“Some things never change,” Libby sighs, a wistfully happy sound that folds over me like sunshine.
Mom’s theory was that youthful skin would make a woman more money (true in both acting and waitressing), good underwear would make her more confident (so far, so true), and good books would make her happy (universal truth), and we’ve clearly both packed with this theory in mind.
Within twenty minutes, I’ve settled in, washed my face, changed into fresh clothes, and booted up my laptop. Meanwhile, Libby put half her stuff away, then passed out on the king bed we’re sharing, her dog-eared copy of Once in a Lifetime facedown beside her on the quilt.
By then I’m desperately hungry, and it takes six more minutes of googling (the Wi-Fi is so slow, I have to use my phone as a hot spot) to confirm that the only place that delivers here is a pizza parlor.
Cooking isn’t an option. Back home, I eat fifty percent of my meals out, and another forty percent come from a mix of takeout and delivery.
Mom used to say New York was a great place to have no money. There’s so much free art and beauty, so much incredible, cheap food. But having money in New York, I remember her saying one winter as we window-shopped on the Upper East Side, Libby and I hanging on to her gloved hands, now that would be magical.
She never said it with bitterness, but instead with wonder, like, If things are already this good, then how must they be when you don’t have to worry about electric bills?
Not that she was in the acting business for the money (she was optimistic, not deluded). Most of her income came from waitressing tips at the diner, where she’d set me and Libby up with books or crayons for the length of her shift, or the occasional nannying job lax enough to let her tote us along until I was about eleven and she trusted me to stay home or at Freeman Books with Libby, under Mrs. Freeman’s watch.
Even without money, the three of us had been so happy in those days, wandering the city with street cart falafel or dollar pizza slices as big as our heads, dreaming up grand futures.
Thanks to the success of Once in a Lifetime, my life has started to resemble that imagined future.
But here, we can’t even get an order of pad thai brought to the door. We’ll have to walk the two miles into town.
When I try to shake Libby awake, she literally cusses me out in her sleep.
“I’m hungry, Lib.” I jog her shoulder and she falls onto her side, burying her face in a pillow.
“Bring me something back,” she grumbles.
“Don’t you want to see your favorite little hamlet?” I say, trying to sound enticing. “Don’t you want to see the apothecary where Old Man Whittaker almost overdoses?”
Without looking up, she flips me off.
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll bring you something back.”
Hair scrubbed into a blunt little ponytail, sneakers on, I take off back down the sunny hillside toward the dirt road hemmed in by scraggly trees.
When the narrow lane finally T-bones into a proper street, I turn left, following the curving road downward.
As with the cottage, the town comes into view all at once.
One instant, I’m on a crumbling road on the side of a mountain, and the next, Sunshine Falls is spread out beneath me like the set from an old Western, tree-covered ridges jutting up at its back and an endless blue sky domed over it.
It’s a little grayer and shabbier than it looked in pictures, but at least I spot the stone church from Once, along with the green-and-white-striped awning over the general store and the lemon-yellow umbrellas outside the soda fountain.
There are a few people out, walking their dogs. An old man sits on a green metal bench reading a newspaper. A woman waters the flower boxes outside a hardware store, through whose window I see exactly zero customers.
Ahead, I spot an old white stone building on the corner, perfectly matched to the description of Mrs. Wilder’s old lending library in Once, my favorite setting in the book because it reminds me of rainy Saturday mornings when Mom parked me and Libby in front of a shelf of middle grade books at Freeman’s before hurrying across town for an audition.
When she got back, she’d take us for ice cream or for glazed pecans in Washington Square Park. We’d walk up and down the paths, reading the plaques on the benches, making up stories about who might’ve donated them.
Can you imagine living anywhere else? Mom used to say.
I couldn’t.
Once, in college, a group of my transplant friends had unanimously agreed they “could never raise kids in the city,” and I was shocked. It isn’t just that I loved growing up in the city—it’s that every time I see kids sleepily shuffling along en masse at the Met, or setting their boom box down on the train to break-dance for tips, or standing in awe in front of a world-class violinist playing beneath Rockefeller Center, I think, How amazing it is to be a part of this, to get to share this place with all these people.
And I love taking Bea and Tala to explore the city too, watching what mesmerizes a four-and-a-half-year-old and a newly three-year-old and which trappings of the city they walk right past, accepting as commonplace.
Mom came to New York hoping for the set of a Nora Ephron movie (my namesake), but the real New York is so much better. Because every kind of person is there, coexisting, sharing space and life.
Still, my love for New York doesn’t preclude me from being charmed by Sunshine falls.
In fact, I’m buzzing with excitement as I near the lending library. When I peer into the dark windows, the buzzing cuts out. The white stone facade of the building is exactly how Dusty described it, but inside, there’s nothing but flickering TVs and neon beer signs.
It’s not like I expected the widowed Mrs. Wilder to be an actual person, but Dusty made the lending library so vivid I was sure it was a real place.
The excitement sours, and when I think of Libby, it curdles entirely. This is not what she’s expecting, and I’m already trying to figure out how to manage her expectations, or at least present her with a fun consolation prize.
I pass a few empty storefronts before I reach the awning of the general store. One glance at the windows tells me there are no racks of fresh bread or barrels of old-fashioned candy waiting inside.
The glass panes are grimy with dust, and beyond them, what I see can only be described as random shit. Shelves and shelves of junk. Old computers, vacuum cleaners, box fans, dolls with ratty hair. It’s a pawnshop. And not a well-kept one.
Before I can make eye contact with the bespectacled man hunched at the desk, I push on until I come even with the yellow-umbrellaed patio on the far side of the street.
At least there are signs of life there, people milling in and out, a couple chatting with cups of coffee at one of the tables. That’s promising. Ish.
I check both ways for traffic (none) before running across the street. The gold-embossed sign over the doors reads MUG + SHOT, and there are people waiting inside at a counter.
I cup my hands around my eyes, trying to see through the glare on the glass door, just as the man on the far side of it starts to swing it open.
3
THE MAN’S EMERALD green eyes go wide. “Sorry!” he cries as I swiftly sidestep the door without any damage.
It’s not often that I’m stunned into silence.
Now, though, I’m staring, silent and agog, at the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen.
Golden-blond hair, a square jaw, and a beard that manages to be rugged without looking unruly. He’s brawny—the word pops into my head, supplied by a lifetime of picking over Mom’s old Harlequin paperbacks—his (flannel) shirt snug, the sleeves rolled up his tan forearms.
With a sheepish smile, he steps aside, holding the door for me.
I should say something.
Anything.
Oh, no, my fault! I was in the way.
I’d even settle for a strangled Hello, good sir.