“Of course, I wouldn’t touch such a project, of course, but still the ride is funny, it’s … just …” And, stalled, she bent, placed her forefinger to my mouth, as if seeking to hush me, and not her own talkative self. “Hart? You musn’t mind Raggedy Angie’s enjoying all this for whatever jackflash fifteen seconds it lasts her. You know it’s only fashion. I’d pull for you …”

“I know,” I said, even while deciding, “You’d pull for me if I had any talent or acclaim or one scrap of your unbelievable luck.”

I wanted to talk about Robert’s spot but I saw it’d queer her playful mood today. And when she, looking so great with the best haircut ever, a two-hundred-dollar job, rose, gathering all her gear, when she bent to buss my either cheek, I smiled up at her. Something made me say, “To quote Cole Porter, ‘You’re the Tops.’ Maybe they’ll let you handpaint a special department store edition.”

“Ouch-ette,” Ang pretended not to mind, and I longed to call it back but she was already passing our window as she luffed my way a customary parting kiss, my friend was gone.

Now, the evening of that same day, road crews kept tearing up a single patch of street, the fourth time in six months (graft, Union and Mafia controlled). The night work crew had been driving me mad with its jackhammer noise. Otherwise, hushed was our once many-peopled block and I felt restless for my pals, for our old days, “hungry” and hungry. I nearly felt the slightest bit sorry for myself. Who on earth was ever going to buy a hardhitting documentary piece about some tapeworm-riddled Baptists singing all over Carolina from their yellow truck painted almost black with scrawled Bible scoldings?

After the chill, May had once more grown warm as May should be. Summer again. By now I felt so at home on our block, during hotter months, I left off wearing shoes. The pet-do scooper law was being enforced; only that made this old pleasure possible. Just as I’d worn a nightshirt downstairs by accident, there was such comfort padding along a city street, your feet nude. It can feel like suede, the nighttime pavement, cooling. Summers at home, we kids wore shoes only to church or doctors’ office visits. (Looking back, I see this urge to run barefoot in Manhattan was one early warning sign of homesickness for North Carolina.)

As my solitary dinner, I’d eaten almost a pound of cherries, just come into season. Cherries, especially the first ones each year, always make me happy.