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books, and one with which I had modest and therefore continual success, was Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking. This became my bible (la mia bibbia?) for meat sauce, fettuccine Alfredo, and lemon veal, none of which is at all good for you and all of which the children, some dates (dates?—yes, but that comes later), and I loved. Perhaps that was because Hazan sounds like it means “cantor” in Hebrew, and I suspected that Hazan was Jewish. (She wasn’t; her husband was.)
Basic silverware and other accoutrements had to be added to all of this, and here is where the children took charge. Red, in fact Coca-Cola red, was, according to them at least, the appropriate accent color. They pointed out that red was perfect to complement my prominently dis- played Richard Sachs racer. Thus it was that we loaded up on red silverware (and black silverware, for when we felt conservative); red canisters; red salt and pepper shakers; a red can opener; and, crucially, a red bottle opener that is still on hand in 2016. After many treks with Rachel, Peter, and Danny to Pottery Barn and two stores the names of which escape me, the apartment (the Bloomingdale’s furniture, the cop- per pots, and the posters aside) looked like a Coca-Cola ad, just when, in the most monstrous marketing mistake in history, Coke decided to abandon its flag bearer and to introduce “New Coke.” Addicted to what is now referred to as “Classic Coke” and aware of the changeover, I went to D’Agostino’s and virtually cleaned out their entire inventory. (This was my first venture into commodities futures, and it worked: my supply lasted until Coke recognized the errors of its ways.)
To all of the foregoing, I added a TV stand on wheels (so I could rotate it and watch, either when I ate at the dining table or when I was seated on the couch), and the apartment, once an empty shell, now looked as if someone actually lived there.
But that would be stretching the meaning of living. Putting aside my adventures with the children (about which more later) and what passed for dating (about which much more later), this was far from a good time in my life. I was, I know, an only child, but nothing had pre- pared me for living alone or being lonesome. I took to watching sports such as the America’s Cup yacht races on TV (nothing could have been
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