So I still like to see you, my friend. I still like to sit in La Cote Basque and sip wine and eat fine food and indulge in our memories—the good ones, the ones we want to remember. So let’s do that. That’s the story we can tell ourselves, at night when we can’t sleep. We can tell ourselves that there is one other person in the world who sees it in the same way, who remembers. Who remembers her. Babe. And Gloria. And even Truman, I guess, as he was, back then. Our fun, gossipy friend. Our entrée into a different world, for a time. An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty.

The Swans of Fifth Avenue