London Is the Best City in America by Laura Dave

looking back at me. He wasn’t. His eyes were back on the road. Now I knew he was thinking about Naomi. Naomi, and maybe his new girlfriend—Cecilia or Chloe, I forgot—something with a C. Carol Ann, maybe.
    “Sorry, I was trying to figure something out about when things go wrong . . . between two people.” I shook my head, knowing I wasn’t making anything any clearer. For them or me. “Forget it. It was a dumb question,” I said.
    “Not for the back of a slam book, maybe,” Josh said.
    “Wow,” I said. “I loved slam books.”
    Berringer met my eyes in the rearview mirror, again, and started smiling. “Favorite song? Not now, of course. Then.”
    I shook my head, trying to think of it, to remember, truly, what I had loved in sixth grade, in seventh, my pen crossing neatly in someone else’s keepsake—me absolutely sure of my answers. “‘Lady in Red,’ I guess,” I said.
    “ ‘Lady in Red,’ ” Josh mumbled under his breath.
    “Favorite hobby?” Berringer asked, ignoring him.
    “Taking baths,” I said.
    “Taking baths?” Josh said. This time he turned all the way around to face me. “Please tell me that you didn’t actually used to write that down. What’s wrong with saying softball? Or ballet?”
    “I used to pretend it was the ocean,” I said.
    “That’s great, Emmy,” he said. “That’s really great.”
    “I like taking baths,” Berringer said.
    Josh put up his hand to silence him. He couldn’t take it when he thought I was being weird—not because he was embarrassed so much, but more because it made him worry about me. It made him worry that I’d get into a situation one day he couldn’t get me out of.
    He rolled down the window, the air hitting me, maybe even more than it was hitting him. “Now that you live near the ocean,” he said, “maybe you can pretend it’s a bath.”

If you were coming to Scarsdale to visit someone—a roommate from college, say, or a new boyfriend’s parents—and someone suggested going to get a drink, the odds were the next suggestion would be heading over to the Heathcote Tavern. The reason for this was that the Heathcote Tavern was the only place to go. I don’t mean only as in the hip place, or the happening one. I mean only as in one and only. If you wanted to go to another bar, you’d have to head to another town. Like White Plains, maybe, or the main drag in New Rochelle.
    The tavern wasn’t a bad place, though. I’m not saying that. It was, actually, pretty great: three big, red rooms with fireplaces and dim lighting and dark wallpaper. Downstairs dining area. And upstairs was the bar itself—a space that was beyond crowded two nights a year, Christmas Eve and Thanksgiving Eve, when most SHS graduates from the last decade made their way back to town for the holidays and staged impromptu, unofficial reunions at the only place they could.
    The rest of the year though, like tonight, there was usually only a smattering of people populating the upstairs bar late-night: a divorced couple on some sort of first date in the corner, an older man talking to the bartender by the flat-screen television, a couple of late-twenty-something women—their backs to us—drinking chardonnay at the bar.
    Of course, tonight, for Josh’s shindig, there was the addition of a long oval table in the center of the upstairs room reserved for and composed of Josh’s relatively weak-looking bachelor party. On one side of the oval were Josh’s other friends from high school—Mark, Todd, Chris—all of whom I recognized. On the other was the college and medical school representation, most of whom I didn’t. Almost everyone had carpooled here from the city, where they either lived or were staying for the weekend at the Essex House, courtesy of Meryl’s mom. When I saw the sheer number of empty shot glasses on the table, I realized this was a mistake. Having the bachelor party out here. At the rate everyone seemed to already be going, they’d be joining