7/ A New York Thing to Say (Story, Part II)

Thank God we had TV on the farm. I watched every show filmed in New York, especially the cop shows. I loved the cop shows. It made me mad when I found out some of them were really made in LA, with only certain scenes shot in my city.

I read every New York writer I could get my hands on. I dreamed of meeting Jimmy Breslin someday, making him laugh, and maybe sitting at a round table at the Algonquin, breathing the air that Dorothy Parker breathed. Going to New York, staying there, living there, becoming a New Yorker, meant everything to me.

Eric was the New York man. A Wall Street executive by day, he played bass at a jazz club on Wednesday nights. We met at a MIDI composition class at NYU. Eric was 40 to my 22, but that didn’t matter. It just meant he’d had more time to become as sophisticated as the beautiful city he called home. I called it home now too.