I treasured the tiny routines that figured into the sum of the workday. Buying my lunch, hearing the guy behind the deli counter announce, “Here she is, Miss No Liverwurst,” since each day I gazed longingly at the liverwurst, so fat it looked ready to burst out of its skin, then never ordered it. I liked deciding whether to drive through Central Park, across the Upper East Side, and over the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge or up through East Harlem and take the Triborough. My ritual of choosing between the news on NPR or “The Big 80s” on my new satellite radio was a comforting self-delusion that I could let in as much of the world as I wanted. It pleased me that when I drove into the studio parking lot in Astoria, I got the security guard’s unsolicited report on Dani Barber’s mood: “Hungover and mean,” he’d say. Or, “She smiled. Must have found a new drug.” Or, “Dangerously quiet.” I loved getting out and about, being part of the city I was born in. The deadest period of my life was when I was writing Spy Guys.
