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This Saturday in mid-October, sunlight blazing as if overhead there's an immense fiery eye opening wider, wider, wider. What I've been seeking, today I will find. I know! Mrs. G. is one of many shoppers on Madison Avenue this afternoon, most of them women, women of all ages though predominantly Mrs. G.'s age, and here and there are quite young girls, Meredith's age, all of them walking purposefully, their faces glowing with hope. Dior, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Rikki, Shanghai Tang, Krill. Glittering display windows, subdued interiors, mannequins posed for contemplation like iconic statues at which shoppers stare. Mrs. G. pauses, staring. Into Prada, into Kizia, into Froufrou. Sometimes she isn't certain if it's her own reflection she sees, or an actual mannequin, a stranger. She's searching still for the perfect frock for Mr. G.'s youngest niece's wedding, unless it's the perfect black-silk suit for Mr. G.'s eldest brother's funeral? And she's looking, too, with girlish anticipation, for the perfect gift for Meredith, her daughter, who will be fifteen on November 8. (Where do beautiful Meredith and her girlfriends shop? Not Madison Avenue like their mothers but miles away downtown in gritty SoHo in shops with matte-black walls and hammered-tin ceilings out of which hard-metal rock blares and the salesgirls speak a dialect Mrs. G. would not recognize.)
Mr. G. is away on business this weekend in Australia, unless it's Saudi Arabia, or Taiwan. The twelve-room penthouse is deserted except for the Marias chattering away in their bird-speech Mrs. G. can't comprehend, and can't trust. Talking about me, laughing at Free. I know! On Madison Avenue, in this familiar territory, Mrs. G. can breathe. Lights up a cigarette with trembling fingers, smoking on the street isn't (yet!) forbidden, is it? She's a happy woman again, an eager woman, a woman-witha-mission. The scissor-cut hair gives her a certain confidence, and the beautiful raw-silk suit, and new vanilla-leather three-inch-heel sandals. Why do they say I have no sense of fashion, the bastards! Working her way down from 86th Street, like a pilgrim except not on her knees. This imaginary city, yet its inhabitants believe it's real, and a privilege to live here. Mrs. G. is thinking suddenly that she will not telephone Mr. G. this weekend. Let...