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day was fine, sunny and not too warm, and the best way to learn a city was on foot. She set off toward the Brooklyn Bridge, moving quickly, following the New York habit of walking with the lights and jaywalking when traffic allowed it. Her knees firmed by the time she climbed the ramp to the pedestrian path of the bridge, but the quiver in her thighs and the slick heat between them didn’t subside with movement.
    Occasionally she turned back to study the skyline, One World Trade Center rising over lower Manhattan. Trish could tell her which banks and investment houses occupied which building on Wall Street, point out Goldman Sachs and the space where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. The Brooklyn Bridge loomed over her, a silent presence she hadn’t quite come to terms with. The bridge, while unique, lacked the Golden Gate Bridge’s stately grandeur and charm. She’d walked that bridge hundreds of times, fascinated by how San Francisco changed with the weather. Fog, sunshine, cloudy days, fog, rain, occasional sleet, and more fog. Alcatraz in the middle of the bay, sailboats tacking with the wind, Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid, and the Marin Headlands rolling to the west. The light. Sunlight filtered through the Bay Area’s micro-ecosystems and diffused over the city in a way she’d never seen anywhere else in the world. Not Paris. Not Rome. Not New York.
    This wasn’t her city yet, not like San Francisco was. She found New York unapproachable, and only time would tell whether a little shoe leather and a lot of noshing her way through neighborhoods would make the city her own.
    She may not be able to find much of anything in Manhattan yet, but once she crossed the bridge she could find her way to the apartment she shared with Trish. She unlocked the yellow door to the building and clomped up the stairs.
    â€œShoes!” their downstairs neighbor called from behind her door on the second floor.
    â€œSorry, Mrs. Hyland!” Sarah called back. She paused and slipped her clogs off, picked them up by the heels, and continued up the stairs to the top-floor apartment she shared with Trish. Inside the door she wiped her bare feet on the mat, dropped her clogs and messenger bag just inside the door, and heaved a sigh of relief.
    â€œTwenty pounds of brown rice, another twenty of white, we need limes . . . Do we need limes?” Trish muttered from her chair near the window. She cast a quick glance at Sarah. “Thank God you’re home. Help!”
    â€œNo problem. Let me shower first, okay?”
    â€œI’ll open some wine.”
    Sarah took a quick shower and dressed in yoga pants and a thin hoodie, then joined Trish in the living room. The East River glittered in the setting sun, and the Manhattan skyline rose in the distance, untouchable and arrogant.
    Trish was curled up in one of the enormous squashy chairs facing the windows, iPad, Mac, and phone spread around her, with the more old-fashioned tools of a cookbook and a legal pad opened haphazardly on the table. She sipped a glass of white wine and looked Sarah over.
    â€œDid you . . .”
    With a sigh Sarah settled into the other chair and wiggled her toes. The view of Manhattan was intimidating, the sun setting behind the skyline making it seem very far away. “I did,” she said.
    â€œIt was ridiculous. Crazy. What were you thinking? You barely know him. Two meals at the truck and you go back to his place? Why?”
    Despite the rapid-fire questions, there was no judgment in Trish’s tone, just idle curiosity and a healthy dose of amusement. “Because he asked, with a self-deprecating sense of humor that appealed to me, and I wanted to. Besides, I’ve been here three weeks, and in that time I’ve met two guys you picked up at the bar in the kitchen, scarfing down Greek yogurt on muesli and reading
the Economist
. One of them had to look at the address