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copies of his moronic letter, intending to send them to everyone I knew. I mailed a few, but it was far from satisfying, since none of the recipients
knew
Hayden
.
Even the SGs had never met him.
    So I added my own note to the bottom of the letter: “This is the handiwork of Hayden Briggs, beat reporter. Perhaps you people should consider raising your standards. Or your copy editors’ salaries.” It had all the hallmarks of a madwoman’s missive, but I made twenty copies and mailed one to every editor and senior writer on the
Post
masthead. Tag, who had once dissuaded actual pirates from robbing her research vessel in the South Pacific, was brave enough to post a copy in the elevator of his building.
    We waited.
    What was I expecting him to do? Call and beg me to stop? Tell me he had behaved like an ass, and that, by the way, he was sorry for writing a sub- par breakup letter and not caring enough to run it through Grammar Wizard? Apologize for not being who I wanted him to be?
    I never heard from him. Which may have been why, two years later, I was still searching for him on every subway car in New York.

THREE
    I GOT OUT AT FOURTEENTH STREET AND HEADED DOWN Seventh Avenue, observing for the millionth time how hideous the cab- clogged thoroughfare was compared to my own charmer of a block, just a few steps away. Seventh Avenue was an acne- like cluster of arriviste chain retailers—McDonald’s, Duane Reade, Radio Shack, Subway—punctuated by a struggling hair salon, a struggling smoothie shop, and the lovely, funky ship-like building of St. Vincent’s Hospital. But turning onto my cobblestoned stretch of Twelfth Street was like stepping into an English garden: old and quaint and aesthetically pleasing, and all the more lovable for its flaws and hidden histories. The two elegant Federal homes at the eastern end of the block might have looked identical to an outsider, but I knew they were occupied alternately by old- timers who’d dug in during the sixties, and the young bankers who’d recently bought in, and that a fragile peace was maintained only by a shared desire to preserve property values.
    There were two tiny Italian restaurants, the too- noisy onethat served perfect lamb ragú, and the too- oily one whose mama- and- son owners cheerfully greeted me every day in Italian. Across the street, interrupting the line of brownstones and postage- stamp front gardens, was a century- old boarding-house for young women. They still came from points west, were served two meals a day, and were not permitted to bring male visitors upstairs. In the summer, girls studying at the Joffrey found rooms there, and for two months the block was overrun by packs of giggling, Starbucks- sucking, splayed- foot ballerinas who moved in a blur of tights and torn denim shorts.
    My own building was unlike most of the others. Two four-story Greek Revivals that had been joined together by a renegade Vanderbilt now housed me, my parents, our super, and five tenants in four rented apartments. My parents had bought the place during the early seventies for a pittance, back when the Village was still considered a bohemian dump. My brother and I had learned to ride our bikes on the cracked sidewalk, and our double- wide interior staircase had been the cold-weather hangout for all our friends from P.S. 41 (the creaky banisters were sturdier than they appeared). When strangers dared to sit on our stoop, we pretended we were ghosts and wailed at them over the intercom until they left.
    Just before I reached Twelfth Street, I waved hello to the deaf woman perched on a milk crate outside the Duane Reade. She was knitting up a storm, making her handout cup look like an afterthought. I sometimes brought her coffee and squatted beside her to chat by way of pen and paper. After a full year of waving and writing, I still didn’t know her name, but because she wore her hair in a hundred tiny twists, I thought of her as Braids.
    Braids and I knew a surprising