Today, and Elaine calling me this morning telling me of her adventures in the Health Clinic, trying to scourge free condoms under the unconvincing guise of inquiring about meningitus shots. She was only able to swipe three, thus counting her mission as a failure. Elaine, you see, needs considerably more than that.

The library, she organizing shelves while I lolled back and forth in a black chair listening to her tales, head dipping back, forward, smiling. Her troubles with Carlos, and our plans to visit a sex shop on South Beach to get a present for Froggy's birthday. Coffee at Starbuck's (delightfully lukewarm and swimming with whipped cream) lying back rather awkwardly yet sublimely on a long chair staring through the glass window and through the glass window again at the library front watching people swim to and fro through the gate, Elaine confessing she had not finished Freakonomics and me telling her what she missed.

Lunch with Froggy, then, in Sbarro's, where I told him of Carrie's woes and joined somewhat sadly by Mars, who stared with his small eyes but was surprisingly palatable. Discussion of birthdays - what to get for his, what he should get for mine, and his absolute adoration for his cats that I had been hitherto unaware of. Froggy's kind eyes, but more taciturn than usual. Then to the bookstore to show me the photography books he wanted (which now I cannot remember) because he is rediculously picky, it seems, as to the gifts he wants. He laughed over a picture book of cats called, laughably, 'Pussycats' that perhaps I should also get as a gag.

Home afterwards, to Danielle who had only just risen at the tender hour of two o'clock in the afternoon. Errands (Michael's, laundry) then letters of Mayakovsky, sweet almost to the point of loathing but only just.

'Linochka my kitten, my little sun, my star...your puppy....' and 'the slanting cheekbones of the sea'.