that familiar accent again. It made her think of what sheâd left behind, and of the reason she was here instead of there.
But it wasnât healthy to look back, especially with a past as dysfunctional as hers. She tried, instead, to focus on being flattered that those tourists had recognized her as a local, despite the fact that sheâd been here only a few months herself.
She had Daddy to thank for that. Sheâd certainly done her New York City homework. Long before she ever actually set foot on Fifth Avenue, for example, she could recite not just the cross street, but the address of every notable skyscraper and flagship store that lined it, from Trump Tower at 725 to the Flatiron Building at 175; Saks at 611 to Lord & Taylor at 424 . . .
Oh, how she admired the way the glorious boulevard neatly bisected the city! Oh, how brilliant that numbered addresses on perpendicular streets increased accordingly east and west, with a mathematical formula available for locating those addresses as well . . .
She appreciated, too, that the venerable avenue disappeared altogether below Fourteenth Street, as if, after having been swallowed into the bohemian wilds of Washington Square Park, it couldnât bear to reemerge in the meandering chaos of the Village.
Of course, Carrieâbeing Carrieâcouldnât blame it. She herself much preferred the symmetry north of Fourteenth Street to the randomly intersecting streets below.
Up on Forty-second Street, for instance, the main branch of the public library, with its stone lions standing sentry, was marvelously centered at the intersection with Fifth Avenue, bookended by Times Square two blocks to the west and Grand Central Terminal two blocks to the east.
Down here in the Village, by contrast, there were anomalies galore. Not only did West Fourth Street defy the simple rule that traffic on one-way even-numbed streets ran eastâso simple to remember because of the E: even, eastâbut West Fourth Street somehow made its way north of itself to intersect with Eleventh Street, Twelfth, Thirteenth . . .
Madness. Sheer madness. Numbered streets were meant to keep a parallel distance from each other. They might intersect with numbered avenues, of courseâbut not other numbered streets.
Oh, and it wasnât just downtown that all bets were off. There was senseless chaos underground as well.
Carrie had spent a full week studying the subway map, determined to learn every stop along the confusing network of color-coded lines that branched to distant boroughsâsomething sheâd since discovered even native New Yorkers didnât bother to do.
When she arrived in the city, she found that no one even referred to the three subway lines by their official namesâthe IRT, IND, BMT. And that half the time, the express train ran local. Or vice versa. Or there was station construction, a disabled train, flooded track, congestion aheadâany number of reasons that she couldnât use the damned subway to get where she needed to go, even though she knew exactly how to do it.
But of course, she didnât regret having spent so much time learning the system; learning everything she could about her new hometown. All that information was bound to come in handy sooner or later, and even if it didnât . . .
Itâs much better to be ambitious enough to learn things you might never use than to be too lazy to learn things you might need.
That wasnât something Daddy had ever told her; nor was it a quote from a famous writer. It was all hers.
At least something was all hers.
At the next corner, she made a left and headed down the block that would lead her directly to Washington Square Park.
âPlanning a trip?â a smiling librarian asked her one day back in Omaha, shelving travel books near the table where Carrie was sitting.
She nodded, forcing a smile.
âWe have a new computer for our patrons to
But it wasnât healthy to look back, especially with a past as dysfunctional as hers. She tried, instead, to focus on being flattered that those tourists had recognized her as a local, despite the fact that sheâd been here only a few months herself.
She had Daddy to thank for that. Sheâd certainly done her New York City homework. Long before she ever actually set foot on Fifth Avenue, for example, she could recite not just the cross street, but the address of every notable skyscraper and flagship store that lined it, from Trump Tower at 725 to the Flatiron Building at 175; Saks at 611 to Lord & Taylor at 424 . . .
Oh, how she admired the way the glorious boulevard neatly bisected the city! Oh, how brilliant that numbered addresses on perpendicular streets increased accordingly east and west, with a mathematical formula available for locating those addresses as well . . .
She appreciated, too, that the venerable avenue disappeared altogether below Fourteenth Street, as if, after having been swallowed into the bohemian wilds of Washington Square Park, it couldnât bear to reemerge in the meandering chaos of the Village.
Of course, Carrieâbeing Carrieâcouldnât blame it. She herself much preferred the symmetry north of Fourteenth Street to the randomly intersecting streets below.
Up on Forty-second Street, for instance, the main branch of the public library, with its stone lions standing sentry, was marvelously centered at the intersection with Fifth Avenue, bookended by Times Square two blocks to the west and Grand Central Terminal two blocks to the east.
Down here in the Village, by contrast, there were anomalies galore. Not only did West Fourth Street defy the simple rule that traffic on one-way even-numbed streets ran eastâso simple to remember because of the E: even, eastâbut West Fourth Street somehow made its way north of itself to intersect with Eleventh Street, Twelfth, Thirteenth . . .
Madness. Sheer madness. Numbered streets were meant to keep a parallel distance from each other. They might intersect with numbered avenues, of courseâbut not other numbered streets.
Oh, and it wasnât just downtown that all bets were off. There was senseless chaos underground as well.
Carrie had spent a full week studying the subway map, determined to learn every stop along the confusing network of color-coded lines that branched to distant boroughsâsomething sheâd since discovered even native New Yorkers didnât bother to do.
When she arrived in the city, she found that no one even referred to the three subway lines by their official namesâthe IRT, IND, BMT. And that half the time, the express train ran local. Or vice versa. Or there was station construction, a disabled train, flooded track, congestion aheadâany number of reasons that she couldnât use the damned subway to get where she needed to go, even though she knew exactly how to do it.
But of course, she didnât regret having spent so much time learning the system; learning everything she could about her new hometown. All that information was bound to come in handy sooner or later, and even if it didnât . . .
Itâs much better to be ambitious enough to learn things you might never use than to be too lazy to learn things you might need.
That wasnât something Daddy had ever told her; nor was it a quote from a famous writer. It was all hers.
At least something was all hers.
At the next corner, she made a left and headed down the block that would lead her directly to Washington Square Park.
âPlanning a trip?â a smiling librarian asked her one day back in Omaha, shelving travel books near the table where Carrie was sitting.
She nodded, forcing a smile.
âWe have a new computer for our patrons to
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