One little thing every day

Elmo is over

Two things with Grace: This week she stopped asking me to carry her to school, which is one block away. She does this funny kind of skip-gallop-prance walk while holding my hand. It made me a little sad, but after all, I'm the one who hoists her up and says, "Someday you're going to be too big and Mommy's not going to be able to carry you to school." Maybe that day came. I don't want to think about a time when she doesn't bear hug me in her towel when I lift her out of the bath, or when she stops putting her little arms around my neck to try to get me to stay a little longer when I put her to bed, or when she no longer sighs a sleepy breath when I climb in next to her and hold her hand, her tiny fingers curling around mine.

Last night, as we were cleaning out drawers of clothes she's outgrown to give to her friend Piper. Grace held her Elmo doll for a moment, and then put it on the pile of clothes. "It's Piper's turn to have Elmo," she said. "Are you sure?" I asked, "Elmo's been a great friend to you." "Yes, I'm sure."

Elmo is over.

***

I bought a tiny rosebush with small buds, some open, at Trader Joe's tonight and the girl at the checkout asked me if I was buying it for myself. I nodded. Then she told me, "Pay attention to the open ones." And then she looked deeply into my eyes. We had some kind of momentary connection, and after I paid she shook my hand and said she hoped she'd see me again. I am not sure what that means or what the metaphor is here, but, OK, I will pay attention to the open flowers.

***

After Trader Joe's, I went to an event for a super cool and funny writer named Cindy Chupack. She worked on a couple little shows you may have heard of, like Sex and the City and Everybody Loves Raymond. She wrote some books. As she signed mine, I mentioned to her that I just had a piece published in Motherlode about Grace's birth parents moving in, and that I was so inspired by her talk and wanted to figure out how to keep that momentum up. And she asked me to send her the link. Which made me really, really happy. I decided in the parking lot on the way out that every day, I will do something, even if it's a little thing, to move my work forward.



On the drive home, I missed my dad and wished he could be around to read my stuff, to tell me to fight for better contracts, to give me the hug I haven't had for 10 years. As I got off the 2 to the 134 West, I realized I'd absently had been holding my fist up, curled around my dad's fingers, which I imagined coming from somewhere above.

***

Tomorrow I go blonde.

Three Weeks Later

The wedding was above all expectations. Most of the Very Important People we love showed, and I was blown away by the generosity and sweetness of our families and friends. There was food and music and tears and remembrances from all my parents (I was a little surprised to count up how many moms and dads I have, but really, there's an astonishing amount. I think this is necessary for a child raised by Me Generation parents, but that is another topic altogether).

It has been a jammed three weeks. We came back from Oregon down the coast. So much driving, so much checking out at 11 wondering about bedbugs, so much fish & chips, so much looking at world and nature framed by the passenger window. Home, and then laundry. And then cycling out old stuff with "our" stuff from very generous family and friends. And dog training and a magazine article due way too soon and why aren't I working on it RIGHT NOW?

Because this is a long-winded way of telling you that I am back. That I LOVED being a bride and wouldn't have changed it for anything in the world. But I need my blogs. I need my life beyond staring down a Very Good Job. I need Wednesday night dinners at my beloved in-laws. I need my Sundays for sewing and yoga and napping. I need to remember who I was and justify keeping my name for professional reasons.

I missed you. I need you.

Wines from Spain

My story on Bazaar by Jose Andres is in Wines from Spain magazine. It's a magical place and has informed my design sensibility going forward. I love it there. Need to go back!!!

A Tiny Gift for Yourself

Poets.org will send you a poem a day to celebrate National Poetry Month. I am sure that a poem a day will soften hard edges and sweeten addled minds. It might even inspire you to greatness, or niceness, or peace.

No, Love Is Not Dead


by Robert Desnos

No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouth
that announced the start of its own funeral.
Listen, I've had enough of the picturesque, the colorful
and the charming.
I love love, its tenderness and cruelty.

My love has only one name, one form.
Everything disappears. All mouths cling to that one.
My love has just one name, one form.
And if someday you remember

O you, form and name of my love,
One day on the ocean between America and Europe,
At the hour when the last ray of light sparkles
on the undulating surface of the waves, or else a stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside or in a speeding car,

A spring morning on the boulevard Malesherbes,
A rainy day,
Just before going to bed at dawn,
Tell yourself-I order your familiar spirit-that
I alone loved you more and it's a shame
you didn't know it.

Tell yourself there's no need to regret: Ronsard
and Baudelaire before me sang the sorrows
of women old or dead who scorned the purest love.

When you are dead
You will still be lovely and desirable.
I'll be dead already, completely enclosed in your immortal body,
in your astounding image forever there among the endless marvels
of life and eternity, but if I'm alive,
The sound of your voice, your radiant looks,
Your smell the smell of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me.

In me and I'm not Ronsard or Baudelaire
I'm Robert Desnos who, because I knew
and loved you,
Is as good as they are.

I'm Robert Desnos who wants to be remembered

On this vile earth for nothing but his love of you.

A la mysterieuse

Tequila's stunt double

Looks like bubble bath but it's really the natural color of the red shiso leaf infused in the shochu.

I’m a lucky person, it turns out. So lucky, in fact, that I was invited on a 10-day press trip to Japan, where the good folks of the Japanese External Trade Organization gave me and seven other American writers a crash course in Japanese food, drink and culture.

 

I came away quite captivated by the shochu. It’s versatile – a gritty stunt double for cheap tequila, or an airy, smooth alternative to vodka. A shocking-pink sweet version is flavored by the red shiso leaf; a mellow gold brew with faint coconut aftertaste has been informed by its aging in an oak cask. Shochu is infused with almost any fruit you can think of – my favorites are plum and yuzu, a citrus that’s kind of a cross between a meyer lemon and a grapefruit. >>> READ MORE OF MY STORY AT www.theliquidmuse.com

Champagne with your bloody WWII revenge epic, madame?

 

Last Labor Day weekend I had the great fortune to go to Sonoma, where I met the coolest sommelier on the planet, Chris Sawyer. Today my interview with him is posted at gayot.com and culinate.com.

Cheers!

My past has caught up with me

For more than 20 years, I worked as a freelance writer. I covered all kinds of things -- schools, health, quirky country folk, crime, politics, oysters, food and art. I was very busy and very comfortable. And then I moved to California. And I was daunted at the prospect of finding new stories from a place where I couldn't even find Target and had to pull over and cry.

So I took a Big Corporate Job. Which has been very good to me, in so many ways.

But there is always the shadow of my freelance self. Sometimes it is large and looming and howling to get out. Sometimes it is a slight sliver that will give a little polite cough every now and then to remind me its there.

Somehow, the good PR people of Sonoma County found it fitting to invite me, based on my past and present freelance work, to a Wine Country Weekend. Yesterday we had a full day -- we began in a vineyard where the complexities of grape-growing were explained. And of course, we tasted a delightful pinot to help illuminate the lecture, and were each given grape knives to learn how to remove the delicate berries from the vine and toss them into a bin. It is the only time that I can think of when drinking wine at 10 a.m. is totally acceptable -- even expected.

And then it was off to the DaVero olive oil folks to learn about olive oil and rose, and because of this, I am forever ruined from my Trader Joe's $5.99 bottle. I also began harboring fantasies about running off to live the Sonoma lifestyle, which apparently includes TWO dogs, a biodynamic farm for chickens, pigs, olives, all vegetables, Meyer lemons and a house my husband and I build ourselves. And in this fantasy, I've let my hair go totally grey and long but I am still HOT and GORGEOUS in my farm dress and wellies. I'm digressing but I don't care, it's my blog.

Then to the MacMurray Ranch, where the intelligent, etherial curly redheaded Kate (the late actor Fred MacMurray's daughter) gave us a tour and sat us down in a redwood grove on the property to teach us about wine and cheese pairing. Which led to an alternate-reality fantasy about curling up under a tall tree, on a soft patch of needles and woodchips, while eating a Humbolt Fog soft goat's milk cheese and pairing with the MacMurray Vintner's Block merlot, and in my culinary bliss, and as I nod off to a nap of undetermined length, coming up with a brilliant idea for a novel that will be optioned for a rock opera.

Then dinner, with a well-known sommelier who pairs wine and movies.

I went to bed, full, happy, slightly queasy and a head full of pitches for my editors.

The 40licious take-away is this: By the time you are 40licious, you've done so much work laying your foundation that it will serve you as you coast along in your future. It's still just about saying yes.

For my mother

My mother is not the type to be bowled over by a bouquet of flowers on the door. She'd appreciate them, yes, but more than that, she wants a little chunk of my spirit, something meaningful. This year she asked for a poem. I began it yesterday as I volunteered at the Gibbon Conservation Center. My friend and I had the cush job -- hang out in a shady spot under a tree, near a gibbon family compound, to make sure people didn't throw food into the cage. It was an amazing exercise, spending hours watching these apes live their little lives in a wire cage, as they engaged us in conversation ("oooh, oooh, oooh") and howled warnings to the world.

My short but profound time with the apes inspired my poem for Mother's Day, to the woman who taught me, above all, that All You Need Is Love.

SWING AND HANG

These monkeys, they pick at each other.
They swing and hang and end up in a big hug.
Tumble down the tree trunk in a pile.
Swing and hang.
They are family.
Swing and hang.

Mama moves neat and swift.
Baby clinging.
They belong together.
Neither will let go.
As they swing and hang.
Across a jungle canopy.
Swing and hang.

Mama will teach
How to play
How to eat
How to survive
In a place that is not always easy or kind.

Baby will learn
by example
how to love without reserve.
How to swing and hang
and not drop her own.

A Bear Crapped on My Table

I've been told by a very inspiring and influential person to get my papers in order (well, outline and proposal) and start working on my memoir after she read my article about living off the grid in Grist. I feel like I landed on the soft pillow after riding bareback in the woods for years. There is a crack in a windowless and doorless room where the light has begun to stream in. I could do this. I could write my book. My book.

December is always a little tough for me because it was the month my father died in 2003. I will always remember the day that I handed him my business card after deciding on a career as a freelance writer. It read:

Vanessa McGrady
Journalist

He handed it back. "One day it will say 'journalist and author.' "

But I never thought that I had enough to say.

Of course, my father was always right. It still takes me a long time to realize this.

My New Blogging Challenge - One Year Ago Today

OK, here's a new blogging challenge -- post an email you sent or received one year ago today (or to whenever the date is that you posted). Here is mine from last Nov. 10, in response to someone who had her first Craigslist experience and wondered about the veracity of the seller.

Yes, he sucks bigtime and is trying to scam you. Also, send to Craig and let them know about it. Be careful!!!!

I’ve bought and sold thousands of dollars of stuff on Craigslist and the usual transaction is:

1. Post the item, say it’s a bike.
2. Someone responds and comes over to see said bike.
3. They decide to buy and PAY CASH. Do not ever accept anything other than cash. If they don’t have it all on them, take a CASH deposit.
BONUS STEP: The customer will try to bargain down. If this is your first showing and you’ve already gotten some other emails or calls of interest, tell them: “You know, I’d be open to bargaining if it doesn’t sell in a few days. I’ve got some other people looking and I know it will sell at full price. Would you like me to take your number?” The customer usually has enough cash on them to pay full price if they’ve already come to see you. 99.9% of the time you will get your price if the person’s already in the house.
4. They pay you. You write out the receipt and keep a copy for both of you. Even better, type and print out two copies before they get there.
they leave
5. You pocket cash
6. You blow half of it on margaritas with your girlfriends
7. You all decide to get tattoos with a secret symbol, something like Hello Kitty
8. You spend the rest of the cash at the tattoo place
9. You drink more margaritas on your credit card
10. You go back to the tattoo place. The guy had bad skin, but really nice eyes.
11. You wake up at 5 a.m. at Tattoo Guy’s place, when his roommates come home from their gig.
12. You look in mirror and think “why the fuck do I have Hello Kitty on my neck?”
You go into the bathroom and find the Tom’s of Maine toothpaste, spread some on your finger and simulate brushing.
13. You make out some more with Tattoo Guy, steal his vintage Motley Crue tee, and head home.
14. You decide to go for a bike ride. Holy crap! Someone stole your bike!
15. You call police.
16. Officer arrives. He has only gray, jumbled-up teeth, but really nice skin.


Hope this helps!

Love,

Vanessa

Let me know if this works for you!

Creative Fall

The Celts have a word for this time of year: Samhain. It's a time when you go indoors, work on crafty things, ponder existence, and listen to Led Zepelin and Etta James. My inner Celt is apparently raging, as I have made no less than five scarves in the last month. Mostly because I don't know how to make hats or socks or anything else. However, I Speak Film turned me on to a great idea to knit kitchen towels out of cotton. (She is a GREAT photographer, but also a kick-ass knitter. She taught me!) Also, today, I made a handbag from a cute skirt that just didn't look good on -- and doesn't look that good as a handbag, either, but it's at least useful. Clearly, I am no Knitting Architect, and I will never be.

Little Mary wanted a scarf the same color as her towel.

She has a very bright future as a scarf model, don't you think?

Brother Ian picked out his yarn for his scarf last April.
But it wouldn't be as good if he didn't have to wait.
This scarf has inspired envy in at least one person, and his order is in!

Now I need to get back to working on the things that really matter. The things that I want the most, what they call "blue chips." Which involve me actually working.

Pop!Tech - Day 1 - Speaking the Unspoken

Holy crap I am hyperventilating about what just happened on my way back from the opening-night cocktail party, but first here's the meaty part of the post:

I am here in Camden for my third Pop!Tech conference, where culture and technology come together, presented by today's greatest writers and thinkers. Today there were special pre-conference sessions. I went to see Joe Navarro, a retired FBI profiler, who spoke about nonverbal communications. Among the gems he imparted to us:

• We are constantly transmitting information by how we present ourselves, our
  actions, expressions and how we choose or not choose to appear.


• Our limbic brain controls our emotions and "gut" reactions; thinking is not involved.


• Pointing with one finger is one of the most offensive things you can do. Use
  your whole hand to wave, instead.


• When we get away with something or when we get caught, we do the "tongue jut," ala McCain after the last debate.


• The most honest part of anyone's body is his or her feet. Watch where they are
  pointing, or not pointing. That will tell you everything. The face is the least
  reliable.


• The weak never assess or adjust their judgment if a situation or person is a threat or not a threat. Think of paranoid schizos.


• Watch what happens when you shake hands with someone. Do they back up? They need more space.


• Watch people who display their thumbs out of their pockets, like doctors or politicians or even Sarah Palin. It means, "We are not equals."


• Always frame people in blue; it is soothing and also a demonstration of power.


• If you want someone to rememeber something, present it in yellow against a blue background.


• Life is a movie, not a photograph. But you can tell a lot from a photograph.


• To establish an empathatic channel with someone, use the same word as they do.


• A head tilt is one of the most powerful comfort signals there is. Abusive
  mothers do not tilt their heads toward their children.


• You can tell which child a parent favors by his or her body language. Watch for the weaker, more relaxed leg toward the favored child.


• There is no single behavior that is indicative of deception; just look for indicators of stress. Which you can find out about in Navarro's book, "What Every Body Is Saying."

Before I tell you about how I made a geek of myself in front of one of my heroes, I will tell you that I made a new friend upon checkout, and we are suddenly BFFs and tomorrow AM we will go to yoga where he promises to teach me to fly! (It involves me balancing my pelvis on the soles of his feet.)

OK, so we're leaving the cocktail party, walking up the blustery, leafy streets of Camden, and a guy with a radical mop of hair asks us where the restauarant is and is the party still going on. I take a look and without thinking, I blurt out, "Are you Malcolm?"
"Yes I am."
I introduce myself and tell him I am a huge fan. And of course he thanks me.

This is Malcolm "Blink" and "The Tipping Point" Gladwell.

And then we told him where the party was and send him on his way. And I start hyperventilating and staggering up the street because I have read his work and it has affected me most profoundly. And then my new friend Michael and I start emailing and texting people that we just met Malcolm Gladwell as we say "holy shit" to each other over and over again.

This is going to be an amazing conference. It feels like the first day of the best semester ever. Holy crap. Malcolm Gladwell.

I am such a geek.

One of Those Things I Wish I'd Thought of ...

... but probably wouldn't have pulled it together anyway if I had.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

40licious and a half

Lesson #7, above. Lucy didn't get a say in this executive decision.

I've been 40licious for six months. It's been amazing, really, the journey to here, so far. The best way to mark it, I think, is to outline 20 things I've learned since I got to this point.

1. Sometimes you just have to let things go. Take the high road, especially when ego is involved. Mine or otherwise.
2. Sometimes you can't figure out the route to the high road until after you've passed it, and by then it's just a faraway squiggly blue line on a map.
3. Dogs and egg yolks: No.
4. PMS is kind of like some weird sneaky parasite demon that makes you do all kinds of whacked-out stuff. It's just best to schedule around it.
5. It pays to buy good face cream. I am particularly fond of Kiehl's Abyssine Cream SPF 23 for day, and Dr. Andrew Weil for Origins Plantidote serum and cream before bed.
6. It's OK to tell your shrink you're not coming back. Very liberating, actually.
7. In terms of furniture, less is more. I got rid of my rugs and love how my floor looks now.
8. Try something new that makes you uncomfortable. I took an art class last weekend from the lovely Tinkerbellian Annie Wharton and I feel like my life has changed. She unlatched a new door for beauty and truth. Now if I can just nail F on the guitar ...
9. Good work follows you and pays you back when you least expect it.
10. Family is everything. There is nobody I'd rather be with, now that I understand the proper dosage. They have the basic dossier on you and love you all the more for it.
11. Better to spend $3,000 on an amazing trip that you'll remember for the rest of your life than do some stupid stock gamble with the money.
12. Never, ever trust your instincts on the stock market.
13. There is an intrinsic irony in making jam: Fruit ripens at the hottest time of the year, and you have to be standing over a hot stove for hours to make it. There's really no way out of that one.
14. I would put my hard-earned principles aside if it meant that someone else would be deeply, deeply hurt. Kind of like the Dalai Lama would do.
15. You will really only eat half as much popcorn as you think you will. Just get the small.
16. There is great liberation in not having to be right all the time.
17. There is power in stillness and silence.
18. When you love a book or find it particularly useful, buy at least five copies of it and give it away.
19. It costs about $50,000 to adopt a child, $20,000 to go through the state system and get one that's hard to place, and $100 (or more if you serve good tequila) to throw a last-man-standing dinner party.
20. Republicans can be cute and funny and charming and even big-hearted. In fact, this whole political labeling thing makes absolutely no sense. One of my dearest friends, who considers herself an "R," is socially liberal but fiscally conservative. I consider myself a "D," and I am socially liberal and fiscally conservative. So, um ... I guess we're voting for the same person.

Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

Surrender to the Freckle

I write so much about other people, that it's sort of a shock to see when someone writes about me. It's happened a few times, like when my play was up in Seattle, and I had all kinds of adoring journalists calling me for the lowdown on the body-image thing. I think I was professionally happiest then.

I've recently come upon my ex-boyfriend's blog. I hold my breath with a voyeuristic caution, reading about his life now, since there's barely been a word between us since we split last fall. I'm surprised he frequently mentions whiskey, because I could hardly get him to drink a glass of cabernet with me. I wonder who the fresh-faced young things are in the pictures under the "friends" section of his MySpace page. (22? Honestly???!!!) I am reminded of his talent and beauty with words sung and written, and regret that I didn't get to see more of that when he lived here. His 20-second interpretation of our 12 or so years, weaving in and out of each other's lives:

I was working as a dinner host and a night auditor at the time, at a Hotel across town called The Red Bull Inn. It was owned by Paul Gimbel who was described to me years later, by the mother of one of my life's great loves, as the black sheep of the Gimbel family. Gimbel of Macy's and Gimbel's that is. The very same. Colleen had dated him back in the late Fifties when she was a globe hopping, jet setting, prima ballerina of the Milan stage and a fledgling film star who had managed to land a couple of small dancing roles in American films by Italian directors. This was before she met the strikingly handsome Patrick McGrady and married him and gave birth to a beautiful daughter, Vanessa, with whom I was to fall impossibly in love at first glance many years later when I witnessed her reading Dorothy Parker poems at an open mic in Port Townsend Washington. Life is just a little peculiar sometimes, no? I was to spend most of my thirties and half of my forties in love and incompatible with this vision in red hair and black leather, with porcelain skin, legs up to her hips and bodacious curves impossible to fathom without the sound of your own blood rushing through your ears. Truth be told, I love her still…as long as we're not in the same room. Every Italian boy surrenders to the freckle at some point in his life.

Sigh. And I think every freckle has surrendered to the horn of Fortuna ... at least a couple times.

40licious Hall o' Fame: Fun With Pop Rocks

The link isn't quite working directly; search for "Liquid Muse" on the site and pick "alcohol-free cocktails." You'll be glad you spent that extra four seconds.

I hereby initiate another rockin' person into the 40licious Hall o' Fame: My good friend Natalie Bovis-Nelsen, aka The Liquid Muse. There are several reasons I could have previously put her right in there. She's clasped on so tight to her mission to make a living as a cocktail writer/blogger and it's actually happening for her. She held her own with those icky pigs on the Tom Leykis show yesterday. But what really tipped the balance, for me, was that she invented a drink featuring Pop Rocks.

I remember hearing that Mikey died from ingesting, simultaneously, Pop Rocks and Coke. If I ever decide to off myself, that's how I'm going down. And don't try to stop me.

Artifact: Of Writing and Forgetting

When you've worked as a writer, by the time you hit 40licious, you've likely stopped and started about 100 projects. Thirty years ago they would have been written longhand on yellow paper, dissolved or crumpled and tossed. Now they sit, forgotten and perfect as they day they were created, on my external hard drive. I found this by accident and can't for the life of me remember writing it. What was it for? The only thing I can tell you is that it's all true. And that I have no idea what to do with it now, though I kind of like it.

Look at them, their faces pressed up against the glass. Four minutes. They can’t wait four fucking minutes. There’s Frank, woozy old Yalie. That guy hasn’t done a thing in 30 years except tell everyone he went to Yale. And drink. He can still do the puzzle, though, like it was nothing. All downs or all across, he switches every day. That kills me. How the hell does he know that Clytemnestra’s sister was Helen? The longest I’ve ever seen him take was 12 minutes, and that was because he was distracted. The day his son died.

I’m not opening up. I’ve still got two minutes. Two minutes, people, and I still need to program all the songs in the jukebox. So if you don’t like Earth Wind and Fire, put your own goddamn quarters in there. That’s what it’s for. I’ve got plenty of change. I don’t see you. I don’t see you, Laura, pretending to rummage around for something in your purse. A lipstick. A lottery ticket. Papers and that roll-your-own tobacco.

And Doug. Sweet Doug. He’s the last real hippie in New York. For real, those are actually clothes he still has from the 70s. Uh oh, he’s got a brown bag with him again. Yesterday he brought me a sandwich made with hummus. He ground the garbanzos himself. He hasn’t cut his hair since 1982, but they made him, when he went to work for the city, fixing boilers in public schools. That job lasted exactly 72 hours. All that hair, gone, what a waste. Doug, you’re going to have to wait until I line up all the chairs. Like that.

30 seconds. Last wipe down the bar. It’s good, these clean towels, white, bleach. Mmm. In 11 hours, this whole stack will be gray, stinking like beer and pineapple juice and melted ice cubes coated with cheap scotch. Cheap scotch is like Listerine. I will never understand that. At least drink rum. That tastes good.

A big ring of keys and a turn of the lock. Happy hour has officially begun.

They take their regular places, backs to the window, front to me, like waiting puppies. Would it kill you to come in at 5:02 some day? Just for once? To sit at a different chair? To maybe go to Bahama Mama’s across the street? They have happy hour too, you know. No, not these people. They like their bars straight up. Old. Irish. Plain. Booze and wood and a big mirror. I guess you really don’t need much more than that for drinking.

It could be worse. I could have to work Arnie’s shift every night. He’s got the yuppie crowd. Somehow it became cool to hang out in old man dive bars. The men in dark suits, women with frosted blond hair, French nails, leather briefcases. All laughing so hard in their little circle of friends, desperately ignoring each other. The money’s better at night, that’s for sure. But the shit you have to put up with. I helped Arnie on st. Patrick’s day, all these drunk firefighters. An inch of beer on the floor. When I gave the tab to one guy he told me he’d pay it only if I let him feel me up. Fucker. He was drunk enough that I could throw him out before he knew what hit him, they started calling me Terminator after that. I guess it’s all shit, just a different brand.

Laura and Doug and Frank all sit at their regular seats. They face away from the window, maybe they wither up if they get too much sun. Rum and Coke for Laura. Well scotch and splash of water for Frank. Tequila and orange juice for Doug. In a year, it hasn’t changed, except for the time when Laura won a judgment against her landlord. She ordered champagne cocktails for all of them. Frank drank his scotch anyway.

These three are the most regular. There are others, maybe they come in a couple times a week, a couple times a month. Like Brad, the Heat Seeker, we named him. He used to play lead guitar. Now he’s a music tutor for prep school kids. Amstel Light, “to keep his girlish figure,” he says. Sometimes he’ll leave with a woman, but he’ll never come in with anybody. He works it. Makes sure they know that he knows Dick Clark. He’s a little bit orange from tanning.