Three-Day Town

“We can come back tomorrow for milk and juice,” Dwight said, happily taking it all in. I tried not to roll my eyes. This was his honeymoon, too, and if he finds grocery stores more entertaining than I do, who am I to complain? Especially since Kate had given me the addresses of a few specialty shops more to my own liking.

By the time we finished eating and stashed the remains in the refrigerator, I decided it was too late to call Anne Harald.

“I’ll do it first thing in the morning,” I said through a barely suppressed yawn, and we were soon back in bed.

This time to sleep.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

CHAPTER

2

Among the detached sculpture in the parks and streets, bad as much of it always was… there are still some notable examples which people do not care to forget.

—

The New New York

, 1909

We slept till after eight the next morning, and while Dwight went out for coffee and breakfast rolls, I checked my email.

Cal wrote that he and Mary Pat had made 100s on their end-of-the-week spelling test and that he was now one level higher than she on one of their long-running computer games. Both of them were going to a classmate’s birthday party the next day.

My friend Portland had finally uploaded some of the pictures she’d taken of her year-old daughter at Christmas. She and Avery named her Carolyn Deborah, and one of the pictures showed her wearing the red plaid dress I’d given her.

Minnie, the sister-in-law who is my campaign advisor, wrote that barring a last-minute surprise, I wasn’t going to have to run an all-out campaign for reelection.

“She says that Paul Archdale’s decided not to run for my seat after all,” I told Dwight when he returned.

“Probably knows he’d be wasting his time and money,” said my loyal spouse, busily unloading plastic bags from Fairway Market onto the kitchen counter.

The smell of freshly ground coffee and warm bagels made my mouth water. Dwight set out milk, orange juice, a block of cream cheese, several slices of smoked salmon, and a small jar of wild strawberry jam. I opened another bag to see an applesauce muffin, a turnover oozing with blackberries, and a little wedge of Brie. A third bag held more packets of deli items.

I shook my head. “All this for breakfast? I’m not letting you go back to that store.”

He laughed. “Try and stop me. You call Mrs. Lattimore’s daughter yet?”

“I’ll do it right now,” I said and scrolled through the list of names on my cell phone’s contact list till I came to Anne Harald.

There were the usual chirps and blips and then four long rings before I heard a woman’s voice say, “You’ve reached Anne and Mac’s answering machine. If you need to reach Anne or Mac before February, find a pencil. Got it? Okay, listen up, ’cause here comes the number to call.”

By then I had grabbed a pen from Dwight’s shirt pocket and scribbled the number on my hand, a 212 area code, which meant it was right here in Manhattan.

A few minutes later, I was listening to a second answering machine message. A different woman’s voice crisply instructed me to leave a short message and a callback number. There was no promise that she would actually call back, but I dutifully gave my number and explained that I was trying to deliver a package to Anne Harald from her mother in North Carolina, but—

At that point the answering machine cut off and left me with nothing but a dial tone.

Exasperated, I ended the connection and helped Dwight finish putting our breakfast together.

The coffee was even better than the aroma promised, and I’d forgotten how delicious toasted onion bagels are with a thick schmeer of cream cheese. I couldn’t decide whether to top mine off with smoked salmon or the wild strawberry jam, so what the hell? I cut it in half and had some of each. Yum!

I told myself I didn’t need to worry about waddling onto the train home, because the city encourages walking. All the New Yorkers I’ve ever known walk miles more than country people, who tend to jump into a car or truck if it’s more than a few hundred feet. Once again, memory stretched back across the years to the winter I spent here with Lev Schuster. A penniless law student, I knew he couldn’t afford cabs, but “Can’t we at least take a bus?” I would whine, only to have him look at me in surprise that I would waste money on a bus when the restaurant or museum or library was only fifteen or twenty blocks away. I grew to hate crosstown blocks, which are two to four times longer than the north–south blocks, and I planned to reacquaint myself with the bus and subway systems as soon as possible.

“What do you want to do first?” Dwight asked me when I emerged from the bedroom warmly dressed in wool slacks, sweater, and sturdy shoes made for walking.

We both had lists of things to do, restaurants to try, and exhibits to see. He wanted to reconnect with an old Army buddy who taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and had promised to give Dwight a tour of the place next time he was up.

I had already decided that would be a good time to check out some of the stores along Fifth Avenue. But for today?

“Let’s take a bus down to Columbus Circle. I want to see that exhibit of Madeleine Albright’s pins.”