The place is almost empty. The banquettes are covered in white leather, the tables black granite, and the entire room is bathed in halogen track lighting that seems too bright. The maître d’ wears a double-breasted wool crepe jacket. There are lilies on every table.
My apartment overlooks Central Park. It’s very luxurious, very expensive, and the furniture is minimal — a black leather couch, a glass coffee table with chrome legs, an Arne Jacobsen floor lamp. A big-screen television set rests on a steel shelving unit. A David Onica painting hangs above the couch. There’s a stainless steel and glass cocktail table. A powder-blue sofa. A thirty-inch digital TV.
A construction site stretched upward into fog, cranes frozen in silhouette. Wind rattled scaffolding draped with torn mesh that glowed faintly from nearby billboards