There was a party just out of sight tonight. Maybe it was on the carriage house roof deck on the other side of the neighboring brownstone? Every so often someone played a line or two on a sax or trumpet (I kept noticing just as it stopped, so I’m not sure), and there were more people talking than usual.

Oh, a roof deck…. I was at a party on Josh’s roof on Saturday, and at some point after the hot sun had slipped behind clouds of light rain and then the rain had tapered off and we were back on the roof, chilly in the dark, I held my plastic cup of decent white wine and smelled sausages on the grill and realized that this was my idea of a perfect city party. A spacious roof on the Upper West Side, music not too loud, a dozen or so people draped around chatting. The grill going. Of course, all those things could happen much more often in the suburbs, but that’s the magic—a deck, a grill, IN the city, with the guy across the street earning hoots and hollers when he strolls by the window with his shirt off, with the next door neighbor sitting in a lawn chair on his side of the roof, separated by only a foot-high ridge, invited to come get a hot dog if he gets hungry. Who needs a lawn?

Of course, in the fantasy it isn’t 50 degrees in mid May, but I’ll take what I can get.