Gorgeous, lazy, late-August Saturday. I’d decided that today would be a day of self indulgence and pampering. I was in dire need of a facial, so I smeared black mud on my face in the shower. Then, because I didn’t want to stay indoors all day because the sky was clear, the air was dry, and God gave us this perfect summer day to go out and be in it, I put on some makeup like a Lady and went to the Greenmarket (mainly as an excuse to leave the neighborhood, because staying in Hell’s Kitchen all day is like not leaving the house at all), and did my marketing in the open air, like I was in Paris or something. After a brief nap, I treated myself to Brunch at the Nook.

Now, 9th Avenue looks very different from inside the Nook. The Nook is a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant that seems to have been transported from a Parisian suburb at the beginning of the 20th century, oak doors and window sashes, a sidewalk bench and a planter or two of flowering ivy; and from within that frame, the tenement buildings on the other side of the avenue regain the personality and charm of their youth, passers-by become neighbors again, and the trees that grow out of the concrete remember that their ancestors were here first. This was especially true on this warm, dry, summer afternoon, when the window sashes disappeared, leaving the café open to the street, and the proprietor (a friendly young Belgian man) lounged on the bench outside his establishment and explained to me—I was sitting at the table just inside—that he believes that aliens walk the earth in the form of animals. This observation was brought on by the sight of a weathered Puerto Rican woman walking a gray-brown rabbit on a leash. Rabbits’ noses are like Jack Russell Terriers’ tails: they wigglewigglewigglewaggle at tireless hyperspeed. The Rabbit Woman wears such a serious expression, until a man walks by with a black and white baby bunny in a box. They chat for a few minutes, and he leaves the baby bunny with her. She holds the adoptee in her arm, and coos at it, as the older rabbit attempted to make friends.