo” and “Jean Genie,” now that is a jukebox dollar well spent.

J’aimerais rencontrer un confectionneur des jouets animés.

Yesterday at lunch Jason and I realized that sometimes, when the entire thing’s cloaked in fidgety ambiguity, the whole shebang could be that much easier if we all just went about it straight-up gradeschool-style. Well, maybe just San Antonio, Texas, gradeschool-style, ’cause this never went down where I went to school.



What else might come in handy is,



Aaahh, hours and hours of fun.

After one sweet, decadent honey truffle on a little white plate and a hot slice of Mel Cooley straight from the oven, we dusted the polenta off our fingers and took the B express in the direction of Brooklyn. I hadn’t taken the B in months. We had to get off at Atlantic, but there was some thrill in knowing we could have, had we stayed on, gone all the way to Brighton Beach. As we click-clacked along the Manhattan Bridge, crossing the East River in the evening dark, a siren wailed by beside us. Laureen looked about, startled. “Is that the subway police?” she said. “Um,” I said, as some guy squished in next to us chortled, “well, we’re above ground.”

At BAM, Rosalind was gangly and awkward and all the more lovely and modern for it.

I would like to believe that it is possible for love.

Laureen came in while the snow fell, or maybe it’s that the snow fell as Laureen came in: I seem to recall her making her way through the slush the last time she got to town. Over bowls of fat couscous and a hearty chickpea-eggplant stew and a couple of glasses of red, it’s some kind of mindblowing how long two girls can sit and talk about boys. I am sorry to say that at one point the words that came out of my mouth were, “He’s just not that into you.”

Why why why why why are things like this taking up space in the cobwebby recesses of my head? I swear I haven’t read this book. But I remember I was at Matthew’s family’s place in The Rock over the holidays and the TV was on and one of the authors was on Oprah and there was this girl tearing up because some guy just wasn’t that into her. Then Hugh pointed out that Greg Behrendt’s eyebrows were uneven, and then we started looking at the town’s community newsletter on the sofa, and then I got up to get some orange cordial.

Warm from a run, caught snow on my tongue all the way home along Ninth Street. I’m putting on Zap Mama and a vegetable stew.

Monday night on zi r, séance Brooklyn: a curried cauliflower soup on the stove, a bottle of Shiraz, slices of manchego and quince paste. Because the DJ humors us, the hip-hop was interrupted for Kelis and Britney and Zap Mama and Erika Badu. Because we are girls with the radio on volume up, there were chocolates and shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass. Because we like French boys, there was even a girl callin’. Non mais you are the one!

After the unexpected decadence of a weekday Balthazar lunch, Schmio and I thought we’d step into Miu Miu just for fun, just to see. On the sale rack, I fondled a luxe black bunchy pleated skirt for a good long while before finally looking at the tag. The figure written on it was composed of so many numerals that I was sure it was a barcode number or an item number or something, and it wasn’t till I’d turned the card over a couple of times looking for the price that the penny, as they say, dropped—except that in this case the realization was accompanied by the great tinkly clatter of ninety-nine thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine pennies dropping, because, ha-ha, that was the price.

Back to H&M, then.

Sunday night Ethan brought over Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” but then we popped the thing into the VCR and it became clear that the synthesizer music on the Eighties remake version wasn’t going to cut it. It also became clear, right then, that we needed to watch “Splash” instead, so the boy went out into the winter for a trade-in. Over party leftovers, and sweet, kicky mojitos drunk out of jam jars, it is nice when you both laugh at the same parts.

I was lamenting the eight bottles of Beaujolais sulking in my pantry, so Maud said, like obviousness, that we needed to have a sangria party. Friday night, envigored by a Joe’s Shanghai feast of crab dumplings and dou miao and eggplant and a beef-and-broccoli stirfry, we set to work slicing apples and oranges for three large bowls of the brew. Sometimes there is little more satisfying than opening wine bottles in quick succession, pop pop pop, and then glugging out their contents with abandon. I am a whiz at opening wine bottles, no, really, it’s true, come over and I’ll show you. I am bragging only because, well, because it’s my blog and I can brag if I want to, but also because maybe a year ago I could only watch with some envy as someone else eased the cork out of the bottleneck while I wished I knew how to open a wine bottle—and look at me now. Oh, it’s nice when goals are achievable.

Saturday morning we had breakfast like we are ladies in a country house, coffee and tea and breads and spreads, then there was melting butter and brown sugar and golden syrup, and a pineapple cardamom upside-down cake in the works.



All those magazines that break down party prep for you step by step, they’re missing the bit where in the afternoon—after the cake’s been baked and the rosemary aioli’s been whipped up; when the portobello-pepper crostini are all but assembled and the tulips are slowly blooming all over the house in pink and red; while the cheese and the assorted chocolate-covered whatsits on pearly plates are just waiting for the show to begin—you pop out to your local video store for “The Goonies” and the early edition of the Sunday Times, and then you come home and watch the movie in your party clothes.

Jason and Emily came bearing gifts, so many gifts, some of them even homemade empañada gifts. Then Jason unwrapped a paper package to reveal, among other little things, a miniature Día de los muertos table with miniature skulls and miniature candles and miniature bananas and a miniature bowl of mole, which made me say, “What is this? A center for ants?”

Tom’s friend Frances was quiet but as nice as he was tall. (Which is: rather.)

I asked Matt Z about cross-departmental canoodling in Philosophy Hall, but he said he hadn’t heard the goss.

Cheryl hadn’t been here before and wanted to open all the doors, so she did.

(The Cheryl story is, Cheryl is my Chinese New Year party competition this year, but I think I might concede early and just go to her shindig, because apparently this semester I am concentrating on being a student who has a thesis to finish by April. Dang, it is occurring to me only now that maybe I should have majored in throwing parties instead. In any case, the other winning ticket for the girl is, it turns out she has managed to befriend a Malaysian restaurateur and get her hands on real pandan leaves whereas I only have a small bottle of green pandan essence from Hong Kong Supermarket. Maybe we will join forces to make my mother’s incredible pineapple spiral tarts, and maybe we will invite Colin Goh.)

Emily wanted to buy my house.

Jessica showed us her district attorney’s badge, gold and heavy. We ooh’d and aah’d. It made the fifty-cent tin star-shaped sheriff’s badge I wanted to get the other day look like, um, a fifty-cent tin star-shaped sheriff’s badge.

By sometime in the midnight hour, the three bowls of sangria had been reduced to three bowls of dregs of alcohol-saturated fruit, the tastiest dregs around.

By sometime in the one o’clock hour, India tried to say good-bye to Maud and found her asleep on the sofa downstairs.

By sometime in the two o’clock hour, the kids had been sent home with foil-wrapped packets of food, and I had help with the clean-up, which was sweet because, like the boy said, the clean-up was easier with two.

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.

At the 192 Books cocktail party last night I was talking to this guy Kurt, and I don’t know how our conversation got to this point, somehow we started talking about the color equivalent of numbers, and he said, “Like, red is five.” “But no,” I said, “ ’cause red is one.” “But it isn’t,” he said. “But it is,” I said. Scintillating, I know. But then he started to break down the formula for the colors of days, which had to do with the number of letters in the day and the placement of the day in the week, and then Jill said we had to go, so we did, and I never figured out what the formula is, exactly. But the thing is, you don’t need a formula for the days of the week. Tuesday just feels blue, the way Wednesday feels green, no?

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.

Just home from mole and a margarita that turned my cheeks a blushing pink and made me feel like I was walking on clouds.

There was a dinner date last night, and plans for a brunch date tomorrow, and nattering on the phone till the low-battery signal started to beep, all of which points to slowly but surely back in the saddle again.

Still not sleeping.

Well, a good way to counter the cold is to take a cue from the nose and go running myself. I stepped out with “Take on Me”—na-na-na-na-na na-na-na-nana-nanuh!—then came home and danced to Bowie while the sun came out again.

Well, it’s cold, and my nose is runny, and there’s no baby. Somewhere under the layers of robe and flannel pyjamas, my shoulders are shiny and brown with summer.

About the baby:

Sometimes she sits around and smiles.

Even when she is asleep she smiles.

Sometimes she whacks herself in the head.

Sometimes she munches.

Sometimes she says a langourous “Hi.”

Sometimes she says “Booya!”

She likes to have her pants off.

She likes to dance to Andy Williams on “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” and Bobby Darin on “Beyond the Sea.”

If she has on her orange socks she looks like an elf. Or a gardener.

Sometimes we call her Cutes McDuff.

Sometimes we call her Maevis Baboonicus.

Sometimes we call her Ngae-ngae.

Sometimes she looks at us like she is the only one with any dignity left.

She falls asleep to me singing her Rilo Kiley.

Sometimes she holds on to my finger while she falls asleep.

Altogether she is brilliant like morning sunshine.

When dinner at home is a chicken pie hot from the oven, a bowl of grilled octopus and artichoke hearts, and a salad of nectarines and walnuts and goat cheese and wild rocket, well, that is dinner enough. But when dinner is all that plus the promise of an ice cream sundae, that is dinner and then some. And then when the promise becomes reality, well.

There was a burst of thundering storm this evening when I got into the shower, and the thing about taking a shower during a storm is, it seems to me there is a chance of little yellow bolts of lightning coming out of the shower head. It sure makes taking a shower a livin’-on-the-edge kinda experience, call me Stellou Dangergirl.

Tomorrow morning the return to real life. Real-life things such as a thirty-something-hour flight back to winter on a cold-pancake airline; real-life things such as, uh, a small matter of a Master’s thesis. A couple of nights ago we were watching a David Attenborough nature show on elephants, and I kept thinking, If I were an elephant I wouldn’t have to write a thesis.

’Course, real life isn’t so bad. Like when real life requires a passport photo, and the photo shoot turns into shits and giggles with CC about.

I know bedtime is nigh, but man am I craving a bowl of Cocoa Crispix.

(The Crispix story is: This girl likes supermarkets in a foreign land. Well, this girl likes supermarkets anywhere, really, but anyway. Some days an excursion up the street to Coles means a tub of beaut King Island Dairy honey-and-cinnamon yoghurt, a pretty bottle of raspberry jam, and reading a local trashy magazine while waiting in line to pay. Other times the Coles adventure is like two girls on a weed bender, our basket heavy with candy and Anzac biscuits and Red Rock Deli chips on special. The other day I tried to sneak a hefty plastic-encased tube of no-brand chicken-and-pork sausage into our cart for the shock value, but CC was watching the whole time. Always, even when the shop is out of Cocoa Crispix, we like the cereal aisle. On that day, we settle for the regular Honey Crispix with a bonus “The Incredibles” Action Card. CC breaks into the box on the walk home, passing me handfuls of sweet crunchiness.)

So, but, maybe near-midnight is the best time for a bowl of Cocoa Crispix swimming in cold, cold milk, I am on vacation after all.

Wednesday. I sleep in cars. I was awake when we pulled out of Redfern, and the next thing I knew, I was waking with a crick in my neck as we barrelled down the Hume Highway heading south.

In Yass, we stopped for burgers “with the lot.” In Yass, “the lot” is bacon, a fried egg, lettuce, tomatoes, and beets. Summer never tasted so good.

We raced along, after, while flocks of sheep lay in the shade under the trees.

“I just want to stop the car, dash into the field, grab a lamb, and run, with it tucked under my arm,” I said.

“You’d be giggling so hard,” CC said.

And then I saw myself: doubled over in the field, a bemused lamb in the crook of my arm, my getaway foiled by mad giggling. The sight made me giggle, hee-hee-hee.



We pulled into Young, cherry capital of Australia, in the mid-afternoon. At the Cherry Blossom Motel, there was a cup of instant coffee and a chocolate biscuit while the wall-mounted television ran an ad for six CDs containing the greatest love songs of all time. We were very tempted to call now for this special offer.

Young at night is quiet. Slowing down and peering into Golden Crown restaurant, we turned the corner instead and headed for the Young Services Club. “Maybe there’ll be a roast dinner,” CC said, and there was. Next to the bar and the pokey machines, traditional Services Club–style, the chalkboard read “Roast Lamb.” The help-yourself vegetable selection included a deep bowl filled with round beets. “I want to tuck that bowl of beets under my arm and run,” I said.

“You’d have to decide which to carry first, the lamb or the beets,” CC said.



Thursday. We loaded up our baskets with pickles and jams at JD’s Jam Factory, then aimed for breakfast in the tea room. I tried to order mince on toast with cherry jam, but the waitress said it was no longer on the menu. I settled for sticky date pudding with cream, what better way than pure sugar to get going first thing in the morning.

At Chinaman’s Dam in the Chinese Tribute Gardens, the yellow birds and the pink birds talked to each other in the gum trees.

Back in the car and on the way to Tumut, I made up a song to sing the baby to sleep: You are the baby / and you have nice pants. / Those sure are nice pants, / for pants.

There was a picnic lunch under the shade of a willow by the Tumut River—hams, and tomatoes, and zucchini and cauliflower pickles, and sweet, deep red Rons cold from the Esky.

I threw my shoes on the grass and stepped on flat rocks in the river water, icy cold from the mountains. When I got out, my dark footprints on the hot granite-slab bench disappeared as soon as they were imprinted.



Past Talbingo and the inviting blue of the Blowering Reservoir, everything green and brown and light gold and open and flashing past beyond our windows up and AC on.

Along the Snowy Mountains Highway, an emu made her way through the high grass with a line of baby emus behind her, black and fluffy. Still no kangaroos.

We drove into The Rock in the late afternoon.

On John Street, Matthew reached under the first blue flowerpot for the key and we moved into Nan’s retirement cottage. Inside, old-people smell and old-people things: lace curtains, a rosary on the side table, a red candy dish filled half-way with Licorice Allsorts, a La-Z-Boy with knitted armrest covers, a teddy bear on the television set. The teddy bear still had its barcode tag attached to its ear.



At the ranch, dinner was like Christmas come again. And then we stepped outside to walk home, and, one foot out the door, we had to stop, because stepping outside into the darkness was like stepping into the sky, it was unspeakably amazing. Everywhere stars and stars and stars, and the Milky Way like magic spreading out from a wizard’s hand. We walked home with our faces turned upward.

Every day I am a little browner.



Friday. I woke to the smell of sausages in the pan.

After a massive fry-up breakfast at the faux bois laminate kitchen table, I was about to head out for a walk when I spotted the next-door neighbor granny coming up the path.

“Hello,” she said, “How’re you going?”

“Good,” I said. “How are you?”

“I’m well,” she said, “And yourself?”

“Um.” I said.

I extricated myself with a smile, and headed down the street. On Nicholas, twelve silky black cows grazed in a field. I watched one of them while she watched me. She stuck her head under the wire fence and munched at the wild oats and purple Patterson’s Curse. It was late morning. The road disappeared into shimmering. I could feel the heat on my shoulders.

Matthew took us for a drive around The Rock after. Far off in the fields, young eucalyptus trees like little giant heads of broccoli evenly spaced. On Cullingullie Road, sheep and lambs hung out on the right while cows and calves in all shades of chocolate grazed on the left. Grand shiny silos glinted in the sun, waiting for the grain trucks.

There was time for ice creams before lunch.



At the ranch, we made chicken sandwiches with leftovers straight from the fridge.

The afternoon was the kind of hot where you break into a light sweat doing nothing. Family talk was a lullaby of a different family in a different accent. I went indoors for a sit-down in the air-conditioning, and woke up an hour later sprawled out on the sofa.



We sat under the gorgeous oak in the backyard while the sun set, slowly. We shooed flies left and right. Rob hung mosquito coils on the tree branches. The smoke curled upward in wisps. Someone turned on the string of colored bulbs, green, blue, yellow, red against a watercolor sky.

There was a kid with a serious face and a large bag of marbles. He climbed the oak, blond hair against the dark branches, grinning from the leaves.

There was a boy who made sushi and who rides his nan’s Gopher (“The whole town laughs at him but he doesn’t care,” Matthew said). This boy might move to Melbourne to become a chef.

There was a guy with twinkly eyes and meaty hands who took serious children seriously.

There was a woman in a purple caftan and big silver jewelry who rolled her own cigarettes and made gin and tonics for the ladies.

There was Nan, eighty-nine years old and wearing her good pants, who told of moving to The Rock in 1939, borrowing the hundred-dollar down payment on the house from the baker. She told about smoking two packs a day, about taking in boarders during wartime. She was wrinkles and bright eyes.

The air was the Best of Dusty Springfield, and meat on the grill.

“This is a great song,” I said, when “Little by Little” came on.

“That’s what you said about the song that just finished,” CC said.

“ ’Cause that was a great song, too,” I said.

“You’re in the right place,” Hughie said. “This is Dusty universe.”

Greg stepped out from the shed in an apron striped blue and white, and announced dinner served. New Year’s Eve tasted of three kinds of green salads. Three kinds of coleslaw. A tomato salad. Grilled eggplant. Sausages, lamb, chicken. Soft white bread. Rosé in a plastic goblet. Orange cordial.



Walking home in that singular sort of country quiet, the baby farted a comic fart into the last night of the year.

Home, I pulled a white plastic garden chair to the middle of the lawn to watch the stars. I tucked one leg under the other. I warmed my hands on a cup of coffee. The sky was wide, and low. The stars seemed suspended, like sparkles in an enormous bowl of champagne jelly. It seemed eminently possible we are all suspended, ourselves, from the sky by gossamer-thin threads. Barely noticeably, we bob.

There was a shooting star, and then another. A train honked in the night air, and then I heard it going by. I turned around to catch it racing through the trees, first the big headlight, then blackness and only the click-clack on the tracks, and then the smaller light on the caboose.



Saturday. The first day of the new year was quiet.

The baby asleep, CC and I sat in the kitchen over strong tea and cherries. Outside, the wind chimes tinkled listlessly in the thick air.

“I want a salad—” I said. (I’d had as much red meat in the last couple of days as I usually do in maybe three weeks.)

“With goat cheese?” she said.

“Sure,” I said. “But, just, a green salad. And then some pie.”

“A meat pie?”

“Fruit. With cream.”

“I want a meat pie,” she said. “Steak and mushroom, and chips and a salad.”

“Mmm.”

“And then a lemon meringue pie. And an egg cream.”

“Chocolate?” I said.

“What other flavor is there?”

We spat out cherry pits. Then:

“If only we had a bunch of DVDs and some banana splits.”

I wished we could taste our words. I settled for a slice of toast with apricot jam. Burying the butter knife into the jam jar, I lifted out fat pieces of sweet fruit.



When the sun began to abate, I took a walk along the train tracks. Bare legs through the scratchy weeds bring back me at seven years old, making a shortcut through the overgrown grass behind the Methodist Girls’ School in Mount Sophia. There were dogs—wild dogs?, I don’t remember; fear and memory confuse the details. I remember running, and I remember later showing my mother the scratches on my legs—thin, uneven scrapes lightly bleeding. It has always been blurry in my mind if the wounds came from thorns or dogs’ teeth.

By a wire fence, a cow black as night saw me approach, then turned and walked away. She kept her calf close to her side.

The wind in the eucalyptus sounded like rain while ants, big and quick and black like temper, ran about on the cracked earth.

Black-headed top-knot pigeons like Chinese courtesans perched on telephone lines.



Later, Matthew strapped on the baby in the Baby Bjorn and we all headed out again. When we hit the railroad tracks, CC started singing that Chordettes tune, “Lollipop,” and then acted out that bit from “Stand By Me” where the boys are walking on the tracks and the train’s coming. Like value for money, she did the train sound, too: “Pohhh!! Pohhhh!!!” Arms out to either side of me, I balanced on one of the rails.



At the showground-slash-golf-course, like great white hunters, like great white hunters in Campers and a Marc Jacobs tote and a summer dress from H&M Paris, we went looking for kangaroos in a Hayao Miyazaki forest.

Really, it was Matthew looking for kangaroos. CC and I followed behind him chatting and laughing while he kept turning around telling us to be quiet.

Then CC pointed to beyond the trees to the left, and said, “Well, I see a horse.”

We peered.

“Could be two kangaroos in a horse suit,” I said.

“Okay, we’ve seen ’em,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

The baby was asleep under a rainbow hat. We walked to the ranch while the galah birds with their bright pink undersides picked at grain on the side of the road.