My New York Minutes - Chapter 4

More Angels and Sayonara

My friend Dorothy came to visit me from Delaware. I know her from nursery school, although we didn't actually become friends until first grade. In Delaware Preschool she was 'the girl with the hair'. I coveted her hair when I was four years old and grew mine long so I could look like her. We were in different grades. Then I got held back in first grade and we both ended up in Mrs. Conaway's first grade class at River Road Elementary School. Our dads both worked for Du Pont. Her mom taught piano lessons to my little sister. She lived a few blocks from me. I sort of stole her boyfriend. I still feel badly about it but she's never given me a moment's grief about it, which is more than I deserve. This is Dorothy after we'd already been friends for years. The picture doesn't do her hair justice.


She dated this guy when we were in High School. His name was Timmy and he looked a little like Ashton Kutcher. So cute. They broke up - well they both went off to different colleges so that was that. When Dorothy came to New York, we took the subway up to Columbia University and looked him up. But he wasn't there - he'd gone home for the weekend. We left my number.

Then we took a walk. We came to Morningside Park. I thought we could cut through the park to get back to the subway. Just as we were turning into the park a Frenchman in a beret who looked and sounded like Pepe Le Pue, jumped out of a cab in front of us.

"Non! Non!", he said, shaking a finger at us. "Don't go in there! Very dangereuse! Very bad! Tres mal!"

He blocked our path into the park. He was about a foot shorter than I was, but he was insistent.

"Okay" I said. I wasn't sure I should trust this kook. But I never had been in Morningside Park. Dorothy beamed at him. "Thank you" she smiled. He got back in his cab. Still smiling, she waved until he drove away.

Later, Timmy told me we never would have come out alive. Maybe Morningside Park has gotten better. New York has gotten better. In the 70's it was in bad shape, bankrupt and getting a bailout from Jimmy Carter. Sometimes the trash on 83rd street wasn't picked up for a week. Huge steaming piles of garbage. But for me, New York was getting better quickly. I felt more capable, more grown-up, as I zipped around New York on the subway. Some days, there were butterflies in my stomach just wondering what that day would bring. From all the go-sees, I knew New York like the back of my hand. I was starting to feel like I belonged, like it was my city.

Timmy called my number on Monday after Dorothy was back in Delaware. "I remember you" he said. We went out. We fell in love, briefly, in an 18-year-old kind of way. I hung out at his dorm at Columbia. Everyone there was so smart. He had a roommate, Dan, who sat under a corona of brown curls smoking from an elaborate hookah, expounding on existential philosophy like a young Allen Ginsburg. I'd like to think that now I'd ask my best friend if it was okay if I dated her former beau. But then, the very idea that there could be such a boy. Such a cute boy. That I could like him. And he could like me back. It was a miracle of inconceivable proportions. Thank you, Dorothy. You're the best.

After I'd been dating Timmy for a few months, Stewart Models told me I was going to Japan. It's one of the ways they got young models started in those days. Japan used all western models and agencies would send the new ones for a few months to gain experience and pictures for their portfolios. As usual, I was excited and scared. I got a passport and a visa. I met the two other models I would be living with, Brenda and Sharon. Sharon was from Wilmington Delaware like me and Brenda was from New Jersey. Sharon said I could ride with her and her boyfriend to the airport. So on the morning we were to leave, I stepped out on the sidewalk on First Avenue and tried to hail a cab. I'd never done this before. I had 2 huge suitcases without wheels that my parents had lent me for the trip. I could barely lift them. It was January and the wind as howling down First Avenue. I don't recall being that cold, ever. Before or since. No cabs would stop. I kept trying different blocks, dragging my suitcases, my hands frostbitten. After about half an hour, I was late. Still no cabs would stop. I sat down on one of my steamer trunks and started to sob. I wasn't going to make it on time and Stewart would send me back to Delaware. A tiny white-haired old woman came up to me. She wasn't wearing a hat or scarf but appeared unaffected by the cold. About the size of an 8-year-old, she peered into my red face. "What's the matter, dear?" she asked. I sobbed something about going to the airport and getting a cab and I was late and my ride would leave without me, etc, etc. "Oh" she said. She walked into the street and stood in front of a cab and held her hand out in a 'halt' command. She walked around the side of the cab. There was a protracted conversation with much gesturing on both parts. Finally, she came back to me smiling sweetly. "He'll take you" she said. "And if your friend has left, he'll just take you right to the airport".

"Oh thank you" I gushed, so relieved. I got in the cab and turned to wave to her, but the street was empty. I was off to Japan. Here's me and Brenda at McDonald's. The french fries were awful.