“You coming in, or are you just going to air out the place?” Maggie’s voice, still sharp as a tack after ten years, echoed from the gloom.
They’d been a strange quartet. Maggie, the aspiring playwright who could talk her way out of a parking ticket. Leo, the musician who composed symphonies for the subway’s screeching brakes. Paul, the quiet one, the photographer who saw stories in cracks on the sidewalk. And Claire, who wanted to be a novelist but spent most nights editing other people’s grocery lists at a publishing house. the friends 1994
They did and they didn’t. Maggie was tugging at a lumpy sofa, her red hair now a sensible bob, her freckles faded. Leo, who’d once sworn he’d die in this very apartment, was carefully wrapping his vintage guitar in bubble wrap. He’d sold his first song last year—a jingle for a breakfast cereal. And then there was Paul. “You coming in, or are you just going to air out the place
“Remember?” he said, not looking at her, but at the mug. “The night you tried to make clam chowder from a recipe in The New Yorker ?” Leo, the musician who composed symphonies for the