Page 69 of Songs of Summer

“Do we have time for a little drive-by tour before we get the cake?”

“Sure, what do you want to see? The shops on Madison Avenue, the Museum Mile?”

“No, no. I want to seeyourUpper East Side. Where you went to school, hung out, that kind of thing.”

Matt sat up straight and leaned into the wheel, clearly pumped for a trip down memory lane—or up Park Avenue, as the case may be.

He paused at the corner of East 82nd and Park and pointed up to his childhood apartment. The uniformed doorman came out, thinking they were stopping to drop someone or something off. Recognizing him, Matt jumped from the car.

“Anthony!”

“Matty!” They went in for an exaggerated shake. “How’s mom?” the doorman asked.

“Getting married tomorrow, if you can believe it. This is my friend Maggie.” He motioned to the passenger seat, and Maggie rolled down the window to wave hello.

“I’m giving her a little tour of the old neighborhood.”

“Oh. See that planter?” Anthony pointed to the corner. “That’s where Matty puked the first time he drank too much.”

They laughed, and the two leaned in for a quick embrace goodbye. Matt got back in the car, turned on East 89th Street, and pulled up in front of the Dalton School. Even Maggie had heard of it.

“Oh my God. I went to college with a girl who went here. Becca Green, do you know her?”

“Look at you playing Jewish geography! I’m gonna buy you a babka at the bakery. Have you tasted babka yet, you newish Jewess?”

“Nope,” she laughed.

“Ah. You have so much to learn—in baked goods alone. Becca Green was two years ahead of me. I had a big crush on her.”

“Yeah, well, she was gorgeous, and so sophisticated, who wouldn’t?”

“A lot of the girls were that sophisticated.”

“Like inGossip Girl?”

“There were a handful in each grade that were over-the-top Serena and Blair level. A few girls from each private school traveled in a pack, armed with their parents’ Amex cards, going to all the hottest places. My group was more erudite. We all thought we were brilliant. Until we got to college and found out we were just overeducated.”

“I can’t even imagine growing up here.”

“I went to college in California, you know, to get away from all of it. In the end, I couldn’t get back fast enough. Though lately I’m such a nomad because of work, it seems ridiculous that I live in the most expensive neighborhood in the most expensive city when I could live anywhere.”

They turned on Madison Avenue and Matt pointed to a restaurant called Three Guys.

“You see that place? We ate there so much that my mother called it the west wing. We had an account. Whenever my parents worked late, I would sit at the counter under a fresco of Mykonos with a book and a burger and fries. The book was a prop, really. I would chat with the old Greek waiters and the chef the whole time. They were awesome.”

“My parents were always home for dinner,” Maggie countered, “but we did live above the store till I was ten, so you know, no big commute.”

He turned again down a side street and stopped in front of the famous steps at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The place was huge—like four blocks long. She waited for him to get all erudite on her. Instead, he pointed. “You see that bench?”

She nodded.

“That’s where Sophie Michaelson let me feel her up for the first time. ‘Let me’ may be an exaggeration. She took my hands and placed them on her boobs. I was twelve. I just satthere twisting them like they were the hot and cold knobs on a shower faucet.”

He laughed at himself, and Maggie laughed with him.

He looked at his phone.

“We gotta get to the bakery,” he warned. “There’s going to be mad traffic on the way back out to the beach.”

---