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• • •<br />
The thing I loved most about New York—besides my aunt<br />
Marty—was the lack of time obsession. Nobody ate lunch<br />
at noon, dinner at six. They didn’t need to get to the drugstore<br />
before it closed at seven. New Yorkers were free.<br />
Nobody noticed what you ordered on your pizza or bought<br />
at the supermarket or wore when you didn’t have anything<br />
that wasn’t in the laundry. They didn’t ask where you lived<br />
in Middletown, then frown when you told them you lived<br />
in Odessa. They didn’t care that your house needed paint<br />
and you didn’t have a dad to do it.<br />
“Ms. Bayer, may I show you to your room?”<br />
Renata, the housekeeper, stood at the sliding glass door<br />
leading to the balcony. She must have responded to some<br />
private signal, because Aunt Marty nodded and said, “Good<br />
night, sweetheart. Uncle Richard and I need to talk to your<br />
mom.”<br />
Mom looked a little wild-eyed, but that could have been<br />
her balcony fear. I noticed she was clutching the edge of the<br />
drapes.<br />
“This was the best day of my whole life,” I said, nearly<br />
bursting into tears. Kissing everyone good night, I followed<br />
Renata to a bedroom at the far end of the giant apartment.<br />
The guest room was all white, too. With a huge window<br />
seat in a soft, robelike fabric. The bed was enormous—a<br />
giant marshmallow—and the sheets were so smooth I was<br />
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