Richard Grayson

Southside Williamsburg landlord Mr. Ratmansky, beside himself with grief over the loss of his favorite hipster tenant, calls on ace detective Claudia Cardinale for help. (PG-14)

I felt a little strange waiting by myself in the clinic while Libby was seeing the doctor. One of the few guys there, a teenage boy, said to me, “Hey, man, you done knock up yo’ fox?”

One sunny morning in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Claudia Cardinale finds a dead nun on Conselyea Street as she passes Mrs. Pizzarelli’s house.

She ended up with two hickeys, one from Kurt and one from Mr. Rapp, and felt very embarrassed by them. “But luckily,” Alice said, “Andreas doesn’t know what a hickey is.”

We shared a joint with some guy with granny glasses (who had bought the dope), two black girls and one pregnant blonde who was so enthusiastic that it was fun just watching her dig on the music.

By now the gay “sensibility” (if there is such an animal) is firmly entrenched in heterosexual culture. New York is a gay city, much the same way that it is (or was) a Jewish city.

There were celebrities all over the place: soap opera actors and the talk-show host Joe Franklin; Allen Funt of Candid Camera; Sherman Hemsley, the star of The Jeffersons; and James Day, president of NET.

I know I was the aggressor, but she didn’t resist; we are both still very attracted to each other. The air was charged with heavy sexual tension.

Josh called yesterday afternoon with very bad news: his sister is gravely ill. I said how sorry I was, and Josh said, “I’m sure you couldn’t care less.”

Each of us wants to be somebody, to be known and famous and respected in our field. But deep down, we know that very few people really make it.

Who reads anymore, anyway? Besides the best-sellers, that is? The new (or, by now, not so new) electronic media have made us writers into near-irrelevancies.

But now, she says, she feels we can never be boyfriend and girlfriend again. That doesn’t mean that when we see each other from time to time that we can’t express our affection physically.