Chapter 23: An Open Question (1986)

Loss on the Camino de Santiago.

Some people are true New Yorkers, and they’ve only been in town a month. That’s how it was for her. She never wondered if she belonged there. She just fit in immediately, flicking her cigarettes on the pavement, waving for taxis right out in the middle of the street. She moved around the city like it was her own, elbowing back the other eighteen million people, shoving her way into the subway car. She lugged her DAG bags up the 108° stairwell; cheered the chicks with dicks in the gay parades; flew along in early Sunday morning cabs, her forehead against the window, watching the long row of timed green stoplights bloom along 6^th Avenue.

She was, standing tall, 5’3”. If it helps to have a face to imagine, she looked more than a little like the actress Lili Taylor. Her eyes were hazel green. She was tuned in. Always. Aware. Hyperaware. She didn’t miss shit. She was an 8000-megawatt emotional receiver, her crowded dial picking up radiated irritation and bits of interpersonal conflict from …