She shook her head no. She was pointing down. In one corner by the sink, a mousetrap, not sprung but nibbled clear of most cheese left on its killing clamp. “Damn Minnie the Mooch rodent,” she said. “I would get a Ph.D. one. It holds the patent pending on this fucking trap. Thing keeps me up nights. I hate the sounds of scuttlings in the wall. Savannah all over again. It ate a half a tube of my cadmium red (light). How do they know which paint is most expensive? Damn damn mouse.” She acted stiff, as if I’d bashed her work.

Had she gone rigid because a very red mouse was still at large, or because one overly white boy remained too-present? I didn’t know yet. I moved toward the door. She failed to stop me. I left before the coffee brewed.

Know Your Whereabouts at All Times

he city’s sense of promise is based precisely on its being all blinders, blinkers, chutes. Such tunnel vision means sudden awarded views that (on a good career- or love-day) can feel designed, singly, paradisal for you. The city offers you the whole Sun waiting (surprise) at your gray street’s very end. Sunlight is glittering on the godly Hudson River like some sudden fad, a fad with your name spelled dancing across it.

—So, even in the memory of my later outrunning thieves (or not), there’s this glee, this wild survivor’s glee that’s beautiful, if quite inaccurate.

Already boastful about our bravery, we didn’t yet know the ways we’d need it. Hold that off? Muggers, sure. Communicable venereal woes and age-old Heartache, fine. Weekly form-rejection slips from The New Yorker (“Does not suit our needs at this time”) okay. But hold the other off. Please hold it off awhile?

Sure, being that young in Old New York, we were scared a lot, and as insecure as we were swaggering. But, ah, we took the art of partying to new heights. And, oh how hard we worked. Private effort, not group sex, became the deep dark secret of our circle, and our age.

Some evenings, I’d explore the used bookstore across the street. It was named The Honored Owl. Before it, a bird-shaped shingle hung. Rumor claimed it’d been painted during the thirties by Rockwell Kent between paychecks. (Someone later swiped the thing and sold it through Sotheby’s for a six thousand dollar minimum.)