My apartment in New York was on the southern edge of Williamsburg, back when rents were almost reasonable. I had a view of the bridge into Manhattan, strung up with lights like a Christmas tree. I had painted my living room in red candy cane stripes. When Stephanie came over to visit shortly after I moved in, she said, “You’re never leaving this place.” And I was so proud to have impressed her for a change.
Paris had been devastating, but also a onetime deal. A private disaster is easy to rewrite for public consumption. “How was Paris?” / “Amazing!” And people nodded, because how else would Paris be? Besides, I had better views in front of me. Here I was. I was here. A writer in New York: the phrase that compensated for nearly anything.
Dreamers plan their lives long before they live them, and by the fall of 2005, mine was finally catching up to the script. The details were a little off. I wasn’t 23 when I moved to the big city; I was 31. I wasn’t exactly writing Catcher in the Rye. I was writing hack profiles and advance blurbs for Lego Star Wars: The Video Game. And I wasn’t nestled in the tree-lined Valhalla of literary Brooklyn. I was scraping by in a borough where razor wire was giving way to ironic T-shirts.
But I loved my big, rambling apartment. The owner of the building was a small Dominican woman in her late 50s, with a tight bun and a stern demeanor. She spoke little English, and I refused to speak Spanish with her, because I didn’t want to cede what little comfort zone I had, so we were reduced to curt nods in the hallway. Her entire family lived in the building. Her heavyset single daughter, who stopped by to discuss noise complaints. (I had a few.) Her sketchy son, who smoked on the front steps while talking on a cell phone. Her six-year-old twin granddaughters, with heads of kinky curls.
“Is your cat home?” one of them would ask from the hallway, lisping through her gap teeth. This question would crack me up. As though sometimes my cat were at work.
My first year was mostly good. Promising. And having finally settled the bullet points of my life, I was ready to finesse the details. Less furniture pulled from curbs. Better skin care products. A little personal improvement.
I had this great idea: I should learn to cook. My mother had tried to teach me a few times in my early 20s, but I blew her off. Women don’t need to know this stuff anymore, I told her, like she was instructing me in stenography.
But 12 months in the city had made me question this tack. Too much of my paycheck was being handed over to deliverymen. I also hoped cooking might forge a healthier connection to food and drink, which I badly needed. How had I determined that not learning a skill was a position of power?
My cooking experiments began with promise. Me, in that empty kitchen, slicing and dicing like a mature, grown-up adult person. I would open a bottle of wine to enjoy while I did prep work. But wine made me chatty, so I would call friends back in Texas. And I’d get so engrossed in the conversation, I didn’t want to cook anymore. I’d lose my appetite after the second glass, and I’d bundle the food and stuff it back into the refrigerator, trading asparagus spears for half a dozen Parliaments by the window.
When the bottle was drained, I’d slip out to the bodega and pick up two 24-ounce Heinekens. The equivalent of four beers, which I had titrated to be the perfect amount: just enough to get me to the edge without pushing me over. (The only recipe I knew.) Around midnight, when hunger came on like a clawing beast, I’d throw some pasta in a pot of boiling water, slather it with butter and salt, and devour it while I watched cable. Didn’t Wolfgang Puck start this way?
My friend Stephanie actually married a chef from the Food Network. Bobby. They lived in an elegant Manhattan apartment—two stories, with a standing bar and a pool table upstairs. Visiting her was like stepping into the Life You’ve Always Wanted, but the thing about Stephanie was, she wanted to share it. She paid for our dinners, floated my cab fare, and made the world lighter with a million other tiny gestures that had nothing to do with money.
Stephanie was in a Broadway play in the spring, and I went to the opening-night party at Bobby’s Midtown bistro, which was like taking straight shots of glamour. Naomi Watts was there. Supporting actors from Sex and the City. I stood in line for the bathroom behind Bernadette Peters (from Annie!), and I had a cigarette with the guy who starred in the second season of The Wire. I texted a friend, “I just bummed a smoke from Frank Sobotka!” In our circle, this was like splitting an ice-cream sundae with Julia Roberts.