I took Pete and Stella south this morning, and accidentally prowled through the West Village when I turned the wrong way at Christopher Street. When I am Empress of the World, my friends, 4th St. will not be allowed to intersect with 10th St. Because some things are just wrong.
We browsed through Murray's and the neighboring shops, and then picnicked at Washington Square. Pete and Stella chased each other around the playground and splashed in the fountain while I looked for the ghost of Henry James. (I spotted no specters.) How tall were those lovely plane trees, I wonder, when he was visiting Washington Square himself?
To my surprise, Elwood and our 17yo turned up there too, and we all walked over to the Strand together. In our Uber I was fretting about what might have happened to Joe, who had gone to a magic shop alone. We were speculating about how hard a person would have to work at getting eaten by bears in Manhattan, when I said, "Okay, now I'm going to obsess about why Alex didn't reply to my messages from last night after he got home from Sleep No More." (Does everybody else know that it's based on Macbeth? I did not.)
"Maybe they mistook him for Birnam Wood," I said.
"Maybe he was eaten by bears," said one of the kids.
"No," Elwood said decisively. "That's Winter's Tale."
Joe was at Penn Station on time, and Alex picked up my call at the airport to assure me that he had not been eaten by a bear either. Our train back to Chicago leaves in an hour.
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