Florence Gordon Read Online Free PDF

had become a cop. Her theory was that after all these years, they still couldn’t really accept it.
    “So you’re here for how long?” Florence said.
    “Long as I want. I’ve got twenty-two years of vacation days to use up.”
    “They let vacation days roll over? You’ve got a good union.”
    “Yep.”
    “And you’ve seriously never taken a vacation in twenty years? That can’t be right.”
    “He took a week a year,” Janine said. “You could set your watch by it.”
    “You never wanted to take some real time off and go somewhere?”
    “I did,” Daniel said. “I did want to. I kept meaning to stop by at a travel agent’s.”
    “And then there were no travel agents anymore,” Emily said.
    “Well, all right. So you’ve finally gotten out of your rut. How do you like being back in New York?” Florence said.
    Daniel slowly finished his drink and put the glass down.
    “I couldn’t be more thrilled.”
    There was an awkward pause, and then Emily said, “He’s acting like he’s joking, but he’s not. We’re all very excited. We’re happy to be in New York, and we’re super happy to see you.”
    She spoke with an obvious sincerity that Janine found touching. Like every other member of her generation, Emily had been infected with the virus of irony, yet she remained capable of emotional directness. She didn’t feel the need to look cool at all times.
    “We are,” Janine said.
    Florence smiled approvingly, probably more because of their affection for New York than because of their affection for her. She was like the ambassador of Manhattan. She seemed to believe that a life that took place elsewhere couldn’t truly be called life. She probably held that it was all well and good for Parisians to live in Paris and Londoners to live in London, but she could not comprehend how any thinking person from the United States could choose to live anywhere other than New York.
    Florence looked at Janine steadily. She looked like someone examining a bill to see if it was counterfeit.
    “I don’t think this one is going back home,” Florence said. “Watch out, boy.”
    Janine felt guilty, as if Florence had seen through her.
    At that moment, the worst possible moment, Janine’s cell phone went off. It was in her purse, which was on the floor next to her; it was buzzing and throbbing and writhing. Really it was just on vibrate, but it seemed to be unusually buoyant just then.
    “You won’t want to go back either,” Florence said to Emily. “I can see it. Where are you going to college again?”
    “That remains to be seen.”
    “No it doesn’t. Obviously you’ll be transferring to Barnard or NYU.”
    “Why do you think?”
    “For the same reason your mother wants to stay. Both of you hunger for the life of the mind.”
    “I hunger for the life of the mind,” Daniel said mildly, as his second drink arrived.
    “You,” Florence said.
    Janine’s cell phone had gone back to sleep, but now it shook one more time, trembling with joy about having taken a message. She was hoping that she wasn’t blushing.
    “Isn’t your father supposed to be here?” Florence said.
    “I spoke to him yesterday,” Daniel said. “He said he’d be here. With bells on. Whatever the hell that means.”
    “He probably can’t tear himself away from his work. You know Saul. His pen has not yet gleaned his teeming brain.”
    This was a not-nice thing to say, as Saul had evidently gleaned his teeming brain a long time ago. He still called himself a writer, but he hadn’t published anything of significance in twenty years. Though he always claimed to be working, though he always claimed to be in contact with “two or three publishers” who were interested in his work, nothing was ever finished, nothing ever appeared.
    “Let’s just order,” Florence said. “The smart money never waits for Saul to show up.”
    After the waiter went away, Emily said, “So you’re working on a memoir?”
    “How did you know