She’s a beautiful, fresh-faced journalist that covers the cop beat in the Bronx, frets over the fate of displaced Sub-Saharan African tribes, forgets to eat on Saturdays (too busy getting her sea legs in the city to grab a turkey on rye). Her accent is from nowhere though her sensibility is distinctly mid-Western. The girl is strong, intrepid and possesses a deep reserve of calm. I imagine that cool to be like the Grotta Azurra in Capri—deep blue, bottomless. My tranquility and patience, meanwhile, run about as deep as a crawfish ditch in back bayou Louisiana.

I like the girl. I decide over the first glass of bad white wine that I want a daughter just like her. Of course, this means that a piece of me wants to be her but I’ve already given up on that end (I never forget to eat on Saturdays). Her apartment is in Times Square. This appeals to my James Herlihy (“Midnight Cowboy”) notions of Manhattan and blind faith—anything can happen once you’re inside the City walls. Just, for God’s sake—make the journey, breach the gates, get inside! Times Square means you live in the hum, there’s no escape, you don’t give a damn about the cache’ of TriBeCa or Clinton Street. You simply care about being part of IT—the City.

What will happen first for this raven-haired ingénue? Please, Lord, let it be a Pulitzer and not a hedge fund manager. She doesn’t eat; she falls asleep to the white lights of Broadway–give her a break, a slice of the golden pie. Dessert first, and on Saturday–wouldn’t that be nice?

What I’m cooking this Saturday night…

I like to wallow in it. And, when the real despair hits, I prefer to be in bed, staring at my white ceiling with hair pin cracks, listening to the doors of my apartment building open and close, open and close. I can differentiate between the groaning hinges and hollow bang of the basement door (remember, I’m the garden apartment) to the sturdy, more definitive thump of my neighbor’s door across the hall. Upstairs, they fight and play the guitar and watch Jackie Chan movies and only open the door for the sushi delivery man— unfortunately, I know all of this. Finally, there’s the slam. I sleep.

Feelings of failure and loneliness do a deceptively simple two-step with my thoughts and dreams. What’s real? What’s conjured up by a hyper-active imagination? The final scene is always this: my lease is up, I have to move on—down and out of my little apartment, the first place in my adult life that I called “home.” The super of ___ Sullivan Street is upset that I’ve painted my walls a shade of café au lait, “Pinte o pague,” he says, long ago having given up communication in English. So I have to pay him or paint though I don’t have any of it—no brushes, no paint, no thousand dollars in cash, no real friends to help cover up the walls, conceal any proof of my previous existence.

But, somehow, I get it done. I paint the walls by myself. I carry the furniture out to the curb one piece at a time. I wrap and then stack the family photos—the pictures of the little pigeon-toed girl that had been given so much… and, then, did what? Even though I failed, I failed on my own terms and picked up all of the little pieces. I didn’t leave a mess for somebody else, I didn’t run out and leave someone else to contend with my four painted walls.

Optimism sets in. I have no place to live but one night left in the city. Who will I meet to change the course of my fortune? Which lovely little boite will play host to my final evening in the city? Will I go to “Raoul’s” for a dirty martini or sit at the “Cub Room’s” high wooden bar and sip the season’s first rose’?

I smile and move ahead in the twilight air because I have to.

“It is easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends. I can remember now, with a clarity that makes the nerves in the back of my neck constrict, when New York began for me, but I cannot lay my finger upon the moment it ended, can never cut through the ambiguities and second starts and broken resolves to the exact place on the page where the heroine is no longer as optimistic as she once was.”

And, may I ask, when does y’all’s optimism begin to fade?

(My thoughts to follow…)

Candace Bushnell, Stephanie Klein, Jessica Cutler… and Belle? That’s right. According to today’s New York Post article, PRIMETIME.COM, we’re the ladies filling up the evening television slots with our tales and tell-alls about Big City life. Producers are eyeing our works–and our lives–for dishy, sexy, universally appealing television shows and silver screen adaptations.

Who would I cast as my feisty and determined yet naive and vulnerable blonde protagonist? The ultimate steel magnolia–Reese Witherspoon, of course!

After y’all check out Mandy Stadtmiller’s fun “New York Post” article, skip on over to (what will soon be) my new home: Belleinthebigapple.com. Stick with me, y’all–I promise we’re goin’ fun places…

An excerpt from a past life, my future novel…

What in God’s name had I been thinking? I was twenty-five years old. I had to face facts: being with a man R.’s age was fast, bland, uninspired— I would always be the fresh catch of the day that had been flash-fried instead of slow roasted…

Chef and champagne have been my distractions…

A post to come later in the day…