Coffee Shop Ghosts
The room where it happens.
I’m beginning this post while sitting in a space about which I have previously gushed—the coffee shop in the basement of the museum at 75th and Madison, the museum currently known as the Frick, formerly known as the Met Breuer, and before that known as the Whitney—and I’m sorry to keep repeating myself, but this really is the world’s most perfect writing venue. I’m sitting at my favorite table, with my back to the northern wall. I like the view from here, the way you can see the whole restaurant, the way the light comes in through the massive windows. The Wifi is good, the coffee is good, the seats are comfortable, the noise level is just right, and the other guests channel that energy that only exists in a museum cafe, that kind of placid contentment induced by looking at great art.
I first started coming to this space in 2018, when this museum was the Met Breuer and this coffee shop was Flora. I wrote a significant portion of Our American Friend sitting on one of the stools along the coffee bar counter. I’ve written before about my routine at Flora, so even though I’m tempted (so tempted!) to plunge back into those distant pre-pandemic memories, I’ll spare you the repeat. What I want to write about is what it feels like today—what it feels like to return to a place that is called something different, that is something different, and yet to be re-encountering myself within this changed place.
The Frick moved to this new (temporary) location a little over a year ago, back in spring 2021, and the Joe Coffee opened in this space shortly thereafter. The Frick is only open Thursday through Sunday, which only gives me Thursday and Friday of the working week to take advantage of it, and some weeks I’m away, and some days I’m at home or at the library, so I haven’t accrued all that many days working here, but that doesn’t matter. I love this new incarnation of the space just as fiercely as I loved the old. Its presence in my life strikes me as a minor miracle—I only need to recall the long stretch of time when the space was empty, when I didn’t know whether it was ever going to come back, when the mere idea of working inside a coffee shop felt impossible, and I’m reminded of that miracle.
When I have friends visiting, I sometimes take them on little walking tours of my neighborhood. I point out the place where I enter Central Park for my runs, and I point out the Society Library, and I point out St. James, and I point out my coffee shops. Because my friends are nice, they indulge me and nod along; they know how attached I am to these places. But it’s hard, actually, to convey to them what I mean, because when I look at these places, I’m not just seeing the brick-and-mortar of it. What I’m seeing are the hundreds of versions of myself who walked through those doors, who ran that pavement, who lit those candles, who sat in that chair and typed those words.
The reason I wanted to write this particular post today—right at this moment it’s Friday June 17, although it will probably be several days by the time this is finished and on your screen—is because I just emailed the revised draft of my new novel, my fourth novel, to my editor. The moment itself is so understated: you write an email, you attach a file, you click send. The things you feel are private, and invisible to the rest of the world. Relief! Fatigue, pride, excitement. There is much work still to come on this manuscript, much revision still to happen, but this is a significant moment nonetheless. The book is becoming more like itself. I love this part of the gig, these invisible thresholds, when you start to loosen your grip on the thing, when you feel your relationship to it evolving. These moments can happen anywhere, and no one else sees them happening, because they happen on the inside. This goodbye is merely temporary! The book will be back on my desk soon enough. But this moment of transition is making me think back on where it all began.
**
Like most writers, I have weirdly specific conventions when it comes to labelling my documents. It’s absolutely terrifying to start a new project, especially that very first moment when you open a new Word doc (Word user for life right here, I simply do not trust the cloud!) and you know that this completely blank document is going to gradually fill with the words that will gradually morph into your next work of fiction—but, dear God, how? How??? Well, you have to start somewhere, so when I start a new novel, I call the document … “book start.” Then I add the date. Yep. Original, right? (Aren’t you riveted right now?) But what I like about this naming convention is that, as the project evolves, as folder grows cluttered with various drafts, I can always find the document where it all began, which also tells me the exact day it all began.
The day a book is published can feel like a birthday. It’s the day your child takes her first breath and gulps down that delicious bookstore oxygen, the day the rest of the world gets to meet her, the day you learn just how gratifying, and challenging, it is for the world to render judgment upon her. But, to me, the real birthday is the day when you and and the work first begin speaking to one another. When you first start that spooky process of conjuring her into existence. Hence the labelling convention: I, with my honestly kind of twisted God complex, like being able to look back and pinpoint that precise moment of creation.
This new novel, my fourth novel, began on April 21, 2020. Those were the dark days of the pandemic: the field hospitals in Central Park, the frightening newness of masks, the meager twice-a-month trips to the grocery store. We don’t need to plunge back into those memories, either. You have your own recollections of those days, and they will be far more vivid than whatever picture I can paint. What I want to describe for you instead is the mindset I had as I opened this document and typed the words “book start, 4.21.20.”
I was, at that point, a few weeks into doing the twelve-week program of The Artist’s Way. Even those early weeks of the program had started to shake loose something in me: a kind of lightness, or playfulness, a desire to simply have fun with whatever I did next. It inspired me to try a new approach to this new novel; I wanted to write with less control, with less of a plan. The pandemic itself also had a weirdly emboldening effect. Part of me thought that we might all be dead in six months, and if that was going to happen, then who the hell cared what happened with this book?
Every book—every work of art—is a reflection of who the artist was in the moment she wrote it. One thing I like about being several books into this career is that, when I look back at a given novel, I’m not just seeing the novel itself: I’m also seeing the ghostly selves, the parade of former Annas, who chipped away at the work. So many hours, thousands and thousands of hours, logged in various rooms and libraries and coffee shops. This pandemic has never stopped, but recently I’ve started to feel a real sense of discontinuity, of true separation from those early lockdown days. They now feel like an entirely different chapter, a completely different life. (It was fiction, predictably, that did it for me. While I had Covid in San Francisco, I read Gary Shteyngart’s novel Our Country Friends. The way he captures the deep strangeness of that first spring and summer, both the terrifying darkness and gentle blessings of it, it somehow caused this awareness to crystallize.) It’s odd to realize that the person now bringing this book into the home stretch, the person typing this post today, that she’s living in an entirely different reality from the person who began it; and that she, in many ways, has changed too. New homes, new friendships, new understandings, new dreams. There’s a sharp contrast between now and then, between summer 2022 and summer 2020, but this book, for me, serves as a bridge between those moments, and also between those selves.
**
I’ve picked the thread back up, and I’m now continuing this post at the kitchen table of my parents’ house, where we’re visiting for the weekend. We spent a lot of that first pandemic spring and summer up here. There are parts of my bedroom that remain trapped in lockdown amber. Last night I noticed that we still had those very first fabric masks, the ones my mom hurriedly made on her sewing machine, using scraps of old cloth, on that April day that the CDC finally admitted we should be wearing masks. Not long after that we moved on to surgical masks, and then to KN95s, and I remember thinking at some point—maybe a year ago, maybe longer—why am I still hanging onto those? And vaguely thinking that I ought to throw them away, but I never did.
I’ve always been a sentimental person. I think it’s part of why I love repetition and routine. Not just because I enjoy the creature comforts of familiarity (although, don’t get me wrong, I do!), but because I like the way my present experiences layer over my past experiences. I like the lessons, the sad and beautiful lessons, that spring from that layering. When I sit in the Joe Coffee in the basement of the Frick, when I pick up that fabric mask, it’s a chance for me to get haunted by those old ghosts. They’re friendly—they’re my ghosts, after all, we’re on intimate terms—but they are also there to offer me some stern and necessary reminders. Like: change is constant. Like: time passes, and the losses rack up. I am never going to be the person I once was. I am never getting that old coffee shop back! It’s foolish to think otherwise.
In April 2020, when I sat down and started writing the story that eventually became my fourth novel, the novel that I’m excited to tell you more about (soon!), there was so much darkness around us, and there was so much darkness ahead. I had no idea how much darkness was ahead! I had no idea how many difficult things, both globally and personally, awaited. And I’m glad, actually, that I didn’t know. That knowledge would have been paralyzing. Instead, I spent a large part of that spring and summer doing simple things. I wrote my morning pages. I did a lot of cooking. I took walks in the woods. I had meals with my family. I felt happy, I felt terrified, I felt lonely, I felt irritable. Sometimes I was grateful; sometimes (often) I was just whiny. I tried to pass the time. I sought refuge in my own imagination. I tried to make myself laugh. I remember Andrew walking into my parents’ living room, one day that spring. The living room was where I’d set up a temporary desk. I was getting into a groove with the new novel—the spies, the secrets, the intrigue. I was writing a scene about some inept bad guys, and I was just letting it rip, I was letting these guys be comically stupid, and I was snorting in amusement, and Andrew raised an eyebrow and said: “Having fun in there?”
And the thing is, despite everything that was happening, despite everything that was yet to happen, despite the bleak feelings that sometimes swamped me like a tidal wave—despite all of that, I was having fun in there.
**
Before I say goodbye, a few things I wanted to share! I’ve been really bad at posting on Instagram lately, so here it goes:
I was recently a guest on two podcasts. I was interviewed by the wonderful Zibby Owens for Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, and interviewed by Mike Consol for Novelist Spotlight. There is basically nothing I love more than talking about the creative process, so I really enjoyed these conversations. Available wherever you get your podcasts!
I also recently reviewed Louis Bayard’s new novel, Jackie & Me, for the Washington Post. This was such a charming, enjoyable read. It has both a breeziness and poignancy that feel just right for summertime. Perfect if you’re a fan of historical fiction, especially of the mid-century Mad Men vintage.
Amazon is currently running a promotion for my first novel, The Futures, discounting the ebook edition to $2.99. I think this promotion only runs until the end of June, so if you haven’t read The Futures and you’re intrigued, act now! Low low prices!
Lastly, a short list of things sparking joy for me these days. Joy the Baker’s brown butter chocolate chip cookies. Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers (SO JUICY). Hacks, my new favorite TV show. The Beatles, blasting while I’m cooking dinner. Ice cream with rainbow sprinkles. The sky being light until 9 p.m. Summer! Everything, everything, everything about summer.