June 29th.
After our harrowing ordeal, Krista, George and I enjoyed a very sound sleep that went into the afternoon. We went to Broadway and 67th to get my AAA membership, and again, I ran into the problem of not having an address. Krista offered to have it mailed to her place, and the AAA representative tried to sell us a couple's membership upon learning we both had the same address. He asked all kinds of questions about who used the car more often, and suddenly I felt like a bourgeois wife again.
That quickly ended when we went out for cocktails at some upper West side mall restaurant. In almost any other part of the country, mall culture is an ugly American thing...but in the upper West side, an ordinary mall is anything but ordinary. The five thousand pound sculptures of fat ladies plopped in front of Smith and Hawkins really added that extra something.
It was wonderful to walk around Manhattan window shopping, drink hopping, and catching up. The first day of our reunion was anything but relaxing. Krista and I go back a long way. We have always remained very close even though we have had long periods of being out of touch. We met 18 years ago at a crappy job, Finn McCool's in Port Washington. We were bus girls, and the indignity of being accused of everything from being stupid and lazy to stealing silverware really brought us together. That was one of the most notoriously unpleasant jobs in Port Washington. Krista and I have had very similar challenges in our family lives, and even though we have done very different things with our lives since we met, on a very important level, we are very similar and will always be able to relate to each other. It is so reassuring to see her again and know that is still the case.
