A MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN
he Crosby Street Hotel will forever be connected to one of my most vivid, seminal and beloved memories of the greatest city on the planet, New York fucking City. As someone who was born there (Mount Sinai hospital), raised there (U.N., Anglo-American, and Trinity schools), and who has a Proustian palimpsest full of halcyon New York memories (Studio 54, CBGBs, Nell’s), I have given myself special dispensation to call Manhattan by this affectionate sobriquet. Anyway, the story goes like this. Many years ago, upon my wife’s first sojourn to New York, we were traipsing up Lafayette Street towards Cosme, our intended dinner destination. Now, despite the November chill, and its effect of shrinking the diameter of her fingers — and despite my specific warning about this — my wife, who has developed an admirable ability to be selectively deaf, was wearing her engagement ring, which was precariously loose.
