Free Milk Glass Moon by Adriana Trigiani

stars, the heels of his black patent-leather wing tips, their glittering shoes barely touching down on the emerald-cut horizon as they dance. What could top the magnificence of this picture? Theodore is so lucky, and I am so lucky that my best friend now
lives
under these lights and inside this fabulous madness. I feel a pang of guilt, though. Etta should be here.
    “You okay, lady?” The driver looks at me in the rearview mirror.
    “I wish my daughter were here,” I tell him.
    “New York City is not going anywhere. It will always be here,” he says, and smiles. And, oddly enough, that makes me feel much better.
    A doorman in a navy blue uniform with gold epaulets greets me in the small but ornate rococo lobby of Theodore’s building on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Ninth Street in Greenwich Village. After I got out of the cab, I must have spent five minutes looking down to the arch at Washington Square Park, a four-story pale blue horseshoe that conjures the Champs-Élysées in Paris. “I just want to take one more look,” I tell the doorman as he buzzes Theodore. I go back outside and look up Fifth Avenue to where the yellow stripes in the center of the street become one giant arrow that disappears into the darkness of uptown.
    “Hey, the reunion’s inside!” Theodore says, stepping out of the elevator. “You made it!” He looks handsome. His red hair is sandy with gray. He is in great shape, as though auditioning for the dance corps at Radio City instead of directing it. He looks younger somehow. The worry creases between his eyes are gone, and it seems like the whole of him has relaxed (no small feat for a perfectionist).
    Every detail of Theodore’s new home interests me: the elevator with the shiny brass buttons; the walnut panels inlaid with 1930s Chinese foil wallpaper in the hallways; the carpet, a black and gray wool harlequin pattern (very deco). Any moment I expect Carole Lombard to peek out one of the doors looking for William Powell. We reach the door to Theodore’s apartment. The small name tag over the doorbell that reads TIPTON proves that this whole trip is not a dream.
    “What do you think?” Theodore stands in the middle of his living room, tastefully done in simple grays and off-white, very spare and neat. There are three large windows that overlook Fifth Avenue. I walk over to take in the scene below. The traffic streams toward Washington Square like a loose string of pop beads.
    “Sure beats your log cabin in Powell Valley.”
    “I wish I had the closets I had in Big Stone Gap. But the only people with big closets in this city own the buildings.” I follow Theodore down a small hallway with track lighting. “Check out the bedrooms. This one is yours.” He drops my bags in a room so small, there is only a single bed, a nightstand, and a straight-back chair. He has decorated it simply with an antique quilt made by my mother-in-law (a gift from me when he got the job at the University of Tennessee). “And this is mine.” Theodore pushes open the door to his bedroom. It looks sleek, with a platform bed and a gray slipper chair in the corner. It’s almost the size of the living room, except it overlooks Washington Square Park.
    “Oh my God” is all I can say.
    “I know, I know. Every night before I go to bed, I think of Henry James.”
    “That’s the actual spot where Dr. Sloper lived, isn’t it?” I point to a row of brownstones that faces the park.
    “Could be.”
    “Remember when we used to read
The Heiress
aloud?”
    “Yep. Your interpretation of Catherine Sloper will never be topped. Even though I am the only person in the world who heard you read it.” Theodore laughs.
    “Let’s just say I could relate to the story.” And boy, did I. The story of an oppressed daughter of a cruel father rang true to me. “Who would have ever thought you would be living in Henry James country?”
    Theodore hasn’t changed so much as evolved. He is comfortable in his skin, in this