Dear Nora, I’m afraid I’m going to be tight-lipped, I just finished that presentation, and it was positively awful. While I was speaking, the professor was flipping idly through her copy of Notes, and afterward the students just all stared at me blankly – it wasn’t that blank look in praise of sublimity either. Wow, perhaps I need a frozen yogurt with gummi bears and butterfinger bits and chocolate chip cookie dough, too. Throwing a fully loaded waffle cone off the Pasadena Bridge sounds like a great hell freezes over gesture, but do I have to remind you that you are the one that wanted to go to Art Center instead of matriculating with me over here in the Big Apple? If I have to cross another mall to find you I may just have to give up on you altogether. Consider my American Apparel days numbered…I can see the resignation letter now…(“I hereby tender my resignation with immediate effect….”)…It’s possible I may need to converse with you on this one…You’ve got some of the best exit lines around…I’ve managed to bypass that important rite of passage at every turn. Next time – if there is a next time – you can reach me by cell at the exact moment your unadulterated dairy sacrifice passes away from the line of sight. To be dialed in the second firmament’s hit. I bet it will make a satisfying splat sound. One day I hope to do the same myself. Fuck me – this optimism is strong stuff! I’ve loved your last few emails. It’s good to have your batting eyelashes and twinkle-toes back in my everydays once again. Rimbaud does this all the time: who is “hideously beautiful with an ulcer on her anus.” Sigh. You’re...

Nora, You are one of those things Proust was wrong about; that Celtic soul inhering in things is transitive, so that you might put yourself there with giggle. Thank you for the care package. Will kites or candy ever be the same? You really know how to fold an envelope. Playboy centerfolds, paper dolls. You made the roommate blush. She’ll think twice before leafing through my mail, the jack-a-lope. I’m surprised the postman didn’t keep it for his dirty little locker. You can never tell with institutions of faith. Blind date, huh? You jerk. I am forced to shift gears rapidly. I have lost my ergonomic detachment. Think of all the poems about rain that get written after a deluge. Dude! Faith is for doddering fools without a plan. We’re all just draftsmen for the divine; and unless you’ve got a concept to pitch, you’re going to be subcontracted for designs of Beelzebub’s new brimstone port-o-pots. I’d hate to see it. I really would. A blind date, really? Call me so we can deal with this. PS: Have you heard from Simon?...

Hello Nora, We haven’t communicated in ages, and it’s entirely my fault, but I would love to know how things are going. Email me your phone number because I’ve lost my phone book. Things here are much the same: taking classes (one with Art Historian Rosalind Krauss that’s quite good), attempting to absorb something of this city, since I feel like my time here is a protracted goodbye. I’m not returning next year, but I’m not sure I can say more than that, although it might have something to do with some sort of naive adolescent appeal made to me by Kerouac while I was sitting on a strange toilet in the middle of the night. I can’t avoid vulgarity, see? And I’ve always thought, probably mistakenly, that you were too good for it — by mistakenly I mean not that you’re too good for it, only that I never should have presumed to make a judgment about it one way or the other. Have you talked to Max? She was in town recently. I ran into her in the Bowery. She was wearing a chainmail dress, chatting with some art people. I guess she gave up smoking. But I thought she did that a long time ago. I asked her about you, which amused her. We should get together, she said. Her eyes still have that wide-apart look I look for in a sister. I hope that you’re doing well. Am I out of prayers? Simon...

Dear Nora, It is with no small degree of trepidation that I respond to your query. Not only has it been too long between letters (I’ve not been completely idle…working on the long, literary defense of my love for champagne, cocaine, La Perla lingerie and soccer for you to read at my funeral. Did I leave anything out? I can’t think of a better way to drop the news that I’m completely made up, that I’m nothing. “We cool?”), but written history has all of the helpless tenacity of an insect splayed on a liquid inversion of sky. And if I remember correctly from our last conversation, we were talking about finches, yolks; wondering what we do with all those nuts. You presented a few choices, and here’s what I came up with: I hate Brazil nuts; Gary Busey is too obvious an answer; the lug nut, though unappreciated if not out of fashion (in both expression and thing-ness), I must say, is not a contender. So I’m going to go with what I know and say “Deez Nuts”. To get a jump on the prosecution: so much has been misunderstood about the boy. My condition prohibits a full-scale induction of the past, and neither do I want one. If it is as you say, and your graduate work aims to save Simon from the speculation of cynics, anarchists and other smart sets of perverts and miscreants, then I will help you, as your patience stands upon the digressions of the up-late type. The boy was as much of a brother to me as I will ever be permitted to know, and public record has done nothing but disavow the filiation by making me out to be some lovesick chippie, who dips her quill...

Lost skate-key: Have you put down your copy of Franny and Zooey yet? Remember Nora, exercise restraint with highlighter use; otherwise, others will suspect you of soft thinking. It’s been a long time, maybe I should slow down. So my new place in NYC…there’s an orange wall. There are barking doggies on my answering machine to scare off the unwelcome and the shabby. Well, it’s all part of the installation that is my apartment. The doorman of Sara’s old building is a tiny Cuban man who changes out of his security uniform at the end of his shift into this incredible hat and suit ensemble. Anyway, Sara asked him if there was any discarded furniture in storage: ever since, we’ve been inundated with the sorriest collection of orphaned, wilting lamps, backless embarrassed chairs with only makeshift bungee-back to show for it, a little nightstand that used to be blue, and a wheeling TV stand that groans with old age on its rusted wheels. My posture is starting to show signs of influence. The summer is here, although I still have two papers to write. It looks like I’m going to be here for most of it, since I have no money to go anywhere, and I’m two months behind on my rent. Plus, I’ve got that invigorating job as a copy-editor for Financial Investor. I’m feeling a little bit trapped in every way. I blame Max and the long weekend visit to Paris. She insisted we spend the birthday together. She knows two things, maybe only two things about me: I’m confused about what I’m doing, and that I’ve been visited by the middle-age version of me with a pony-tail and a tropical print t-shirt, a sort of conscious Doonesbury character. She picked me...