Summer and the City

Chapter One

First Samantha asks me to find her shoe. When I locate it in the sink, she asks me to a party.

“You might as well come, seeing as you don’t have anyplace else to go and I don’t feel like babysitting.”

“I’m hardly a baby.”

“Okay. You’re a sparrow. Either way,” she says, adjusting her silk bra as she wriggles into a green Lycra shift, “you’ve already been mugged. If you’re kidnapped by a pimp, I don’t want it on my hands.”

She spins around and eyes my outfit-a navy blue gabardine jacket with matching culottes that I’d actually considered chic a few hours ago. “Is that all you’ve got?”

“I have a black cocktail dress from the 1960s.”

“Wear that. And put these on.” She tosses me a pair of gold aviator sunglasses. “They’ll make you look normal.”

I don’t ask what normal is as I follow behind her, clattering down the five flights of stairs to the street.

“Rule number one,” she declares, stepping into traffic. “Always look like you know where you’re going, even if you don’t.”

She holds up her hand, causing a car to screech to a halt. “Move fast.” She bangs on the hood of the car and gives the driver the finger. “And always wear shoes you can run in.”

I skittle behind her through the obstacle course of Seventh Avenue and arrive on the other side like a castaway discovering land.

“And for God’s sake, those wedge sandals. Out,” Samantha decries, giving my feet a disparaging glance.

“Did you know that the first wedge sandal was invented by Ferragamo for the young Judy Garland?”

“How on earth do you know that?”

“I’m a font of useless information.”

“Then you should do just fine at this party.”

“Whose party is it again?” I shout, trying to be heard over the traffic.

“David Ross. The Broadway director.”

“Why is he having a party at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon?” I dodge a hot dog cart, a supermarket basket filled with blankets, and a child attached to a leash.

“It’s a tea dance.”

“Will they be serving tea?” I can’t tell if she’s serious.

She laughs. “What do you think?”

The party is in a dusky pink house at the end of a cobblestoned street. I can see the river through a crack between the buildings, turgid and brown under glints of sunlight.

“David’s very eccentric,” Samantha warns, as if eccentricity might be an unwelcome trait to a new arrival from the provinces. “Someone brought a miniature horse to his last party and it crapped all over the Aubusson carpet.”

I pretend to know what an Aubusson carpet is in favor of learning more about the horse. “How’d they get it there?”

“Taxi,” Samantha says. “It was a very small horse.”

I hesitate. “Will your friend David mind? Your bringing me?”

“If he doesn’t mind a miniature horse, I can’t imagine he’ll mind you. Unless you’re a drag or a bore.”

“I might be a bore but I’m never a drag.”

“And the stuff about coming from a small town? Nix it,” she says. “In New York, you need a shtick.”

“A shtick?”

“Who you are, but better. Embellish,” she says with a flourish as we pause in front of the house. It’s four stories high and the blue door is flung open in welcome, revealing a colorful throng, twirling and weaving like a chorus in a musical show. My insides throb with excitement. That door is my entrance to another world.

We’re about to cross the threshold when a shiny black marble of a man comes rolling out, a bottle of champagne in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. “Samantha!” he screams.

“Davide,” Samantha shouts, giving the name a French twist.

“And who are you?” he asks, peering at me with friendly curiosity.

“Carrie Bradshaw, sir.” I hold out my hand.

“How divine,” he squeals. “I haven’t been called ‘sir’ since I was in short pants. Not that I ever was in short pants. Where have you been hiding this delightful young person?”

“I found her on my doorstep.”

“Did you arrive in a basket like Moses?” he asks.

“Train,” I reply.

“And what brings you to the Emerald City?”

“Oh.” I smile. And taking Samantha’s advice to heart, I quickly blurt out, “I’m going to become a famous writer.”

“Like Kenton!” he exclaims.

“Kenton James?” I ask breathlessly.

“Is there any other? He should be here somewhere. If you trip across a very small man with a voice like a miniature poodle, you’ll know you’ve found him.”

In the next second, David Ross is halfway across the room and Samantha is sitting on a strange man’s lap.

“Over here.” She waves from the couch.

I push past a woman in a white jumpsuit. “I think I just saw my first Halston!”

“Is Halston here?” Samantha asks.

If I’m at the same party with Halston and Kenton James, I’m going to die. “I meant the jumpsuit.”

“Oh, the jumpsuit,” she says with exaggerated interest to the man beneath her. From what I can see of him, he’s tan and sporty, sleeves rolled up over his forearms.

“You’re killing me,” he says.

“This is Carrie Bradshaw. She’s going to be a famous writer,” Samantha says, taking up my moniker as if it’s suddenly fact.

“Hello, famous writer.” He holds out his hand, the fingers narrow and burnished like bronze.

“This is Bernard. The idiot I didn’t sleep with last year,” she jokes.

“Didn’t want to be another notch in your belt,” Bernard drawls.

“I’m not notching anymore. Don’t you know?” She holds out her left hand for inspection. An enormous diamond glitters from her ring finger. “I’m engaged.”

She kisses the top of Bernard’s dark head and looks around the room. “Who do I have to spank to get a drink around here?”

“I’ll go,” Bernard volunteers. He stands up and for one inexplicable moment, it’s like watching my future unfold.

“C’mon, famous writer. Better come with me. I’m the only sane person here.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and steers me through the crowd.

I look back at Samantha, but she only smiles and waves, that giant sparkler catching the last rays of sunlight. How did I not notice that ring before?

Guess I was too busy noticing everything else.

Like Bernard. He’s tall and has straight dark hair. A large, crooked nose. Hazel-green eyes and a face that changes from mournful to delighted every other second, as if he has two personalities pulling him in opposite directions.

I can’t fathom why he’s paying me so much attention, but I’m mesmerized. People keep coming up and congratulating him, while snippets of conversation waft around my head like dandelion fluff.

“You never give up, do you-”

“Crispin knows him and he’s terrified-”

“I said, ‘Why don’t you try diagramming a sentence-’”

“Dreadful. Even her diamonds looked dirty-”

Bernard gives me a wink. And suddenly his full name comes back to me from some old copy of Time magazine or Newsweek . Bernard Singer? The playwright?

He can’t be, I panic, knowing instinctively he is.

How the hell did this happen? I’ve been in New York for exactly two hours, and already I’m with the beautiful people?

“What’s your name again?” he asks.

“Carrie Bradshaw.” The name of his play, the one that won the Pulitzer Prize, enters my brain like a shard of glass: Cutting Water.

“I’d better get you back to Samantha before I take you home myself,” he purrs.

“I wouldn’t go,” I say tartly. Blood pounds in my ears. My glass of champagne is sweating.

“Where do you live?” He squeezes my shoulder.

“I don’t know.”

This makes him roar with laughter. “You’re an orphan. Are you Annie?”

“I’d rather be Candide.” We’re edged up against a wall near French doors that lead to a garden. He slides down so we’re eye-level.

“Where did you come from?”

I remind myself of what Samantha told me. “Does it matter? I’m here.”

“Cheeky devil,” he declares. And suddenly, I’m glad I was robbed. The thief took my bag and my money, but he also took my identity. Which means for the next few hours, I can be anyone I want.

Bernard grabs my hand and leads me to the garden. A variety of people-men, women, old, young, beautiful, ugly-are seated around a marble table, shrieking with laughter and indignation as if heated conversation is the fuel that keeps them going. He wriggles us in between a tiny woman with short hair and a distinguished man in a seersucker jacket.

“Bernard,” the woman says in a feathery voice. “We’re coming to see your play in September.” Bernard’s response is drowned out, however, by a sudden yelp of recognition from the man seated across the table.

He’s enveloped in black, a voluminous coat that resembles a nun’s habit. Brown-shaded sunglasses hide his eyes and a felt hat is pressed over his forehead. The skin on his face is gently folded, as if wrapped in soft white fabric.

“Bernard!” he exclaims. “Bernardo. Darling. Love of my life. Do get me a drink?” He spots me, and points a trembling finger. “You’ve brought a child!”

His voice is shrill, eerily pitched, almost inhuman. Every cell in my body contracts.

Kenton James.

My throat closes. I grab for my glass of champagne, and drain the last drop, feeling a nudge from the man in the seersucker jacket. He nods at Kenton James. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” he says, in a voice that’s pure patrician New England, low and assured. “It’s the grain alcohol. Years of it. Destroys the brain. In other words, he’s a hopeless drunk.”

I giggle in appreciation, like I know exactly what he’s talking about. “Isn’t everyone?”

“Now that you mention it, yes.”

“Bernardo , please ,” Kenton pleads. “It’s only practical. You’re the one who’s closest to the bar. You can’t expect me to enter that filthy sweating mass of humanity-”

“Guilty!” shouts the man in the seersucker.

“And what are you wearing under that dishabille?” booms Bernard.

“I’ve been waiting to hear those words from your lips for ten years,” Kenton yips.

“I’ll go,” I say, standing up.

Kenton James breaks into applause. “Wonderful. Please take note, everyone-this is exactly what children should do. Fetch and carry. You must bring children to parties more often, Bernie.”

I tear myself away, wanting to hear more, wanting to know more, not wanting to leave Bernard. Or Kenton James. The most famous writer in the world. His name chugs in my head, picking up speed like The Little Engine That Could.

A hand reaches out and grabs my arm. Samantha. Her eyes are as glittery as her diamond. There’s a fine sheen of moisture on her upper lip. “Are you okay? You disappeared. I was worried about you.”

“I just met Kenton James. He wants me to bring him alcohol.”

“Don’t leave without letting me know first, okay?”

“I won’t. I never want to leave.”

“Good.” She beams, and goes back to her conversation.

The atmosphere is revved up to maximum wattage. The music blares. Bodies writhe, a couple is making out on the couch. A woman crawls through the room with a saddle on her back. Two bartenders are being sprayed with champagne by a gigantic woman wearing a corset. I grab a bottle of vodka and dance my way through the crowd.

Like I always go to parties like this. Like I belong.

When I get back to the table, a young woman dressed entirely in Chanel has taken my place. The man in the seersucker jacket is pantomiming an elephant attack, and Kenton James has pulled his hat down over his ears. He greets my appearance with delight. “Make way for alcohol,” he cries, clearing a tiny space next to him. And addressing the table, declares, “Someday, this child will rule the city!”

I squeeze in next to him.

“No fair,” Bernard shouts. “Keep your hands off my date!”

“I’m not anyone’s date,” I say.

“But you will be, my dear,” Kenton says, blinking one bleary eye in warning. “And then you’ll see. ” He pats my hand with his own small, soft paw.

Chapter Two

Help!

I’m suffocating, drowning in taffeta. I’m trapped in a coffin. I’m… dead?

I sit up and wrench free, staring at the pile of black silk in my lap.

It’s my dress. I must have taken it off sometime during the night and put it over my head. Or did someone take it off for me? I look around the half darkness of Samantha’s living room, crisscrossed by eerie yellow beams of light that highlight the ordinary objects of her existence: a grouping of photographs on the side table, a pile of magazines on the floor, a row of candles on the sill.

My head throbs as I vaguely recall a taxi ride packed with people. Peeling blue vinyl and a sticky mat. I was hiding on the floor of the taxi against the protests of the driver, who kept saying, “No more than four.” We were actually six but Samantha kept insisting we weren’t. There was hysterical laughter. Then a crawl up the five flights of steps and more music and phone calls and a guy wearing Samantha’s makeup, and sometime after that I must have collapsed on the futon couch and fallen asleep.

I tiptoe to Samantha’s room, avoiding the open boxes. Samantha is moving out, and the apartment is a mess. The door to the tiny bedroom is open, the bed unmade but empty, the floor littered with shoes and articles of clothing as if someone tried on everything in her closet and cast each piece away in a rush. I make my way to the bathroom, and weaving through a forest of bras and panties, step over the edge of the ancient tub and turn on the shower.

Plan for the day: find out where I’m supposed to live, without calling my father.

My father . The rancid aftertaste of guilt fills my throat.

I didn’t call him yesterday. I didn’t have a chance. He’s probably worried to death by now. What if he called George? What if he called my landlady? Maybe the police are looking for me, another girl who mysteriously disappears into the maw of New York City.

I shampoo my hair. I can’t do anything about it now.

Or maybe I don’t want to.

I get out of the tub and lean across the sink, staring at my reflection as the mist from the shower slowly evaporates and my face is revealed.

I don’t look any different. But I sure as hell feel different.

It’s my first morning in New York!

I rush to the open window, taking in the cool, damp breeze. The sound of traffic is like the whoosh of waves gently lapping the shore. I kneel on the sill, looking down at the street with my palms on the glass-a child peering into an enormous snow globe.

I crouch there forever, watching the day come to life. First come the trucks, lumbering down the avenue like dinosaurs, creaky and hollow, raising their flaps to receive garbage or sweeping the street with their whiskery bristles. Then the traffic begins: a lone taxi, followed by a silvery Cadillac, and then the smaller trucks, bearing the logos of fish and bread and flowers, and the rusty vans, and a parade of pushcarts. A boy in a white coat pumps the pedals of a bicycle with two crates of oranges attached to the fender. The sky turns from gray to a lazy white. A jogger trips by, then another; a man wearing blue scrubs frantically hails a taxi. Three small dogs attached to a single leash drag an elderly lady down the sidewalk, while merchants heave open the groaning metal gates on the storefronts. The streaky sunlight illuminates the corners of buildings, and then a mass of humanity swarms from the steps beneath the sidewalk. The streets swell with the noise of people, cars, music, drilling; dogs bark, sirens scream; it’s eight a.m.

Time to get moving.

I search the area around the futon for my belongings. Tucked behind the cushion is a heavy piece of drafting paper, the edge slightly greasy and crumpled, as if I’d lain clutching it to my chest. I study Bernard’s phone number, the numerals neat and workmanlike. At the party, he made a great show of writing out his number and handing it to me with the statement, “Just in case.” He pointedly didn’t ask for my number, as if we both knew that seeing each other again would have to be my decision.

I carefully place the paper in my suitcase, and that’s when I find the note, anchored under an empty bottle of champagne. It reads:

Dear Carrie,

Your friend George called. Tried to wake you but couldn’t. Left you a twenty. Pay me back when you can.

Samantha

And underneath that, an address. For the apartment I was supposed to go to yesterday but didn’t. Apparently I called George last night after all.

I hold up the note, looking for clues. Samantha’s writing is strangely girlish, as if the penmanship part of her brain never progressed beyond seventh grade. I reluctantly put on my gabardine suit, pick up the phone, and call George.

Ten minutes later, I’m bumping my suitcase down the stairs. I push open the door and step outside.

My stomach growls as if ravenously hungry. Not just for food, but for everything: the noise, the excitement, the crazy buzz of energy that throbs beneath my feet.

I hail a taxi, yank open the door and heave my suitcase onto the backseat.

“Where to?” the driver asks.

“East Forty-seventh Street,” I shout.

“You got it!” the driver says, steering his taxi into the melee of traffic.

We hit a pothole and I’m momentarily launched from my seat.

“It’s those damn New Jersey drivers.” The cabbie shakes his fist out the window while I follow suit. And that’s when it hits me: It’s like I’ve always been here. Sprung from the head of Zeus-a person with no family, no background, no history .

A person who is completely new.

As the taxi weaves dangerously through traffic, I study the faces of the passersby. Here is humanity in every size, shape, and hue, and yet I’m convinced that on each face I divine a kinship that transcends all boundaries, as if linked by the secret knowledge that this is the center of the universe.

Then I clutch my suitcase in fear.

What I said to Samantha was true: I don’t ever want to leave. And now I have only sixty days to figure out how to stay.

The sight of George Carter brings me back to earth with a thump. He’s sitting dutifully at the counter of the coffee shop on Forty-seventh Street and Second Avenue, where we agreed to meet before he trots off to his summer job at The New York Times . I can tell by the set of his mouth that he’s exasperated-I’ve been in New York for less than twenty-four hours and already I’m off course. I haven’t even managed to make it to the apartment where I’m supposed to be staying. I tap him on the shoulder, and he turns around, his expression both relieved and irritated.

“What happened to you?” he demands.

I set down my suitcase and take the stool next to him. “My purse got stolen. I didn’t have any money. So I called this girl, the cousin of someone I know from Castlebury. She took me to a party and-”

George sighs. “You shouldn’t be hanging around people like that.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know them.”

“So what?” Now I’m annoyed. This is the problem with George. He always acts like he thinks he’s my father or something.

“I need you to promise you’ll be more careful in the future.”

I make a face.

“Carrie, I’m serious. If you get into another jam, I’m not going to be around to help you out.”

“Are you abandoning me?” I ask jokingly. George has had a crush on me for nearly a year. And he’s one of my dearest friends. If it weren’t for George, I might not be in New York at all.

“Actually, I am,” he says, sliding three crisp twenty-dollar bills in my direction. “This should tide you over. You can pay me back when you get to Brown.”

I look from the bills to his face. He’s not kidding.

“The Times is sending me to DC for the summer. I’ll get to do some actual reporting, so I agreed.”

I’m stunned. I don’t know whether to congratulate him or chastise him for deserting me.

The impact of his defection hits me, and the floor drops out from below my feet. George is the only person I really know in New York. I was counting on him to show me the ropes. How am I going to get by without him?

As if reading my thoughts, he says, “You’ll be fine. Just stick to the basics. Go to class and do your work. And try not to get mixed up with any crazy people, okay?”

“Sure,” I say. This wouldn’t be a problem but for the fact I’m a little crazy myself.

George picks up my suitcase and we stroll around the corner to a white brick apartment building. A tattered green awning with the words WINDSOR ARMS shields the entrance. “This isn’t so bad,” George remarks. “Perfectly respectable.”

Inside the glass door is a row of buttons. I press the one marked 15E.

“Yes?” a shrill voice shrieks from the intercom.

“It’s Carrie Bradshaw.”

“Well,” says the voice, in a tone that could curdle cream. “It’s about time.”

George kisses me on the cheek as a buzzer sounds and the second door clicks open. “Good luck,” he says, and pauses to give me one last piece of advice: “Will you please call your father? I’m sure he’s worried about you.”

Chapter Three

“Is this Carrie Bradshaw?” The voice is girlish but demanding, as if the caller is slightly annoyed.

“Y-e-e-e-e-s,” I say cautiously, wondering who it could be. It’s my second morning in New York and we haven’t had our first class yet.

“I have your bag,” the girl announces.

“What!” I nearly drop the phone.

“Well, don’t get too excited. I found it in the garbage. Someone dumped nail polish all over it. I was thinking about leaving it in the garbage, but then I thought: What would I want someone to do if I lost my purse? So I called.”

“How’d you find me?”

“Your address book. It was still in the bag. I’ll be in front of Saks from ten o’clock on if you want to pick it up,” she says. “You can’t miss me. I have red hair. I dyed it the same color red as the Campbell’s soup can. In honor of Valerie Solanas.” She pauses. “The SCUM Manifesto ? Andy Warhol?”

“Oh, sure.” I have absolutely no idea what’s she talking about. But I’m not about to admit my ignorance. Plus, this girl sounds kind of… bizarre.

“Good. I’ll see you in front of Saks.” She hangs up before I can get her name.

Yippee! I knew it. The whole time my Carrie bag was gone, I had a strange premonition I’d get it back. Like something out of one of those books on mind control: visualize what you want and it will come to you.

“A-hem!”

I look up from my cot and into the scrubbed pink face of my landlady, Peggy Meyers. She’s squeezed into a gray rubber suit that fits like sausage casing. The suit, combined with her shining round face, gives her an uncanny resemblance to the Michelin Man.

“Was that an outgoing call?”

“No,” I say, slightly offended. “ They called me .”

Her sigh is a precise combination of annoyance and disappointment. “Didn’t we go over the rules?”

I nod, eyes wide, pantomiming fear.

“All phone calls are to take place in the living room. And no calls are to last more than five minutes. No one needs longer than five minutes to communicate. And all outgoing calls must be duly listed in the notebook.”

Duly, I think. That’s a good word.

“Do you have any questions?” she asks.

“Nope.” I shake my head.

“I’m going for a run. Then I have auditions. If you decide to go out, make sure you have your keys.”

“I will. I promise.”

She stops, takes in my cotton pajamas, and frowns. “I hope you’re not planning to go back to sleep.”

“I’m going to Saks.”

Peggy purses her lips in disapproval, as if only the indolent go to Saks. “By the way, your father called.”

“Thanks.”

“And remember, all long-distance calls are collect.” She lumbers out like a mummy. If she can barely walk in that rubber suit, how can she possibly run in it?

I’ve only known Peggy for twenty-four hours, but already, we don’t get along. You could call it hate at first sight.

When I arrived yesterday morning, disheveled and slightly disoriented, her first comment was: “Glad you decided to show up. I was about to give your room to someone else.”

I looked at Peggy, whom I suspected had once been attractive but was now like a flower gone to seed, and half wished she had given the room away.

“I’ve got a waiting list a mile long,” she continued. “You kids from out of town have no idea- no idea -how impossible it is to find a decent place in New York.”

Then she sat me down on the green love seat and apprised me of “the rules”:

No visitors, especially males.

No overnight guests, especially males, even if she is away for the weekend.

No consumption of her food.

No telephone calls over five minutes-she needs the phone line free in case she gets a call about an audition.

No coming home past midnight-we might wake her up and she needs every minute of sleep.

And most of all, no cooking. She doesn’t want to have to clean up our mess.

Jeez. Even a gerbil has more freedom than I do.

I wait until I hear the front door bang behind her, then knock hard on the plywood wall next to my bed. “Ding-dong, the witch is dead,” I call out.

L’il Waters, a tiny butterfly of a girl, slips through the plywood door that connects our cells. “Someone found my bag!” I exclaim.

“Oh, honey, that’s wonderful. Like one of those magical New York coincidences.” She hops onto the end of the cot, nearly tipping it over. Nothing in this apartment is real, including the partitions, doors, and beds. Our “rooms” are built into part of the living room, forming two tiny six-by-ten spaces with just enough room for a camp bed, a small folding table and chair, a tiny dresser with two drawers, and a reading light. The apartment is located right off Second Avenue, so I’ve taken to calling L’il and me The Prisoners of Second Avenue after the Neil Simon movie.

“But what about Peggy? I heard her yelling at you. I told you not to use the phone in your room.” L’il sighs.

“I thought she was asleep.”

L’il shakes her head. She’s in my program at The New School, but arrived a week earlier to get acclimated, which also means she got the slightly better room. She has to walk through my space to get to hers, so I have even less privacy than she does. “Peggy always gets up early to go jogging. She says she has to lose twenty pounds-”

“In that rubber suit?” I ask, astounded.

“She says it sweats the fat out.”

I look at L’il in appreciation. She’s two years older than I am, but looks about five years younger. With her birdlike stature, she’s one of those girls who will probably look like she’s twelve for most of her life. But L’il is not to be underestimated.

When we first met yesterday, I joked about how “L’il” would look on the cover of a book, but she only shrugged and said, “My writing name is E. R. Waters. For Elizabeth Reynolds Waters. It helps to get published if people don’t know you’re a girl.” Then she showed me two poems she’d had published in The New Yorker.

I nearly fell over.

Then I told her how I’d met Kenton James and Bernard Singer. I knew meeting famous writers wasn’t the same as being published yourself, but I figured it was better than nothing. I even showed her the paper where Bernard Singer had written his phone number.

“You have to call him,” she said.

“I don’t know.” I didn’t want to make too big a deal of it.

Thinking of Bernard made me all jellyish until Peggy came in and told us to be quiet.

Now I give L’il a wicked smile. “Peggy,” I say. “She really goes to auditions in that rubber suit? Can you imagine the smell?”

L’il grins. “She belongs to a gym. Lucille Roberts. She says she takes a shower there before. That’s why she’s always so crazy. She’s sweating and showering all over town.”

This cracks us up, and we fall onto my bed in giggles.

The red-haired girl is right: I have no problem finding her.

Indeed, she’s impossible to miss, planted on the sidewalk in front of Saks, holding a huge sign that reads, DOWN WITH PORNOGRAPHY on one side, and PORNOGRAPHY EXPLOITS WOMEN on the other. Behind her is a small table covered with graphic images from porno magazines. “Women, wake up! Say no to pornography!” she shouts.

She waves me over with her placard. “Do you want to sign a petition against pornography?”

I’m about to explain who I am, when a stranger cuts me off.

“Oh, puhleeze,” the woman mutters, stepping around us. “You’d think some people would have better things to do than worrying about other people’s sex lives.”

“Hey,” the red-haired girl shouts. “I heard that, you know? And I don’t exactly appreciate it.”

The woman spins around. “And?”

“What do you know about my sex life?” she demands. Her hair is cut short like a boy’s and, as promised, dyed a bright tomato red. She’s wearing construction boots and overalls, and underneath, a ragged purple T-shirt.

“Honey, it’s pretty clear you don’t have one,” the woman responds with a smirk.

“Is that so? Maybe I don’t have as much sex as you do, but you’re a victim of the system. You’ve been brainwashed by the patriarchy.”

“Sex sells,” the woman says.

“At the expense of women.”

“That’s ridiculous. Have you ever considered the fact that some women actually like sex?”

“And?” The girl glares as I take advantage of the momentary lull to quickly introduce myself.

“I’m Carrie Bradshaw. You called me. You have my bag?”

“ You’re Carrie Bradshaw?” She seems disappointed. “What are you doing with her?” She jerks her thumb in the woman’s direction.

“I don’t even know her. If I could just get my bag-”

“Take it,” the redheaded girl says, as if she’s had enough. She picks up her knapsack, removes my Carrie bag, and hands it to me.

“Thank you,” I say gratefully. “If there’s anything I can ever do-”

“Don’t worry about it,” she replies proudly. She picks up her placard and accosts an elderly woman in pearls. “Do you want to sign a petition against pornography?”

The old woman smiles. “No thank you, dear. After all, what’s the point?”

The red-haired girl looks momentarily crestfallen.

“Hey,” I say. “I’ll sign your petition.”

“Thanks,” she says, handing me a pen.

I scribble my name and skip off down Fifth Avenue. I dodge through the crowds, wondering what my mother would have thought about me being in New York. Maybe she’s watching over me, making sure the funny red-haired girl found my bag. My mother was a feminist, too. At the very least, she’d be proud I signed the petition.

“There you are!” L’il calls out. “I was afraid you were going to be late.”

“Nope,” I say, panting, as I join her on the sidewalk in front of The New School. The trek downtown was a lot farther than I expected, and my feet are killing me. But I saw all kinds of interesting things along the way: the skating rink at Rockefeller Center. The New York Public Library. Lord & Taylor. Something called the Toy Building. “I got my bag,” I say, holding it up.

“Carrie was robbed her very first hour in New York,” L’il crows to a cute guy with bright blue eyes and wavy black hair.

He shrugs. “That’s nothing. My car was broken into the second night I was here. They smashed the window and stole the radio.”

“You have a car?” I ask in surprise. Peggy told us no one had cars in New York. Everyone is supposed to walk or take the bus or ride the subway.

“Ryan’s from Massachusetts,” L’il says as if this explains it. “He’s in our class too.”

I hold out my hand. “Carrie Bradshaw.”

“Ryan McCann.” He’s got a goofy, sweet smile, but his eyes bore into me as if summing up the competition. “What do you think about our professor, Viktor Greene?”

“I think he’s extraordinary,” L’il jumps in. “He’s what I consider a serious artist.”

“He may be an artist, but he’s definitely a creep,” Ryan replies, goading her.

“You hardly know him,” L’il says, incensed.

“Wait a minute. You guys have met him?” I ask.

“Last week,” Ryan says casually. “We had our conferences. Didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know we were supposed to have a conference,” I falter. How did this happen? Am I already behind?

L’il gives Ryan a look. “Not everyone had a conference. It was only if you were going to be in New York early. It doesn’t matter.”

“Hey, you kids want to go to a party?”

We turn around. A guy with a Cheshire cat grin holds up some postcards. “It’s at The Puck Building. Wednesday night. Free admission if you get there before ten o’clock.”

“Thanks,” Ryan says eagerly as the guy hands us each a postcard and strolls away.

“Do you know him?” L’il asks.

“Never seen him before in my life. But that’s cool, isn’t it?” Ryan says. “Where else would some stranger walk up to you and invite you to a party?”

“Along with a thousand other strangers,” L’il adds.

“Only in New York, kids,” Ryan says.

We head inside as I examine the postcard. On the front is an image of a smiling stone cupid. Underneath are the words, LOVE. SEX. FASHION. I fold the postcard and stick it into my bag.

Chapter Four

Ryan wasn’t kidding. Viktor Greene is strange.

For one thing, he droops. It’s like someone dropped him out of the sky and he never quite got his sea legs here on earth. Then there’s his mustache. It’s thick and glossy across his upper lip, but curls forlornly around each side of his mouth like two sad smiles. He keeps stroking that mustache like it’s some kind of pet.

“Carrie Bradshaw?” he asks, consulting a list.

I raise my hand. “That’s me.”

“It is I ,” he corrects. “One of the things you’ll learn in this seminar is proper grammar. You’ll find it improves your manner of speaking as well.”

I redden. Five minutes into my first real writing class and I’ve made a bad impression.

Ryan catches my eye and winks as if to say, “I told you so.”

“Ah, and here’s L’il.” Viktor Greene nods as he gives his mustache a few more comforting pats. “Does everyone know Ms. Elizabeth Waters? She’s one of our most promising writers. I’m sure we’ll be hearing a lot from her.”

If Viktor Greene had said something like that about me, I’d be worried everyone in the class was going to hate me. But not L’il. She takes Viktor’s praise in stride, as if she’s used to being regaled for her talent.

For a moment, I’m jealous. I try to reassure myself that everyone in the class is talented. Otherwise they wouldn’t be here, right? Including myself. Maybe Viktor Greene just doesn’t know how talented I am-yet?

“Here’s how this seminar works.” Viktor Greene shuffles around as if he’s lost something and can’t remember what it is. “The theme for the summer is home and family. In the next eight weeks, you’ll write four short stories or a novella or six poems exploring these themes. Each week, I’ll choose three or four works to be read aloud. Then we’ll discuss them. Any questions?”

A hand shoots up belonging to a slim guy with glasses and a mane of blond hair. Despite his resemblance to a pelican, he nevertheless manages to give off the impression that he thinks he’s better than everyone else. “How long are the short stories supposed to be?”

Viktor Greene taps his mustache. “As long as it takes to tell the story.”

“So that could mean two pages?” demands a girl with an angular face and tawny eyes. A baseball cap is perched backward over her luxurious crop of dark hair and she’s wearing a pile of beaded necklaces slung around her neck.

“If you can tell a whole story in five hundred words, be my guest,” Viktor Greene says mournfully.

The girl nods, a triumphant expression on her beautiful face. “It’s just that my father is an artist. And he says-”

Viktor sighs. “We all know who your father is, Rainbow.”

Wait a minute . Rainbow? What kind of name is that? And who is this artist father of hers?

I sit back and fold my arms. The guy with the long nose and blond hair catches Rainbow’s eye and nods, edging his chair a little closer to hers, as if they’re already friends.

“I have a question.” Ryan raises his hand. “Can you guarantee that after taking this course, we’ll all become writers?”

This causes Viktor Greene to droop even more. I actually wonder if he’s going to disappear into the floor.

He frantically pats down his mustache with both hands. “Good question. And the answer is no. Chances are ninety-nine point nine percent of you won’t make it as writers at all.”

The class groans.

“If I’m not going to make it as a writer, I’ll have to demand my money back,” Ryan says jokingly.

Everyone laughs, except Viktor Greene. “If that’s the way you feel, you should contact the bursar’s office.”

He twirls the ends of his mustache between his fingers.

That mustache is going to drive me insane. I wonder if Viktor Greene is married and what his wife thinks of all his mustache stroking. Living with that mustache must be like having an extra person in the house. Does it have its own name and eat its own food as well?

And suddenly, I’m burning with passion. I don’t care what Viktor Greene says: I’m going to make it. I’m going to become a real writer if it kills me.

I look around the room at my fellow students. Now I’m the one judging the competition.

“All right,” I say, plopping onto L’il’s bed. “Who is Rainbow’s father?”

“Barry Jessen,” she says with a sigh.

“Who the hell is Barry Jessen? I know he’s an artist and all, but-”

“He’s not just any artist. He’s one of the most important artists in New York right now. He’s the leader of some new art movement. They live in abandoned buildings in SoHo-”

“Rainbow lives in an abandoned building?” I ask, perplexed. “Do they have running water? Heat? She doesn’t look like she’s homeless.”

“She’s not,” L’il says in exasperation. “They only used to be abandoned buildings. Garment and print factories. But then all these artists moved in and started fixing them up. And now they have parties in their lofts and take drugs and people buy their art and write about them in The New York Times and New York Magazine .”

“And Rainbow?”

“Well, her father is Barry Jessen. And her mother is Pican-”

“The model ?”

“That’s why she’s so beautiful and will get anything she wants. Which includes becoming a writer. Does that answer your question?”

“So she’s a million times cooler than us.”

“Than ‘we are,’” L’il corrects. “And, yes, she is. Her parents know a ton of people, and if Rainbow wants to get a book published, all she has to do is snap her fingers and her father will find someone to publish it for her. And then he’ll get a bunch of journalists to write about it and critics to give her good reviews.”

“Damn,” I say, impressed.

“Meanwhile, if the rest of us want to be successful, we have to do it the old-fashioned way. We have to write something great.”

“What a bore,” I say sarcastically.

L’il laughs while I pick at an imaginary thread. “And what about that guy with the blond hair and the attitude? He acts like he knows her.”

“Capote Duncan?” she says in surprise. “I’m sure he does. Capote’s the type who knows everyone.”

“Why?”

“Oh, he just is. He’s from the South,” she says, as if this explains it. “He’s kind of dreamy, isn’t he?”

“No. But he is kind of an asshole.”

“He’s older. He and Ryan are seniors in college. They’re friends. Apparently the two of them are quite the ladies’ men.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.” She pauses, and in a slightly formal tone of voice, adds, “If you don’t mind-”

“I know, I know,” I say, jumping off the bed. “We’re supposed to be writing.”

L’il doesn’t seem to share my overweening interest in other people. Perhaps she’s so confident in her own talents, she feels like she doesn’t need to. I, on the other hand, could easily spend the entire day engaged in gossip, which I prefer to call “character analysis.” Unfortunately, you can’t engage in character analysis by yourself. I go back into my cubbyhole, sit down at my desk, roll a piece of paper into my typewriter, and sit there.

Ten minutes later, I’m still sitting there, staring at the wall. There’s only one window in our area, and it’s in L’il’s room. Feeling like I’m suffocating, I get up, go into the living room, and look out the window there.

Peggy’s apartment is in the back of the building, facing the back of another nearly identical building on the next street. Maybe I could get a telescope and spy on the apartments across the way. I could write a story about the residents. Unfortunately, the denizens of that building appear to be as dull as we are. I spot the flickering blue screen of a television set, a woman washing the dishes, and a sleeping cat.

I sigh, feeling thwarted. There’s a whole world out there and I’m stuck in Peggy’s apartment. I’m missing everything. And now I only have fifty-nine days left.

I’ve got to make something happen.

I race to my cubby, grab Bernard’s number, and pick up the phone.

I hesitate, considering what I’m about to do, and put it down.

“L’il?” I call out.

“Yes?”

“Should I call Bernard Singer?”

L’il comes to the door. “What do you think?”

“What if he doesn’t remember me?”

“He gave you his number, didn’t he?”

“But what if he didn’t mean it? What if he was only being polite? What if-”

“Do you want to call him?” she asks.

“Yes.”

“Then do.” L’il is very decisive. It’s a quality I hope to develop in myself someday.

And before I can change my mind, I dial.

“Y-ello,” he says, after the third ring.

“Bernard?” I say, in a voice that’s way too high. “It’s Carrie Bradshaw.”

“Aha. Had a feeling it might be you.”

“You did?” I curl the phone cord around my finger.

“I’m a bit psychic.”

“Do you have visions?” I ask, not knowing what else to say.

“Feelings,” he murmurs sexily. “I’m very in touch with my feelings. What about you?”

“I guess I am too. I mean, I never seem to be able to get rid of them. My feelings.”

He laughs. “What are you doing right now?”

“Me?” I squeak. “Well, I’m just kind of sitting here trying to write-”

“Want to come over?” he asks suddenly.

I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it isn’t this. I suppose I had a vague yet hopeful idea that he would invite me to dinner. Take me out on a proper date. But asking me to come to his apartment? Yikes. He probably thinks I’m going to have sex with him.

I pause.

“Where are you?” he asks.

“On Forty-seventh Street?”

“You’re less than ten blocks away.”

“Okay,” I cautiously agree. As usual, my curiosity trumps my better judgment. A very bad trait, and one I hope to amend. Someday.

But maybe dating is different in New York. For all I know, inviting a strange girl to your apartment is just the way they do things around here. And if Bernard tries anything funny, I can always kick him.

On my way out, I run into Peggy coming in. She’s got her hands full trying to maneuver three old shopping bags onto the love seat. She looks me up and down and sighs. “Going out?”

I deliberate, wondering how much I need to tell her. But my excitement gets the better of me. “I’m going to see my friend. Bernard Singer?”

The name has its desired effect. Peggy inhales, nostrils flaring. The fact that I know Bernard Singer has to be killing her. He’s the most famous playwright in all of New York and she’s still a struggling actress. She’s probably dreamed of meeting him for years, and yet here I am, only three days in the city, and already I know him.

“Some people have quite the life, don’t they?” She grumbles as she goes to the refrigerator and extracts one of her many cans of Tab-which are also off-limits for L’il and me.

For a moment, I feel victorious, until I take in Peggy’s despondent expression. She jerks the ring from the top of the can and drinks thirstily, like the solutions to all her problems lie in that can of Tab. She drains it, absentmindedly rubbing the metal ring against her thumb.

“Peggy, I-”

“Damn!” She drops the can and sticks her thumb in her mouth, sucking the blood from the cut where the ring has sliced the skin. She closes her eyes as if holding back tears.

“Are you all right?” I ask quickly.

“Of course.” She looks up, furious that I’ve witnessed this moment of weakness. “You’re still here?”

She brushes past me on her way to her room. “Tonight’s my night off and I intend to make it an early one. So don’t be home late.”

She closes the door. For a second, I stand there, wondering what just happened. Maybe it’s not me Peggy hates. Maybe it’s her life .

“Okay,” I say to no one in particular.

Chapter Five

Bernard lives in Sutton Place. It’s only a few blocks away, but it might as well be in another city. Gone are the noise, the grime, and the vagrant types that populate the rest of Manhattan. Instead, there are buildings constructed of soft-colored stone with turrets and green copper mansards. Uniformed doormen wearing white gloves stand under quiet awnings; a limousine idles at the curb. I pause, breathing in the atmosphere of luxury as a nanny passes me wheeling a baby carriage, behind which prances a small fluffy dog.

Bernard must be rich.

Rich, famous, and attractive. What am I getting myself into?

I scan the street, looking for number 52. It’s on the east side facing the river. Swanky, I think, hurrying toward the building. I step inside, where I’m immediately halted by a low growl from a stern-faced doorman. “Can I help you?”

“Going to see a friend,” I mutter, attempting to snake my way around him. And that’s when I make my first mistake: never, ever try to get around a doorman in a white-glove building.

“You can’t just walk in here.” He holds up one gloved mitt, as if the mere sight of his hand is enough to ward off the unwashed.

Unfortunately, something about that glove sets me off. There’s nothing I hate more than some old guy telling me what to do. “How did you expect me to enter? By horseback?”

“Miss!” he exclaims, taking a step back in displeasure. “Please state your business. And if you cannot state your business, I suggest you take your business elsewhere.”

Aha. He thinks I’m some kind of hooker. He must be half blind. I’m hardly even wearing makeup. “I’m here to see Bernard,” I say tightly.

“Bernard who?” he demands, refusing to budge.

“Bernard Singer?”

“ Mr. Singer?”

How much longer can this go on? We stare at each other in a stalemate. He must know he’s beat. After all, he can’t actually deny that Bernard lives here-or can he?

“I’ll ring Mr. Singer,” he finally concedes.

He makes a great show of strolling across the marble lobby to a desk containing a huge spray of flowers, a notebook, and a telephone. He presses a few buttons and, while he waits for Bernard to answer, rubs his jaw in aggravation. “Mr. Singer?” he says, into the receiver. “There’s a”-he glares at me-“young, er, person downstairs asking to see you.” His expression changes to one of disappointment as he glances my way. “Yes, thank you, sir. I’ll send her right up.”

And just when I think I’ve made it past that guard dog of a doorman, I’m confronted by yet another man in a uniform, who operates the elevator. Being the twentieth century and all, you’d think most people would have figured out how to press the button themselves, but apparently the occupants of Sutton Place are slightly feeble when it comes to technology.

“Can I help you?” he asks.

Not again. “Bernard Singer,” I say. As he presses the button for the ninth floor, he clears his throat in disapproval. But at least he’s not peppering me with questions.

The elevator doors fold open to reveal a small hallway, another desk, another spray of flowers, and patterned wallpaper. There are two doors at either end of the corridor, and mercifully, Bernard is standing in one of them.

So this is the lair of a wunderkind, I think, taking a look around the apartment. It’s surprising, all right. Not because of what’s in it, but because of what isn’t.

The living room, with its mullioned windows, cozy fireplace, and stately bookshelves, calls out for well-loved, well-worn furniture, but contains a single beanbag chair. Ditto for the dining room, which is populated by a Ping-Pong table and a couple of folding chairs. Then there’s the bedroom: a king-size bed, a king-size television. On the bed itself, a lone sleeping bag.

“I love to watch TV in bed,” Bernard says. “I think it’s sexy, don’t you?”

I’m about to give him a don’t-even-try-it look, when I notice his expression. He seems sad.

“Did you just move in?” I ask brightly, searching for an explanation.

“Someone just moved out,” he replies.

“Who?”

“My wife.”

“You’re married?” I shriek. Of all the possibilities, I never considered the one in which he might be hitched. What kind of married man invites a girl he just met to his apartment?

“My ex -wife,” he corrects. “I keep forgetting we’re not married. We got divorced a month ago and I’m still not used to it.”

“So you were married?”

“For six years. But we were together for two before that.”

Eight years? My eyes narrow as I do a quick calculation. If Bernard was in a relationship for that long, it means he has to be at least thirty. Or thirty-one. Or even… thirty-five?

When was his first play released? I remember reading about it, so I had to be at least ten. To cover up my ruminations, I quickly ask, “How was it?”

“How was what?”

“Your marriage.”

“Well,” he laughs. “Not so good. Considering we’re divorced now.”

It takes me a second to emotionally recalibrate. During the walk over, the far-off reaches of my imagination were constructing visions of Bernard and me together, but nowhere in that picture was there an ex-wife. I always figured my one true love would have only one true love, too-me. The fact of Bernard’s previous marriage throws a real monkey wrench into my fantasy.

“And my wife took all the furniture. What about you?” he asks. “Have you ever been married?”

I look at him in astonishment. I’m barely old enough to drink, I nearly say. Instead, I shake my head as if I, too, have been disappointed in love.

“I guess we’re both a couple of sad sacks,” he says. I go along with his mood. I’m finding him particularly attractive at the moment and I’m hoping he’ll put his arms around me and kiss me. I’m longing to be pressed up against that lean chest. I sit in the beanbag chair, instead.

“Why’d she take the furniture?” I ask.

“My wife?”

“I thought you were divorced,” I say, trying to keep him on point.

“She’s mad at me.”

“Can’t you make her give it back?”

“I don’t think so. No.”

“Why not?”

“She stubborn. Oh Lord. She’s as stubborn as a mule on race day. Always has been. That’s how she got so far.”

“Hmmm.” I roll around seductively on the beanbag.

My actions have their desired effect, that being why should he think about his ex-wife when he has a lovely young woman-me-to concentrate on instead? Sure enough, in the next second, he asks, “How about you? Are you hungry?”

“I’m always hungry.”

“There’s a little French place around the corner. We could go there.”

“Terrific,” I say, leaping to my feet, despite the fact that the word “French” reminds me of the restaurant I used to go to in Hartford with my old boyfriend, Sebastian, who dumped me for my best friend, Lali.

“You like French food?” he asks.

“Love it,” I reply. Sebastian and Lali were a long time ago. And besides, I’m with Bernard Singer now, not some mixed-up high school boy.

The “little French place around the corner” turns out to be several blocks away. And it’s not exactly “little.” It’s La Grenouille. Which is so famous, even I’ve heard of it.

Bernard ducks his head in embarrassment as the maître d’ greets him by name. “Bonsoir, Monsieur Singer. We have your usual table.”

I look at Bernard curiously. If he comes here all the time, why didn’t he say he was a regular?

The maître d’ picks up two menus and with an elegant tip of his head, leads us to a charming table by the window.

Then Mr. Monkey-suit pulls out my chair, unfolds my napkin, and places it on my lap. He rearranges my wine glasses, picks up a fork, inspects it, and, the fork having passed muster, replaces it next to my plate. Honestly, all the attention is disorienting. When the maître d’ finally retreats, I look to Bernard for help.

He’s studying the menu. “I don’t speak French. Do you?” he asks.

“Un peu.”

“Really?”

“Vraiment.”

“You must have gone to a very fancy school. The only foreign language I learned was fisticuffs.”

“Ha.”

“I was pretty good at it too,” he says, making jabbing motions in the air. “Had to be. I was this runt of a kid and everyone’s favorite punching bag.”

“But you’re so tall,” I point out.

“I didn’t grow until I was eighteen. What about you?”

“I stopped growing when I was six.”

“Hahaha. You’re funny.”

And just as the conversation is about to take off, the maître d’ returns with a bottle of white wine. “Your Pouilly-Fuissé, Monsieur Singer.”

“Oh, thanks,” Bernard says, looking sheepish again. This is very odd. The apartment, the restaurant, the wine-surely Bernard is wealthy. Why, then, does he insist on acting like he’s not? Or rather, that it’s all a burden which he must somehow endure?

The wine pouring is yet another ritual. When it’s over, I breathe a sigh of relief.

“It’s annoying, isn’t it?” Bernard says, echoing my thoughts.

“Why do you let them do it, then?”

“It makes them happy. If I didn’t sniff the cork, they’d be very disappointed.”

“You might even lose your special table.”

“I’ve been trying to sit at that table”-he points to an empty table in the back of the room-“for years. But they won’t let me. It’s Siberia,” he adds, in a dramatic whisper.

“Is it colder there?”

“Freezing.”

“And what about this table?”

“Right on the equator.” He pauses. “And you-you’re on the equator too.” He reaches out and takes my hand. “I like your gumption,” he says.

The chef pulls out all the stops for Bernard. After a stomach-numbing meal of seven courses-including soup, a soufflé, two desserts, and some delicious after-dinner wine that tastes like ambrosia-I look at my watch and discover it’s just after midnight. “I ought to go.”

“Why? Will you turn into a pumpkin?”

“Something like that,” I say, thinking about Peggy.

His next move hangs in the air, spinning like a lazy disco ball. “I suppose I should walk you home,” he says finally.

“And ruin all this?” I laugh.

“I haven’t done ‘this’ for a while. What about you?”

“Oh, I’m an expert,” I tease.

We walk back to my building, swinging our hands between us.

“Good night, pussycat,” he says, stopping in front of my door. We stand awkwardly, until he makes his move. He tilts up my chin and leans in for a kiss. It’s gentle and civilized at first, then more and more urgent, ending just before some imaginary line of lust is crossed.

The kiss leaves me swooning. Bernard looks at me longingly, but settles for a gentlemanly peck on the cheek and a squeeze of my hand. “I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

“Okay.” I can barely breathe.

I watch him stroll off into the night. At the corner, he turns and waves. When he’s disappeared completely, I slip inside.

I creep down the hallway to the apartment, brushing my fingers against the pea-green wall for support, wondering why anyone would paint a hallway such an ugly color. At the door, I carefully insert my key into the first lock. The bolt drops with an alarming ping.

I hold my breath, wondering if Peggy has heard the sound, and if so, what she’ll do. But when I don’t hear anything for several seconds, I try the next lock.

It, too, turns easily, which means I should now be able to enter the apartment. I twist the knob and try to ease open the door, but it won’t move.

Huh? Maybe Peggy didn’t lock the door after all and I’ve ended up locking it instead. It doesn’t seem like something Peggy would do, but I try turning the locks in the opposite direction just to make sure.

No luck. The door moves precisely one-sixteenth of an inch, and then refuses to budge, as if someone has shoved a heavy piece of furniture in front of it.

The dead bolt, I think, with rising panic. It’s a metal bar that runs across the door and can only be opened and closed from inside the apartment. We’re supposed to use it strictly in an emergency, like a nuclear war or a blackout or a zombie attack. But apparently Peggy has decided to break her own stupid rule and has locked it to teach me a lesson.

Crap. I have to either wake her up or sleep in the hallway.

I scratch on the door. “L’il?” I hiss, hoping L’il is awake and will hear me. “L’il?”

Nothing.

I slump to the floor, resting my back against the wall. Does Peggy really hate me that much? And why? What have I ever done to her?

Another half hour passes, and I give up. I curl into a ball with my Carrie bag nestled between my arms, and try to get some sleep.

And then I guess I do fall asleep, because the next thing I hear is L’il whispering, “Carrie? Are you okay?”

I open my eyes, wondering where the hell I am, and what the hell I’m doing in the hallway.

And then I remember: Peggy and her damn dead bolt.

L’il puts her finger to her lips and motions for me to come inside.

“Thanks,” I mouth. She nods as we quietly shut the door. I pause, listening for sounds of Peggy, but there’s only silence.

I turn the knob on the bolt and lock us inside.

Chapter Six

The next morning, triumphant, perhaps, in her perceived victory, Peggy sleeps until nine. This allows the Prisoners of Second Avenue a much-needed extra hour of shut-eye.

But once Peggy’s up, she’s up. And while early-morning silence has never been her forte, this morning she appears to be in an especially good mood.

She’s singing show tunes.

I turn over on my cot, and rap quietly on the plywood. L’il raps back, indicating she’s awake and has heard the singing as well.

I slide under the sheet and pull the covers up to my nose. Maybe if I lie flat on my bed and put the pillow over my head, Peggy won’t notice me. It was a trick my sisters and I perfected when we were kids. But I’m quite a bit bigger now, and Peggy, with her beady crow eyes, is sure to notice the lumps. Perhaps I could hide under my cot?

This, I decide, is beyond ridiculous.

I won’t have it. I’m going to confront Peggy. And full of brio, I hop out of bed and put my ear to the door.

The shower is running, and above that, I can hear Peggy’s particularly grating rendition of “I Feel Pretty” from West Side Story .

I wait, my hand on the doorknob.

Finally, the water stops. I imagine Peggy toweling herself off and applying creams to her body. She carries her toiletries to and from the bathroom in a plastic shower basket she keeps in her room. It’s yet another deliberate reminder that no one is to use her precious possessions on the sly.

When I hear the bathroom door open, I step out into the living room. “Good morning, Peggy.”

Her hair is wrapped in a pink towel, and she’s wearing a worn chenille robe and fluffy slippers in the shape of bears. At the sound of my voice, she throws up her arms, nearly dropping her basket of toiletries. “You almost scared me to death.”

“Sorry,” I say. “If you’re finished in the bathroom-”

Perhaps Peggy’s not such a bad actress after all, because she immediately recovers. “I need it back in a minute. I have to dry my hair.”

“No problem.” We stand there, wondering who’s going to bring up the locking-out issue first. I say nothing and neither does Peggy. Then she gives me a shrewd, vicious smile and goes into her room.

She’s not going to mention it.

On the other hand, she doesn’t have to. She made her point.

I trip into the bathroom. If she isn’t going to say anything to me, I’m certainly not going to say anything to her.

When I exit, Peggy is standing there with a blow-dryer in her hand. “Excuse me,” I say as I wriggle past her.

She goes back into the bathroom and shuts the door.

While the apartment is filled with the buzz of the dryer, I take the opportunity to check in on L’il. She’s so tiny, she looks like a doll someone laid under the comforter, her round face as pale as porcelain.

“She’s drying her hair,” I report.

“You should sneak in there and drop her blow-dryer into the sink.”

I tilt my head. The whirring has suddenly ceased, and I skittle back to my cell. I quickly plop myself in the chair in front of my mother’s old Royal typewriter.

A few seconds later, Peggy’s behind me. I just love the way she insists we respect her privacy, yet doesn’t believe we deserve the same, barging into our rooms whenever she feels like it.

She’s slurping down her ubiquitous can of Tab. It must be like mother’s milk to her-good for any occasion, including breakfast.

“I’ve got an audition this afternoon, so I’ll need quiet in the apartment while I’m practicing.” She eyes my typewriter doubtfully. “I hope you’re not planning on using that noisy thing. You need to get an electric typewriter. Like everyone else.”

“I’d love to, but I can’t exactly afford one right now,” I reply, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my tone.

“That’s not my problem, is it?” she says with more saccharine than an entire six-pack of diet soda.

“It’s that little itch.” Pause. “No. It’s that little itch.

“Damn. It’s that little itch .”

Yes, it’s true. Peggy is auditioning for a hemorrhoid commercial.

“What did you expect?” L’il mouths. “Breck?” She checks her appearance in a hand mirror, carefully dabbing her cheeks with a pot of blush.

“Where are you going?” I hiss in outrage, as if I can’t believe she’s going to abandon me to Peggy and her little itch.

“Out,” she says, mysteriously.

“But where?” And then, feeling like Oliver Twist asking for more grub, I say, “Can I come?”

L’il is suddenly flustered. “You can’t. I have to-”

“What?”

“See someone,” she says firmly.

“Who?”

“A friend of my mother’s. She’s very old. She’s in the hospital. She can’t have visitors.”

“How come she can see you?”

L’il blushes, holding up the mirror as if to block my inquiries. “I’m like family,” she says, fiddling with her lashes. “What are you doing today?”

“Haven’t decided,” I grumble, eyeing her suspiciously. “Don’t you want to hear about my evening with Bernard?”

“Of course. How was it?”

“Incredibly interesting. His ex-wife took all his furniture. Then we went to La Grenouille.”

“That’s nice.” L’il is annoyingly distracted this morning. I wonder if it’s due to Peggy locking me out-or something else entirely. I’m sure she’s lying about her mother’s sick friend, though. Who puts on blush and mascara to go to a hospital?

But then I don’t care, because I get an idea.

I dash into my cubbyhole and come back with my Carrie bag. I rifle through it and pull out a piece of paper. “I’m going to see Samantha Jones.”

“Who’s that?” L’il murmurs.

“The woman who let me stay at her apartment?” I ask, trying to jog her memory. “Donna LaDonna’s cousin? She lent me twenty dollars. I’m going to pay her back.” This, of course, is merely an excuse. Both to get out of the apartment and to talk to Samantha about Bernard.

“Good idea.” L’il puts down the mirror and smiles, as if she hasn’t heard a word I’ve said.

I open my bag to replace the paper, and find the folded-up invitation to the party at The Puck Building, which I wave in L’il’s face. “That party is tonight. We should go.” And maybe, if Bernard calls, he could come with us.

L’il looks skeptical. “I’m sure there’s a party every night in New York.”

“I’m sure there is,” I counter. “And I plan to go to every one.”

Samantha’s steel and glass office building is a forbidding bastion of serious business. The lobby is sharply air-conditioned, with all manner of people rushing about, harassed and irritated. I find the name of Samantha’s company-Slovey, Dinall Advertising-and board an elevator for the twenty-sixth floor.

The elevator ride actually makes me a little queasy. I’ve never ridden an elevator so high up. What if something happens and we crash to the ground?

But no one else seems the least concerned. Everyone has their eyes turned to the numbers that tick off the floors, their faces intentionally blank, deliberately ignoring the fact that there are at least half a dozen people in the space of a large closet. This must be elevator protocol, and I attempt to copy their demeanor.

But I don’t quite get it right, because I actually manage to catch the eye of a middle-aged woman holding a sheaf of folders in front of her chest. I smile, and she quickly looks away.

Then it occurs to me that popping in unexpectedly on Samantha in her place of work might not be the best idea. Nevertheless, when the elevator opens on her floor, I get out and bump around in the softly carpeted hallway until I find two enormous doors with SLOVEY, DINALL ADVERTISING INCORPORATED etched into the glass. On the other side is a large desk behind which sits a small woman with black hair that rises in sharp spikes. She takes in my appearance, and after a beat, says, “Can I help you,” in a doubtful, grating tone that sounds like her nose is speaking instead of her mouth.

This is very disconcerting, and in a hesitant voice intended to convey the fact that I hope I’m not bothering her, I say, “Samantha Jones? I just want to-”

I’m about to say I want to leave the twenty dollars for her in an envelope, but the woman waves me to a seat and picks up the phone. “Someone’s here for Samantha,” she whines into the receiver. Then she asks for my name and nods. “Her assistant will be out to get you,” she says wearily. She picks up a paperback book and starts reading.

The reception area is decorated with posters of advertisements, some of which appear to go back to the 1950s. I’m kind of surprised that Samantha Jones has her own assistant. She doesn’t look old enough to be anyone’s boss, but I guess Donna LaDonna was right when she said her cousin was a “big deal in advertising.”

In a few minutes, a young woman appears, wearing a navy suit, a light blue shirt with two straps tied around her neck in a loose bow, and blue running shoes.

“Follow me,” she commands. I jump up and trot behind her, through a maze of cubicles, ringing telephones, and the sound of a man shouting.

“Seems like everyone around here is pretty cranky,” I wisecrack.

“That’s because we are,” she snaps, coming to a halt by the open door of a small office. “Except for Samantha,” she adds. “She’s always in a good mood.”

Samantha looks up and waves at the chair in front of her. She’s seated behind a white Formica table, wearing an outfit that’s nearly identical to her assistant’s, with the exception of her shoulder pads, which are much wider. Perhaps the wider your shoulder pads, the more important you are. Her head is cocked against an enormous phone cradle. “Yes, of course, Glenn,” she says, making a yakking motion with her hand. “The Century Club is perfect. But I don’t see why we have to have flower arrangements in the shape of baseballs… Well, I know it’s what Charlie wants, but I’ve always thought the wedding was supposed to be the bride’s day… Yes, of course… I’m sorry, Glenn, but I have a meeting. I really have to go,” she continues, with mounting frustration. “I’ll call you later. I promise.” And with a roll of her eyes, she firmly replaces the receiver, looks up, and tosses her head.

“Charlie’s mother,” she explains. “We’ve been engaged for about two minutes and already she’s driving me crazy. If I ever get married again, I’m going to skip the engagement completely and go right to City Hall. The minute you get engaged, you become public property.”

“But then you wouldn’t have the ring,” I say awkwardly, suddenly intimidated by Samantha, her office, and her glamorous life.

“I suppose that’s true,” she concedes. “Now if I could only find someone to sublet my apartment-”

“Aren’t you moving in with Charlie?”

“My God. You really are a sparrow. When you have an apartment like mine, rent-controlled and only two hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, you don’t ever give it up.”

“Why not?”

“Because real estate is impossible in this town. And I might need it back someday. If things don’t work out with Charlie. I’m not saying they won’t , but you never know with men in New York. They’re spoiled. They’re like kids in a candy store. If you have a good deal-well, naturally, you want to hang on to it.”

“Like Charlie?” I ask, wondering if he’s a good deal as well.

She smiles. “You catch on quick, Sparrow. As a matter of fact, Charlie is a good deal. Even if he is a baseball freak. He wanted to be a player himself, but of course, his father wouldn’t let him.”

I nod encouragingly. Samantha seems to be in a mood to talk, and I’m like a sponge, ready to absorb anything she says. “His father?”

“Alan Tier.”

When I look at her blankly, she adds, “The Tiers? The mega real estate family?” She shakes her head as if I’m hopeless. “Charlie is the oldest son. His father expects him to take over the business.”

“I see.”

“And it’s about time. You know how it is with men,” she says, as if I, too, am some kind of guy expert. “If a man doesn’t ask you to marry him-or at least live with him-after two years, he never will. It means he’s only interested in having a good time.” She folds her arms and puts her feet on the desk. “I’m as interested in having a good time as any man, but the difference between me and Charlie is that my clock is ticking. And his isn’t.”

Clocks? Ticking? I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I keep mum, nodding my head as if I understand.

“He may not have a timetable, but I do.” She holds up her hand and ticks off the moments on her fingers. “Married by twenty-five. Corner office by thirty. And somewhere in there- children . So when that bachelor story came out, I decided it was time to do something about Charlie. Speed things along.”

She pushes aside some papers on her desk to retrieve a battered copy of New York Magazine .

“Here.” She holds it out. The headline reads, NEW YORK’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELORS, above a photograph of several men standing on bleachers like a sports team in a high school yearbook. “That’s Charlie,” she says, pointing to a man whose face is partially hidden by a baseball cap. “I told him not to wear that stupid cap, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Do people still care about this stuff?” I ask. “I mean, aren’t debutantes and eligible bachelors sort of over?”

Samantha laughs. “You really are a rube, kiddo. If only it didn’t matter. But it does.”

“All right-”

“So I broke up with him.”

I smile knowingly. “But if you wanted to be with him-”

“It’s all about getting the guy to realize he wants to be with you .” She swings her feet off the desk and comes around to the side. I sit up, aware that I’m about to receive a valuable lesson in man management.

“When it comes to men,” she begins, “it’s all about their egos. So when I broke up with Charlie, he was furious. Couldn’t believe I’d leave him. Giving him no choice but to come crawling after me. Naturally, I resisted. ‘Charlie,’ I said. ‘You know how crazy I am about you, but if I don’t respect myself, who will? If you really care about me-I mean me as a person and not just as a lover-then you’re going to have to prove it. You’re going to have to make a commitment .’”

“And did he?” I ask, on the edge of my seat.

“Well, obviously,” she says, waving her ringed finger. “And it didn’t hurt that the Yankees are on strike.”

“The Yankees?”

“Like I said, he’s obsessed. You don’t know how many baseball games I’ve had to sit through in the last two years. I’m more of a football girl, but I kept telling myself that someday, it’d be worth it. And it was. With no baseball, Charlie didn’t have anything to distract him. And voilà,” she says, indicating her hand.

I take the opportunity to mention Bernard. “Did you know Bernard Singer was married?”

“Of course. He was married to Margie Shephard. The actress. Why? Did you see him?”

“Last night,” I say, blushing.

“And?”

“We kissed.”

“That’s it?” She sounds disappointed.

I squirm in my chair. “I only just met him.”

“Bernard’s a bit of a mess right now. Which is not surprising. Margie walked all over him. Cheated on him with one of the actors in his play.”

“You’re kidding,” I say, aghast.

Samantha shrugs. “It was in all the papers so it’s hardly a secret. Not very nice for Bernard, but I always say there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Besides, New York is a small town. Smaller than small, if you really think about it.”

I nod carefully. Our interview seems to be over. “I wanted to return the twenty dollars you gave me,” I say quickly, digging around in my pocket. I pull out a twenty-dollar bill and hand it to her.

She takes the bill and smiles. And then she laughs. I suddenly wish I could laugh like that-knowing and tinkling at the same time.

“I’m surprised,” she says. “I wasn’t expecting to see you, or my twenty dollars, ever again.”

“And I wanted to thank you. For lending me the money. And for taking me to the party. And for introducing me to Bernard. If there’s anything I can do-”

“Not a thing,” she says, rising to her feet.

She walks me to the door and holds out her hand. “Good luck. And if you need to borrow another twenty sometime-well, you know where to find me.”

“Are you sure nobody called?” I ask L’il for the twentieth time.

“I’ve been here since two. The phone didn’t ring once.”

“He might have called. While you were visiting your mother’s friend. In the hospital.”

“Peggy was home then,” L’il points out.

“But maybe he did call and Peggy didn’t tell me. On purpose.”

L’il gives her hair a firm brush. “Why would Peggy do that?”

“Because she hates me?” I ask, rubbing my lips with gloss.

“You only saw him last night,” L’il says. “Guys never call the next day. They like to keep you guessing.”

“I don’t like to be kept guessing. And he said he would call-” I break off as the phone rings. “It’s him!” I yelp. “Can you get it?”

“Why?” L’il grumbles.

“Because I don’t want to seem too eager. I don’t want him to think I’ve been sitting by the phone all day.”

“Even though you have?” But she picks up the phone anyway. I wait in anticipation as she nods and holds out the receiver. “It’s your father.”

Of course. His timing couldn’t be worse. I called him yesterday and left a message with Missy, but he didn’t call back. What if Bernard tries to call while I’m talking to my father and it’s busy? “Hi, Dad,” I sigh.

“Hi, Dad? Is that how you greet your father? Whom you haven’t called once since you got to New York?”

“I did call you, Dad.” My father, I note, sounds slightly strange. Not only is he in a really good mood, he doesn’t seem to remember that I tried to reach him. Which is fine by me. So many things have happened since I’ve arrived in New York-not all of which my father would consider good-that I’ve been dreading this conversation. Unnecessarily, it seems.

“I’ve been really busy,” I say.

“I’m sure you have.”

“But everything’s great.”

“Glad to hear it,” he says. “Now that I know you’re still alive, I can rest easy.” And with a quick good-bye, he hangs up.

This really is odd. My father has always been distracted, but he’s never been this enthusiastic and removed. I tell myself it’s only because my father, like most men, hates talking on the phone.

“Are you ready?” L’il demands. “You’re the one who wanted to go to this party. And we can’t get home too late. I don’t want Peggy locking both of us out this time.”

“I’m ready,” I sigh. I grab my Carrie bag, and with one last, longing look at the phone, follow her out.

A few minutes later, we’re strolling down Second Avenue in a flurry of giggles as we do our best Peggy imitations.

“I’m so glad I got you as a roommate,” L’il says, taking my arm.

There’s a line in front of the entrance to the Puck Building, but by now we’ve realized that in New York, there’s a line for everything. We’ve already passed three lines on Second Avenue: two in front of movie theaters, and one for a cheese shop. Neither L’il nor I could understand why so many people felt they needed cheese at nine p.m., but chalked it up to yet another fascinating mystery about Manhattan.

We get through the line pretty quick, though, and find ourselves in an enormous room filled with what appears to be every variety of young person. There are rocker types in leather and punk kids with piercings and crazy-colored hair. Tracksuits and heavy gold chains and shiny gold watches. A glittering disco ball spins from the ceiling, but the music is something I’ve never heard, discordant and haunting and insistent, the kind of music that demands you dance. “Let’s get a drink,” I shout to L’il. We make our way to the side, where I’ve spotted a makeshift bar set up on a long plywood table.

“Hey!” a voice exclaims. It’s the arrogant blond guy from our class. Capote Duncan. He has his arm around a tall, painfully thin girl with cheekbones like icebergs. Who must be a model, I think, in annoyance, realizing that maybe L’il was right about Capote’s ability to get girls.

“I was just saying to Sandy here,” he says, in a slight Southern accent, indicating the startled girl next to him, “that this party is like something out of Swann’s Way .”

“Actually, I was thinking Henry James,” L’il shouts back.

“Who’s Henry James?” the girl named Sandy asks. “Is he here?”

Capote smiles as if the girl has said something charming and tightens his grip around her shoulders. “No, but he could be if you wanted.”

Now I know I was right. Capote is an asshole. And since no one is paying attention to me anyway, I figure I’ll get a drink on my own and catch up with L’il later.

I turn away, and that’s when I spot her. The red-haired girl from Saks. The girl who found my Carrie bag.

“Hi!” I say, frantically waving my arm as if I’ve discovered an old friend.

“Hi what?” she asks, put out, taking a sip of beer.

“It’s me, remember? Carrie Bradshaw. You found my bag.” I hold the bag up to her face to remind her.

“Oh, right,” she says, unimpressed.

She doesn’t seem inclined to continue the conversation, but for some reason, I do. I suddenly have a desire to placate her. To make her like me.

“Why do you do that, anyway?” I ask. “That protesting thing?”

She looks at me arrogantly, as if she can hardly be bothered to answer the question. “Because it’s important?”

“Oh.”

“And I work at the battered women’s center. You should volunteer sometime. It’ll shake you out of your secure little world,” she says loudly over the music.

“But… doesn’t it make you think all men are bad?”

“No. Because I know all men are bad.”

I have no idea why I’m even having this conversation. But I can’t seem to let it-or her-go. “What about being in love? I mean, how can you have a boyfriend or husband knowing this stuff?”

“Good question.” She takes another sip of her beer and looks around the room, glaring.

“I meant what I said,” I shout, trying to regain her attention. “About thanking you. Could I buy you a cup of coffee or something? I want to hear more about… what you do.”

“Really?” she asks, dubious.

I nod enthusiastically.

“Okay,” she says, giving in. “I guess you could call me.”

“What’s your name?”

She hesitates. “Miranda Hobbes. H-o-b-b-e-s. You can get my number from information.”

And as she walks away, I nod, making a dialing motion with my finger.

Chapter Seven

“It’s Chinese silk. From the 1930s.”

I finger the blue material lovingly and turn it over. There’s a gold dragon stitched on the back. The robe is probably way more than I can afford, but I try it on anyway. The sleeves hang at my sides like folded wings. I could really fly in this.

“That looks good on you,” the salesman adds. Although “salesman” is probably not the right word for a guy in a porkpie hat, plaid pants, and a black Ramones T-shirt. “Purveyor” might be more appropriate. Or “dealer.”

I’m in a vintage clothing store called My Old Lady. The name of which turns out to be startlingly appropriate.

“Where do you get this stuff?” I ask, reluctant to remove the robe but too scared to ask the price.

The owner shrugs. “People bring things in. Mostly from their old relatives who have died. One man’s trash is another one’s treasure.”

“Or one woman’s,” I correct him. I screw up my courage. “How much is this, anyway?”

“For you? Five dollars.”

“Oh.” I slide my arms out of the sleeves.

He wags his head back and forth, considering. “What can you pay?”

“Three dollars?”

“Three fifty,” he says. “That old thing’s been sitting around for months. I need to get rid of it.”

“Done!” I exclaim.

I exit the store still wearing the robe, and head back up to Peggy’s.

This morning, when I tried to face the typewriter, I once again drew a blank. Family. I thought I could write about my own, but they suddenly felt as foreign to me as French people. French people made me think of La Grenouille, and that made me think about Bernard. And how he still hasn’t called. I considered calling him, but told myself not to be weak. Another hour passed, in which I clipped my toenails, braided and unbraided my hair, and scanned my face for blackheads.

“What are you doing?” L’il demanded.

“I’ve got writer’s block.”

“There’s no such thing as writer’s block,” she proclaimed. “If you can’t write it’s because you don’t have anything to say. Or you’re avoiding something.”

“Hmph,” I said, squeezing my skin, wondering if maybe I just wasn’t a writer after all.

“Don’t do that,” L’il yelped. “You’ll only make it worse. Why don’t you go for a walk or something?”

So I did. And I knew exactly where to go. Down to Samantha’s neighborhood, where I’d spotted the vintage store on Seventh Avenue.

I catch my reflection in a plate-glass window and stop to admire the robe. I hope it will bring me good luck and I’ll be able to write. I’m getting nervous. I don’t want to end up in Viktor’s 99.9 percent of failed students.

“My Lord!” L’il exclaims. “You look like something the cat dragged in.”

“I feel like something the cat dragged in. But look what I got.” I spin around to show off my new purchase.

L’il appears doubtful, and I realize how flaky I must seem, shopping instead of writing. Why do I keep evading my work? Is it because I’m afraid of being confronted by my lack of abilities?

I collapse onto the love seat and gently ease off my sandals. “It was about fifty blocks away and my feet are killing me. But it was worth it,” I add, trying to convince myself.

“I finished my poem,” L’il says casually.

I smile, biting back envy. Am I the only one who has to struggle? L’il doesn’t seem to labor at all. But that’s probably because she’s way more talented.

“And I got some Chinese food, too,” she says. “Moo shu pork. There’s plenty left over if you want some.”

“Oh, L’il. I don’t want to eat your food.”

“No need to stand on ceremony.” She shrugs. “Besides, you’ve got to eat. How can you work if you’re hungry?”

She’s right. And it will give me a few more minutes to put off writing.

L’il sits on my bed as I polish off the moo shu pork straight from the carton.

“Don’t you ever get scared?” I ask.

“Of what?” she says.

“Of not being good enough.”

“You mean at writing?” L’il asks.

I nod. “What if I’m the only one who thinks I can do it and no one else does? What if I’m completely fooling myself-”

“Oh, Carrie.” She smiles. “Don’t you know that every writer feels that way? Fear is part of the job.”

She picks up her towel to take a long bath, and while she’s in the bathroom, I manage to eke out one page, and then two. I type in a title, “Home.” I cross it out and write, “My New Home.” This somehow reminds me of Samantha Jones. I picture her in her four-poster bed, wearing fancy lingerie and eating chocolates, which, for some strange reason, is how I imagine she spends her weekends.

I push these thoughts out of my head and try to focus, but now the throbbing in my feet is overwhelming and I can’t concentrate for the pain.

“L’il?” I knock on the bathroom door. “Do you have any aspirin?”

“I don’t think so,” she calls out.

“Damn.” Peggy must have aspirin somewhere. “Can I come in?” I ask. L’il is in the shallow tub, under a soft pile of bubbles. I check the medicine cabinet. Nothing. I look around, my gaze resting on the closed door to Peggy’s bedroom.

Don’t do it, I think, remembering Peggy’s one final rule. We’re not allowed into her room. Ever. Under any circumstances. Her bedroom is strictly verboten.

I carefully open the door.

“What are you doing?” L’il shrieks, jumping out of the tub and grabbing her towel. Remnants of bubbles cling to her shoulders.

I put my finger to my lips to shush her. “I’m only looking for aspirin. Peggy’s so cheap, she probably keeps the aspirin hidden in her room.”

“What if she realizes some of her aspirin is missing?”

“Even Peggy can’t be that crazy.” I push the door wider. “You’d have to be really wacky to count your aspirin. Besides,” I hiss, “aren’t you dying to know what her room’s like?”

The blinds are drawn, so it takes a second for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I squeal in horror.

Peggy’s bed is covered with bears. Not real bears, of course, but what appears to be every variation on the stuffed animal kind. There are big bears and small bears, bears holding tennis rackets and bears wearing aprons. Bears with pink fur and bears with earmuffs. There’s even a bear that appears to be constructed entirely of clothespins.

“That’s her big secret?” L’il asks, disappointed. “Bears?”

“She’s a middle-aged woman. What kind of middle-aged woman has stuffed animals all over her room?”

“Maybe she collects them,” L’il says. “People do, you know.”

“Not normal people.” I pick up the pink bear and hold it in front of L’il’s face. “Hello,” I say, in a funny voice. “My name is Peggy and I’d like to explain a few of my rules. But first I need to put on my rubber suit-”

“Carrie, stop,” L’il pleads, but it’s too late. We’re already in stitches.

“Aspirin,” I remind her. “If you were Peggy, where would you keep it?” My eye goes to the top drawer in Peggy’s bedside table. Like everything else in the apartment, it’s cheap, and when I tug on the knob, the whole drawer flies out, spilling the contents onto the floor.

“Now she’s going to kill us for sure,” L’il moans.

“We won’t tell her,” I say, scrambling to pick up the pieces. “Besides, it’s only a bunch of pictures.” I begin gathering the snapshots when I’m startled by what seems to be an image of a naked breast.

I take a closer look.

Then I scream and drop the picture like it’s on fire.

“What is it?” L’il shouts.

I sit down on the floor, shaking my head in disbelief. I pick up the photograph and examine it more closely, still not convinced. But it’s exactly what I thought it was. I shuffle through the other photographs, trying to suppress my laughter. They’re of Peggy, all right, but in each and every one of them she’s buck naked.

And not just any old naked. She’s arranged herself like a model in a porn magazine.

Unfortunately, she doesn’t exactly look like one. “L’il?” I ask, wanting to delve into this mystery of why Peggy would have posed for these photographs and who might have taken them, but L’il is gone. I hear a faint thud as the door to her room closes, followed by the louder bang of the front door. And before I have a chance to move, Peggy is standing over me.

We both freeze. Peggy’s eyes get bigger and bigger as her face turns from red to purple and I wonder if her head is going to explode. She opens her mouth and raises her arm.

The photograph falls from my fingers as I shrink back in fear.

“Get out! Get out!” she screams, swatting at my head. I drop to my hands and knees, and before she can figure out what’s happening, crawl between her legs to the hall. I stand up, run to my room, and shut the door.

She immediately yanks it open. “Listen, Peggy-” I begin, but really, what can I say? Besides, she’s shouting too much for me to get a word in.

“The minute I laid eyes on you, I knew you were trouble. Who do you think you are, coming into my home and going through my things? Where did you grow up? In a barn? What kind of animal are you?”

“A bear?” I want to say. But she’s right. I did violate her privacy. I knew it was wrong and I did it anyway. It was worth it to see those naked photos, though.

“I want you, and your stuff, out of here now!”

“But-”

“You should have thought about your ‘buts’ before you went into my room,” she snaps, which doesn’t help much, because after seeing those photographs, all I can think about is her butt. Indeed, I’m so absorbed by the image, I hardly notice her segue into how good it will be for me to spend a night or two on the streets.

The next thing I know, she’s pulling my suitcase out from under the bed and heaving it onto the mattress. “Start packing,” she orders. “I’m going out for twenty minutes and when I get back, you’d better be gone. If you’re not, I’m calling the police.”

She grabs her purse and storms out.

I stand there in shock. The plywood door opens and L’il comes in, white as a sheet.

“Oh, Lord, Carrie,” she whispers. “What are you going to do?”

“Leave,” I say, picking up a pile of my clothes and dumping them into the suitcase.

“But where will you go? This is New York City. It’s night and it’s dangerous. You can’t be out there on your own. What if you’re attacked or end up dead? Maybe you could go to the YMCA-”

I’m suddenly angry. At Peggy and her irrationality. “I have plenty of places to go.”

“Like where?”

Good question.

I slip on the Chinese robe for good luck and snap my suitcase shut. L’il looks dazed, as if she can’t believe I’m going to carry through with my plan. I give her a wan smile and a brief hug. My stomach is clenched in fear, but I’m determined not to back down.

L’il follows me to the street, begging me to stay. “You can’t just leave with no place to go.”

“Honestly, L’il. I’ll be fine,” I insist, with way more confidence than I actually feel.

I hold out my arm and hail a cab.

“Carrie! Don’t,” L’il pleads as I shove my suitcase and typewriter into the backseat.

The cab driver turns around. “Where to?”

I close my eyes and grimace.

Thirty minutes later, stuck outside in the torrential rain of a thunderstorm, I wonder what I was thinking.

Samantha’s not home. In the back of my mind, I guess I was figuring if Samantha wasn’t there, I could always go to Bernard’s and throw myself on his mercy. But now, having splurged on one cab, I don’t have enough money for another.

A rivulet of water runs down the back of my neck. My robe is soaked and I’m scared and miserable but I attempt to convince myself that everything is going to be all right. I imagine the rain washing the city clean, and washing Peggy away with it.

But another rumble of thunder changes my mind, and suddenly I’m being attacked by pinpricks of ice. The rain has turned to hail and I need to find shelter.

I drag my suitcase around the corner, where I spot a small, glass-fronted shop at the bottom of a short flight of steps. At first, I’m not sure it even is a store, but then I see a big sign that reads, NO CHANGE-DO NOT EVEN ASK. I peer through the glass and spot a shelf dotted with candy bars. I pull open the door and go inside.

A strange, hairless man who looks quite a bit like a boiled beet is sitting on a stool behind a Plexiglas barrier. There’s a small opening cut into the plastic where you can slide your money across the counter. I’m dripping all over the floor, but the man doesn’t seem to mind. “What can I get for you, girlie?” he asks.

I look around in confusion. The store is even tinier on the inside than it looked from the outside. The walls are thin and there’s a door in the back that’s bolted shut.

I shiver. “How much for a Hershey’s bar?”

“Twenty-five cents.”

I reach into my pocket and extract a quarter, sliding it through the slot. I pick out a candy bar and start to unwrap it. It’s pretty dusty, and I immediately feel sorry for the man. Apparently he doesn’t have much business. I wonder how he’s able to survive.

Then I wonder if I’m going to be able to survive. What if Samantha doesn’t come home? What if she goes to Charlie’s apartment instead?

No. She has to come home. She just has to . I close my eyes and picture her leaning against her desk. You really are a sparrow, she says.

And then, as if I’ve willed it to happen, a cab stops on the corner and Samantha gets out. She’s clutching her briefcase across her chest, her head ducked against the rain, when suddenly, she stops, looking defeated. By the weather and, just possibly, by something else.

“Hey!” I yank open the door and race toward her, waving my arms. “It’s me!”

“Huh?” She’s startled, but quickly regains her composure. “You,” she says, wiping the rain from her face. “What are you doing here?”

I muster up my last ounce of confidence. I shrug, as if I’m used to standing on corners in the rain. “I was wondering-”

“You got kicked out of your apartment,” she says.

“How did you know?”

She laughs. “The suitcase and the fact that you’re soaked to the skin. Besides, that’s what always happens to sparrows. Jesus, Carrie. What am I going to do with you?”

Chapter Eight

“You’re alive!” L’il throws her arms around my neck.

“Of course I am,” I say, as if getting kicked out of an apartment happens to me all the time. We’re standing in front of The New School, waiting to go in.

“I was worried.” She steps back to give me a searching once-over. “You don’t look so good.”

“Hangover,” I explain. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“Did you finish your story?”

I laugh. My voice sounds like it’s been scraped over the sidewalk. “Hardly.”

“You’ll have to tell Viktor what happened.”

“ Viktor? Since when did you start calling him by his first name?”

“It’s his name, isn’t it?” She starts into the building ahead of me.

I was beyond relieved when Samantha showed up and rescued me, explaining how she’d decided to give Charlie the night off to keep him guessing. And I was thrilled when I realized Charlie’s night off meant Samantha’s night out, and that she expected me to accompany her. It wasn’t until I discovered that Samantha’s night out literally meant all night that I began to get worried.

First we went to a place called One Fifth. The inside was a replica of a cruise ship, and even though it was technically a restaurant, no one was eating. Apparently, no one actually eats in trendy restaurants because you’re only supposed to be seen in them. The bartender bought us drinks, and then two guys started buying us drinks, and then someone decided we should all go to this club, Xenon, where everyone was purple under the black lights. It was pretty funny because no one was acting like they were purple, and just when I was getting used to it, Samantha found some other people who were going to a club called The Saint, so we all piled into taxis and went there. The ceiling was painted like the sky, illuminated by tiny lights over a revolving dance floor that spun like a record, and people kept falling down. Then I got caught up dancing with a bunch of guys who were wearing wigs and lost Samantha but found her again in the bathroom, where you could hear people having sex. I danced on top of a speaker and one of my shoes fell off and I couldn’t find it, and Samantha made me leave without it because she said she was hungry, and we were in a taxi again with more people, and Samantha made the driver stop at a twenty-four-hour drugstore in Chinatown to see if they had shoes. Mysteriously, they did but they were bamboo flip-flops. I tried them on along with a pointy hat, which was apparently so hilarious, everyone else had to have bamboo flip-flops and pointy hats as well. Finally, we managed to get back into the taxi, which took us to a metal diner where we ate scrambled eggs.

I think we got home around five a.m. I was too scared to look at my watch, but the birds were singing. Who knew there were so many damn birds in New York? I figured I’d never be able to sleep with the racket, so I got up and started typing. About fifteen minutes later Samantha came out of her room, pushing a velvet sleeping mask onto her forehead.

“Carrie,” she said. “What are you doing ?”

“Writing?”

“Can you please save it for morning?” She groaned in pain. “Plus, I’ve got terrible cramps. They don’t call it ‘the curse’ for nothing.”

“Sure,” I said, flustered. The last thing I needed was to annoy her or her cramps.

Now, following L’il’s neat head up the stairs to class, I’m racked with guilt. I need to start writing. I have to get serious.

I only have fifty-six days left.

I run after L’il and tap her on the shoulder. “Did Bernard call?”

She shakes her head and gives me a pitying look.

Today we’re treated to the pleasure of Capote Duncan’s work. It’s the last thing I need, considering my condition. I rest my head in my hand, wondering how I’m going to get through this class.

“‘She held the razor between her fingers. A piece of glass. A piece of ice. A savior. The sun was a moon. The ice became snow as she slipped away, a pilgrim lost in a blizzard.’” Capote adjusts his glasses and smiles, pleased with himself.

“Thank you, Capote,” Viktor Greene says. He’s slumped in a chair in the back of the room.

“You’re welcome,” Capote says, as if he’s just done us an enormous favor. I study him closely in an attempt to discover what L’il and, supposedly, hundreds of other women in New York, including models, see in him. He does have surprisingly masculine hands, the kind of hands that look like they’d know how to sail a boat or hammer a nail or pull you up from the edge of a steep rock face. Too bad he doesn’t have the personality to match.

“Any comments on Capote’s story?” Viktor asks. I turn around to give Capote a dirty look. Yes, I want to say. I have a response. It sucked. I actually feel like I might puke. There’s nothing I hate more than some cheesy romantic story about a perfect girl who every guy is in love with and then she kills herself. Because she’s so tragic. When in reality, she’s just crazy. But, of course, the guy can’t see that. All he can see is her beauty. And her sadness.

Guys can be so stupid.

“Who is this girl again?” Ryan asks, with a touch of skepticism that tells me I’m not alone in my thinking.

Capote stiffens. “My sister. I thought that was pretty apparent from the beginning.”

“I guess I missed it,” Ryan says. “I mean, the way you write about her-she doesn’t sound like your sister. She sounds like some girl you’re in love with.” Ryan’s being pretty hard on Capote, especially since they’re supposed to be friends. But that’s what it’s like in this class. When you enter the room, you’re a writer first.

“It does sound a little… incestuous,” I add.

Capote looks at me. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged my presence, but only because he has to. “That’s the point of the story. And if you didn’t get the point, I can’t help you.”

I press on. “But is it really you ?”

“It’s fiction,” he snaps. “Of course it’s not really me.”

“So if it’s not really you or your sister, I guess we can criticize her after all,” Ryan says as the rest of the class titters. “I wouldn’t want to say something negative about a member of your family.”

“A writer has to be able to look at everything in their life with a critical eye,” L’il says. “Including their own family. They do say the artist must kill the father in order to succeed.”

“But Capote hasn’t killed anyone. Yet,” I say. The class snickers.

“This discussion is totally stupid,” Rainbow interjects. It’s the second time she’s deigned to speak in class, and her tone is world-weary, defiant and superior, designed to put us in our place. Which seems to be somewhere far below hers. “Anyway, the sister is dead. So what difference does it make what we say about her? I thought the story was great. I identified with the sister’s pain. It seemed very real to me.”

“Thank you,” Capote says, as if he and Rainbow are two aristocrats stranded in a crowd of peasants.

Now I’m sure Rainbow is sleeping with him. I wonder if she knows about the model.

Capote takes his seat, and once again I find myself staring at him with open curiosity. Studied in profile, his nose has character-a distinctive bump of the type passed from one generation to another-“the Duncan nose”-likely the bane of every female family member. Combined with closely spaced eyes, the nose would give the face a rodentlike demeanor, but Capote’s eyes are wide-set. And now that I’m really looking at him, a dark inky blue.

“Will L’il read her poem, please?” Viktor murmurs.

L’il’s poem is about a flower and its effect on three generations of women. When she’s finished, there’s silence.

“That was wonderful.” Viktor shuffles to the front of the room.

“Anyone can do it,” L’il says with cheerful modesty. She might be the only genuine person in this class, probably because she really does have talent.

Viktor Greene stoops over and picks up his knapsack. I can’t imagine what’s in it besides papers, but the weight tilts him perilously to one side, like a boat listing in the waves. “We reconvene on Wednesday. In the meantime, for those of you who haven’t handed in your first story, you need to do so by Monday.” He scans the room. “And I need to see Carrie Bradshaw in my office.”

Huh? I look to L’il, wondering if she might know the reason for this unexpected meeting, but she only shrugs.

Maybe Viktor Greene is going to tell me I don’t belong in this class.

Or maybe he’s going to tell me I’m the most talented, brilliant student he’s ever had.

Or maybe… I give up. Who knows what he wants. I smoke a cigarette and make my way to his office.

The door is closed. I knock.

It opens a crack, and the first thing I’m confronted by is Viktor’s enormous mustache, followed by his soft sloping face, as if skin and muscle have abandoned any attempt to attach to the skull. He silently swings open the door and I enter a small room filled with a mess of papers and books and magazines. He removes a pile from the chair in front of his desk and looks around helplessly.

“Over there,” I say, pointing to a relatively small mound of books perched on the sill.

“Right,” he says, plopping the papers on top, where they balance precariously.

I sit down in the chair as he clumsily drops into his seat.

“Well.” He touches his mustache.

It’s still there, I want to scream, but don’t.

“How do you feel about this class?” he asks.

“Good. Really good.” I’m pretty sure I suck, but there’s no reason to give him ammunition.

“How long have you wanted to become a writer?”

“Since I was a kid, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“I know .” Why do conversations with teachers always go around in circles?

“Why?”

I sit on my hands and stare. There’s no good answer to this question. “I’m a genius and the world can’t live without my words,” is too pretentious and probably untrue. “I love books and want to write the great American novel” is true, but is also what every student wants, because why else would they be in this class? “It’s my calling,” sounds overly dramatic. On the other hand, why is he even asking me this question? Can’t he tell that I should be a writer?

In consequence, I end up saying nothing. Instead, I open my eyes as wide as possible.

This has an interesting effect. Viktor Greene suddenly becomes uncomfortable, shifting in his chair and then opening and closing a drawer.

“Why do you have that mustache?” I ask.

“Mmph?” He covers his lips with his tapered, waxy fingers.

“Is it because you think that mustache is a part of you?” I’ve never talked to a teacher this way, but I’m not exactly in school. I’m in a seminar. And who says Viktor Greene has to be the authority?

“Don’t you like the mustache?” he asks.

Hold on. Viktor Greene is vain ?

“Sure,” I say, thinking about how vanity is a weakness. It’s a chink in the armor. If you’re vain, you should do everything possible to conceal it.

I lean forward slightly to emphasize my admiration. “Your mustache is really, er, great.”

“You think so?” he repeats.

Jeez. What a Pandora’s box. If he only knew how Ryan and I make fun of that mustache. I’ve even given it a name: “Waldo.” Waldo is not any ordinary mustache, however. He’s able to go on adventures without Viktor. He goes to the zoo and Studio 54, and the other day, he even went to Benihana, where the chef mistook him for a piece of meat and accidently chopped him up.

Waldo recovered, though. He’s immortal and cannot be destroyed.

“Your mustache,” I continue. “It’s kind of like me wanting to be a writer. It’s a part of me. I don’t know who I’d be if I didn’t want to be a writer.” I deliver this line with great conviction, and Viktor nods.

“That’s fine, then,” he says.

I smile.

“I was worried you’d come to New York to become famous .”

What?

Now I’m confused. And kind of insulted. “What does my wanting to be a writer have to do with wanting to become famous?”

He wets his lips. “Some people think writing is glamorous. They make the mistake of thinking it’s a good vehicle for becoming famous. But it isn’t. It’s only hard work. Years and years and years of it, and even then, most people don’t get what they want out of it.”

Like you, I wonder? “I’m not worried, Mr. Greene.”

He sadly fingers his mustache.

“Is that it?” I stand up.

“Yes,” he says. “That’s it.”

“Thanks, Mr. Greene.” I glare at him, wondering what Waldo would say.

But when I get outside, I’m shaking.

Why shouldn’t I? I demand silently. Why shouldn’t I become a famous writer? Like Norman Mailer. Or Philip Roth. And F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and all those other men. Why can’t I be like them? I mean, what is the point of becoming a writer if no one reads what you’ve written?

Damn Viktor Greene and The New School. Why do I have to keep proving myself all the time? Why can’t I be like L’il, with everyone praising and encouraging me? Or Rainbow, with her sense of entitlement. I bet Viktor Greene never asked Rainbow why she wanted to be a writer.

Or what if-I wince-Viktor Greene is right? I’m not a writer after all.

I light a cigarette and start walking.

Why did I come to New York? Why did I think I could make it here?

I walk as fast as I can, pausing only to light yet another cigarette. By the time I get to Sixteenth Street, I figure I’ve probably smoked nearly half a pack.

I feel sick.

It’s one thing to write for the school newspaper. But New York is on a whole different level. It’s a mountain, with a few successful people like Bernard at the top, and a mass of dreamers and strivers like me at the bottom.

And then there are people like Viktor, who aren’t afraid to tell you that you’re never going to reach that peak.

I flick my cigarette butt onto the sidewalk and grind it out in a fury. A fire truck roars down the avenue, horns blaring. “I am pissed off,” I scream, my frustration mingling with the wail of the siren.

A couple of people glance my way but don’t pause. I’m only another crazy person on the street in New York.

I stomp down the sidewalk to Samantha’s building, take the stairs two at a time, unlock the three bolts, and fling myself onto her bed. Which makes me feel, once again, like an interloper. It’s a four-poster with a black coverlet and what Samantha calls silk sheets, which, she claims, prevent wrinkles. Except they’re really made of some kind of super slippery polyester and I have to push my foot against one of the posts to keep from sliding onto the floor.

I grab a pillow and put it over my head. I think about Viktor Greene and Bernard. I think about how I’m all alone. How I’m constantly having to pull myself up from the depths of despair, trying to convince myself to try one more time. I bury my face deeper into the pillow.

Maybe I should give up. Go back home. And in two months, I’ll go to Brown.

My throat closes at the thought of leaving New York. Am I going to allow what Viktor Greene said to cause me to quit? I have to talk to someone. But who?

That girl. The one with the red hair. The one who found my Carrie bag. She seems like the kind of person who would have something to say about my situation. She hates life, and right now, I do too.

What was her name, again? Miranda. Miranda Hobbes. “H-o-b-b-e-s.” I hear her voice in my head.

I pick up the phone and dial information.

Chapter Nine

“All men are a disappointment. No matter what anyone says.” Miranda Hobbes glares at the cover of Cosmopolitan. “‘How to Get Him and Keep Him,’” she says, reading the cover line aloud in disgust.

She places the magazine back in the rack. “Even if you could get Him-and why do they always capitalize His name like He’s God-I can personally guarantee He wouldn’t be worth keeping.”

“What about Paul Newman?” I count out four dollars and hand the money to the cashier. “I’m sure he’s worth keeping. Joanne Woodward thinks so.”

“First of all, no one knows what goes on between two people in a marriage. And secondly, he’s an actor. Which means by definition he’s a narcissist.” She looks at the package of chicken thighs doubtfully. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

I put the chicken thighs, rice, and the tomato into a bag, feigning ignorance about her concerns. Truth is, I’m a little worried about the chicken myself. Besides being minuscule, the supermarket is none too clean. Maybe that’s why no one cooks in New York. “Don’t you think everyone’s a narcissist?” I ask. “I have this theory that all anyone ever really thinks about is themself. It’s human nature.”

“Is this human nature?” Miranda demands, still absorbed by the rack of magazines. “‘How to De-dimple Your Thighs in Thirty Days.’ ‘Kissable Lips.’ ‘How to Tell What He’s Really Thinking.’ I can tell you what he’s really thinking. Nothing. ”

I laugh, partly because she’s probably right, and partly because I’m in the giddy throes of a new friendship.

It’s my second Saturday in New York, and what no one tells you is how the city empties out on the weekends. Samantha goes to the Hamptons with Charlie, and even L’il said she was going to the Adirondacks. I told myself I didn’t mind. I’d had enough excitement for the week, and besides, I had to write.

And I did work, for a few hours, anyway. Then I started to feel lonely. I decided there must be a particular kind of lonely in New York, because once you start thinking about all the millions of people out there eating or shopping or going to movies or museums with friends, it’s pretty depressing not to be one of them.

I tried calling Maggie, who’s spending the summer in South Carolina, but her sister said she was at the beach. Then I tried Walt. He was in Provincetown. I even called my father. But all he said was how much I must be looking forward to Brown in the fall and he’d talk more but he had an appointment.

I wished I could tell him what a hard time I was having with my writing class, but it would have been pointless. He’s never been interested in my writing anyway, convinced it’s a phase I’ll get over when I go to Brown.

Then I looked through Samantha’s closet. I found a pair of neon-blue Fiorucci boots that I particularly coveted, and even tried them on, but they were too big. I also discovered an old leather biker jacket that appeared to be from her former life-whatever that was.

I tried Miranda Hobbes again. I’d actually tried her three times since Thursday, but there was no answer.

But apparently she doesn’t protest on Saturdays, because she picked up the phone on the first ring.

“Hello?” she asked suspiciously.

“Miranda? It’s Carrie Bradshaw.”

“Oh.”

“I was wondering… what are you doing right now? Do you want to get a cup of coffee or something?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh,” I said again, disappointed.

I guess she felt sorry for me, because she asked, “Where do you live?”

“Chelsea?”

“I’m on Bank Street. There’s a coffee shop around the corner. As long as I don’t have to take the subway, I guess I could meet you.”

We spent two hours at the coffee shop, discovering all kinds of things we had in common. Like we both went to our local high schools. And we both loved the book The Consensus as kids. When I told her I knew the author, Mary Gordon Howard, she laughed. “Somehow, I knew you were the type who would.” And over yet another cup of coffee, we began to have that magical, unspoken realization that we were going to be friends.

Then we decided we were hungry, but also admitted we didn’t have any money. Hence my plan to cook us dinner.

“Why do magazines do this to women?” Miranda complains now, glaring at Vogue . “It’s all about creating insecurity. Trying to make women feel like they’re not good enough. And when women don’t feel like they’re good enough, guess what?”

“What?” I ask, picking up the grocery bag.

“Men win. That’s how they keep us down,” she concludes.

“Except the problem with women’s magazines is that they’re written by women,” I point out.

“That only shows you how deep this thing goes. Men have made women coconspirators in their own oppression. I mean, if you spend all your time worrying about leg hair, how can you possibly have time to take over the world?”

I want to point out that shaving your legs takes about five minutes, leaving plenty of time for world-taking-over, but I know she only means it as a rhetorical question.

“Are you sure your roommate won’t mind my coming over?” she asks.

“She’s not really my roommate. She’s engaged. She lives with her boyfriend. She’s in the Hamptons anyway.”

“Lucky you,” Miranda says as we start up the five flights of stairs to the apartment. By the third flight, she’s panting. “How do you do this every day?”

“It’s better than living with Peggy.”

“That Peggy sounds like a nightmare. People like that should be in therapy.”

“She probably is, and it’s not working.”

“Then she needs to find a new shrink,” Miranda says, puffing. “I could recommend mine.”

“You see a shrink?” I ask, startled, fitting my key into the lock.

“Of course. Don’t you?”

“No. Why would I?”

“Because everyone needs to see a shrink. Otherwise you keep repeating the same unhealthy patterns.”

“But what if you don’t have unhealthy patterns?” I throw open the door and Miranda stumbles in. She flops onto the futon.

“Thinking you don’t have unhealthy patterns is an unhealthy pattern in itself. And everyone has something unhealthy from their childhood. If you don’t deal with it, it can ruin your life.”

I open the cantilevered doors to reveal the small kitchen and place the grocery bag onto the few inches of counter space next to the tiny sink. “What’s yours?” I ask.

“My mother.”

I find a bent skillet in the oven, pour in some oil, and light one of the two burners with a match. “How do you know all this stuff?”

“My father’s a shrink. And my mother is a perfectionist. She used to spend an hour every morning styling my hair before I went to school. Which is why I cut it and dyed it as soon as I could get away from her. My father says she suffers from guilt. But I say she’s a classic narcissist. Everything is about her. Including me.”

“But she’s your mother,” I say, placing the chicken thighs in the hot oil.

“And I hate her. Which is okay, because she hates me, too. I don’t fit into her narrow idea of what a daughter should be. What about your mother?”

I pause, but she doesn’t seem all that interested in the answer. She’s examining the collection of photographs Samantha keeps on the side table, with the zeal of an anthropologist who has suddenly discovered an old piece of pottery. “Is this the woman who lives here? Christ, is she an egomaniac or what? She’s in every photograph.”

“It is her apartment.”

“Don’t you think it’s weird when someone has photographs of themselves all over the place? It’s like they’re trying to prove they exist.”

“I don’t know her that well.”

“What is she?” Miranda sneers. “An actress? A model? Who has five photographs of themselves in a bikini?”

“She’s in advertising.”

“Another business designed to make women feel insecure.”

She gets up and comes into the kitchen. “Where’d you learn to cook?”

“I sort of had to.”

“My mother tried to teach me, but I refused. I rejected anything that could turn me into a housewife.” She leans over the skillet. “That smells pretty good though.”

“It will be,” I say, adding two inches of water to the pan. When it boils, I pour in the rice, add the tomato, then turn down the heat and cover the skillet. “And it’s cheap. We get a whole meal for four dollars.”

“Which reminds me.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out two one-dollar bills. “My share. I hate owing anyone anything. Don’t you?”

We go back into the living room and curl up on either end of the couch. We light cigarettes, and I inhale contemplatively. “What if I can’t become a writer and I have to get married, instead. What if I have to ask my husband for money? I couldn’t do it. I’d hate myself.”

“Marriage turns women into whores,” Miranda declares. “The whole thing is a sham.”

“That’s what I think too!” I can hardly believe I’ve found someone who shares my secret suspicions. “But if you let people know, they want to kill you. They hate the truth.”

“That’s what happens to women when they go against the system.” Miranda fumbles awkwardly with her cigarette. I can tell she’s not really a smoker, but maybe, because everyone else in New York smokes, she’s trying it out. “And I, for one, plan to do something about it,” she continues, coughing.

“What?”

“Haven’t decided yet. But I will.” She narrows her eyes. “You’re lucky you’re going to be a writer. You can change people’s perceptions. You should write about marriage and what a lie it is. Or even sex.”

“Sex?” I grind my cigarette out in the ashtray.

“Sex. It’s the biggest sham of all. I mean, your whole life, all you ever hear is how you’re supposed to save yourself for marriage. And how it’s so special. And then you finally do it. And you’re like, that’s it ? This is what everyone’s been raving about?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Come on,” she says. “You’ve done it.”

I grimace. “Actually, I haven’t.”

“Really?” She’s surprised. Then pragmatic. “Well, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. You’re not missing anything. In fact, if you haven’t done it, I would recommend not doing it. Ever.” She pauses. “And the worst thing about it? Once you do it, you have to keep doing it. Because the guy expects you to.”

“Why’d you do it in the first place?” I ask, lighting another cigarette.

“Pressure. I had the same boyfriend all through high school. Although, I have to admit, I was curious.”

“And?”

“Everything but ‘it’ is fine,” she says matter-of-factly. “‘It’ itself is boring as hell. That’s what no one tells you. How boring it is. And it hurts.”

“I have a friend who did it for the first time and loved it. She said she had an actual orgasm.”

“From intercourse?” Miranda yelps. “She’s lying. Everyone knows women cannot have an orgasm from intercourse only.”

“Then why does everyone do it?”

“Because they have to,” she practically screams. “And then you just lie there, waiting for it to be over. The only good thing about it is that it only lasts a minute or two.”

“Maybe you have to do it a lot to like it.”

“Nope. I’ve done it at least twenty times, and each time it was as bad as the first.” She crosses her arms. “You’ll see. And it doesn’t matter who you do it with. I did it with another guy six months ago to make sure it wasn’t me, and it was just as lousy.”

“What about with an older guy?” I ask, thinking about Bernard. “A guy with experience-”

“How old?”

“Thirty?”

“That’s even worse,” she declares. “His thing could be all wrinkly. There’s nothing more disgusting than a wrinkly thing.”

“Have you ever seen one?” I ask.

“Nope. And I hope I never have to.”

“Well,” I say, laughing. “What if I do it and I like it? Then what?”

Miranda snickers, as if this is not a possibility. She jabs her finger at Samantha’s photograph. “I bet even she thinks it’s boring. She looks like she likes it, but I promise you, she’s pretending. Just like every other goddamn woman on the planet.”