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.

Old biddies abound. Yesterday in Chinatown, two old Chinese biddies sat in a sunny spot on a stoop on Mulberry Street. In her hand, one held a miniature jar of Tiger Balm out to the other. Today on the F train, roundish, lumpish, two old biddies straight out of Maurice Sendak. One carried a polka-dotted oilcloth bag in blue and white. The other had a Christmas-tree pin on the lapel of her purple coat. This one pronounced the word “bad” like it had two syllables.

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.

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.

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.

He was sitting there already, among the Saturday afternoon crowd, when I got to the arch in Washington Square Park. Skirting the Village, we made our way through SoHo and its sidewalk sellers and its weekend throng before fortuitously becoming hungry for lunch as we approached Chinatown. At 69 Bayard, where the walls are papered with defaced one-dollar bills, I tried to do that thing with the waiter boss guy where it’s like, Dude, you’re Chinese, I’m Chinese, I know that you know that I know that there are dishes that can be had that may not be on the menu. “Dou miao?” I ventured. “No,” he said, “kang kong.” “Um, xiao bai cai?” “Kang kong.” Ah, okay, sure, sounds good.

We continued downtown downtown after, past the row of pigeons on a wire fence, past the wrinkled Chinese shoeshine uncles sitting on a street corner shooting the breeze, past City Hall Park and Trinty Church and the old stone buildings that make me think of that Crimson Permanent Assurance scene in “Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life,” and then we were by the water, with the breakdancing boys and their boombox on high; the skater boys with impatient eyes, lining up to grind a bench; the makeshift stands hawking black-and-white prints and “I heart New York” T-shirts and miniature yellow cabs.

On the ferry to Staten Island, our boat honked that mournful boat honk, and we were off, the city skyline behind us, and a wise old seagull perched up high to navigate the seas. And I thought we were just going to ride there and back, because that would have been adventure enough, because who doesn’t like a boat?, but then we got to the ferry terminal on the other end and the boy made a move to debark. “Wait, you actually want to get off at Staten Island?” I said. “Sure,” he said, “why not.” “I guess— well— I mean— okay, cool.” And, really, I was excited, because I’ve never actually gotten off the boat at Staten Island. “Maybe Staten Island will be full of Italian cafés serving good coffee,” he said. “And cannoli!” I said. And, oh, how the gods must have laughed. Because we got off the boat to an underwhelming bus station and the browngreyness of what looked like abandoned train tracks, and, twenty minutes later, having walked by the Chinese restaurant and the shop selling Exxxotic Toys, the empty carpark and the green house leaning to the right, the Sri Lankan Grocery and Videos and the hairstylists specializing in braids and buzz cuts, we were on the 62 bus back to the terminal. On the ferry to Manhattan, the setting sun painted a watery yellow stroke over the horizon.



And then it was dusk and cobblestones, and we’d been on our feet all day, and what we needed was a sit-down. At the Wall Street stop, the 2 train arrived like a present as we reached the platform.

Heading to the Pavilion down Prospect Park West, we swapped dreams of skiing, and of spiderwebs, and of swimming through the air. Two Rasta jellyfish and a box of Milk Duds later, it was cold enough when we got out of the cinema that I danced silly shivering steps down the block.

There was toast and butter and raspberry jam for a late snacky dinner. Les Rita Mitsouko. He tasted of tobacco and chocolate.

Just past one or so on a Saturday night at Schiller’s Liquor Bar, you can point out the boys who will buy you diamonds and the boys who will buy you cocaine.

“I’m building a birdhouse!”

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is good,
crazy good. It's snow-on-your-face good, beach-in-the-winter good, yellow-lighting-’cause-you-turned-the-flash-off good.

After, traipsing around the Lower East Side in this blasted drizzle, looking for dinner. At Schiller’s, a two-hour wait for a table. Also at inoteca. Oh, how we laughed, bitterly. Then we fell into the Pink Pony, where there’s always a table free, and where the waitstaff always seems stoned out of their minds. An artichoke salad, a plate of salmon tartare, and a tarte tatin later, back out into the wet, but not before one cute indie-rock boy and I looked at each other, and then looked at each other again, and then, once Kat and I were outside, turned around and looked at each other again. What’s a girl to do? Go back in? Too obvious. It’s okay, move on, the Lower East Side is the natural habitat of the cute indie-rock boy.

In a now-calmer Schiller’s for a sit-down with Bellinis, Kat in new green puff-sleeve shirt and grey sweater, jeans, pointy shoes, me in grey pinstripe bias-cut dress with little red cardigan, pink socks, black round-toe Marc Jacobs knock-offs. We are cute girls, and we have lots to talk about, and we make each other laugh, and, yes, okay, we’ll take some of those crisp, salty fries.