At the party everyone was very young and oh so hip. The house is famous for such parties, parties attended by the very young and oh so hip. Everyone would say, Well the last time I was here, it was for this big Halloween party and . . . Actually Jimmy had asked for my phone number at one of these famous Halloween parties and, well, now I'm married, my family won't speak to me, and I'm getting ready to go abroad for the rest of my life.

But I wasn't thinking along history's tricky pathways. Goodness, I was already so tipsy on wine, singing to myself and snickering with the girls under dripping black trees whose branches had somehow caught the moon.

We went to a donut shop but I don't remember the trip. Jimmy says that I fell asleep clutching a chocolate old-fashioned donut.

Of course, as the inchivalrous scoundrel he is oft, Jimmy ate that donut.

When he disclosed this minor offense, slight indignation pricked me: it would have been nice to have eaten the fried bit of oh so sweetness on that morning-after-a-night-out, a perfect morning for riding bikes through Chinatown, fathers out with daughters playing chess in the park and that big ship in the sandbox tiered teeming with teenagers eating take-out dim sum, until arriving at the flea market, for cinnamon-perfumed churros, antique frames, an embossed collection of Washington Irving stories published in 1884, and snowy-owl-shaped toothbrush receptacles.

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