"I need to get out of this city," Jessie says at the same time that Kirby says, "I need to get out of this city." Jessie lights Kirby's cigarette and fights the urge to throw the matches out the open window-the city is so dirty, what difference would it make?-because she has taken great pains to rid her tiny studio apartment and her carrel at Bobst Library of everything Theo-related. Jessie's ex-boyfriend, Theo, basically lives there. "Or I would be if I weren't so hungover." She pulls a cigarette out of a pack of Virginia Slims with her lips and leans over to Jessie, who rummages through her pocketbook for matches. I took my last exam this morning, I have a full week off before I start my internship, and we're going to Nantucket." "I know I shouldn't feel happy," she says.
Jessie sets her macramé pocketbook on the front seat next to a tray of hotdogs from Gray's Papaya. Kirby pulls away from the curb before Jessie even has her door closed.
Jessie does as she's told-Kirby's back seat is as big as Grand Central Terminal-but even so, the cars lining up behind the LTD start honking and someone yells, "Move your tush, sweetheart!" "Just throw your suitcase in the back seat." She has done a fair amount of studying in the park while she's been in law school and she's seen it all: punk rockers with purple hair and pierced lips walking their dachshunds, drag queens eating knishes, a couple painted gold who set a boom box on the lip of the fountain and discoed to Chopin's Polonaise in A-flat Major. Reed must have been talking about Washington Square Park in this song, Jessie thinks. Jessie Levin ("rhymes with 'heaven'") is drinking an ice cold can of Tab on the northwest corner of Washington Square Park when her sister, Kirby, pulls up in her butterscotch-colored Ford LTD with the sunroof open, strains of Lou Reed floating out like a haze.
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