Mimi Read Online Free Page A

brass-framed list of my fellow inhabitants while waiting for the elevator, trying to imagine what the hell they’re all up to in there:
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    FEATHER FLAUNT
    THE QUICK-FIX COMPANY
    COUTURE CUTEY
    BARRY’S BRAS
    JEEPERS & CO.
    MATERNITY PANTS
    FIFI FUN
    CHOCOLATEX
    BUSKYDELL CORP.
    SNAPPY ZIPPER. . .
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    Living in the Garment District is very convenient—you never have to wash a shirt, just go down and buy a new one at Ramin’s! I work across town, right by the Morgan Library, so daily pass all of female fashion, from underwear to eveningwear. I’m a block away from the General Post Office too, where on tax day a guy runs up and down the steps dressed as an Excedrin, passing out free samples to late filers.
    The elevator doesn’t reach my floor—you have to walk up the last flight on foot (sprained ankle or not). But because I’m on the top, it’s very quiet: I can play the piano whenever I want, and don’t have to listen to other people’s idiotic choice of music. I don’t own the roof terrace, but nobody ever comes up there so it’s effectively mine. Gertrude had hopes of turning the whole place into an urban farm, but my main use for it is as a lookout post for terrorist attacks and more benign types of fireworks. It’s also a bracing spot for the first cup of coffee of the day, while staring at the ancient faded ad for boots on a building opposite—
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    LOOKS WELL
    FEELS WELL
    WEARS WELL
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    â€”which pretty much sums up how I feel about my apartment! Another sign further on, “ baar & beard’s ” (ladies’ scarves), reminds me to shave.
    The best thing about my apartment is that there are no dingy areas. Dinginess is the source of all human misery. There’s a skylight over the front door, and windows on three sides of the building. Light fills the place, coming in from all angles, drifting through internal doors and windows, over diagonally cut white breezeblock walls, and bouncing off the high ceilings. It’s airy in my eyrie! Some of the woodwork is dark mahogany, but most of the doors are filled with old frosted glass. And, next to the French doors that open out onto the roof, there’s just one huge window that stretches the length of the living room, a slanted wall of glass. The coziest thing in the world is to sit under this window at twilight when it’s raining heavily outside and the water patters on the glass, forming a steady sheet of drips through which you glimpse the twinkling lights of a million other windows and the bridge (a guy’s always got to have an escape route in sight).
    So now, a martini to the left of me, fire to the right of me, piano in stasis before me, and all of Manhattan in motion behind me, I sat in torpor, my foot on its footstool, my head in its fool’s cap, and a pad of foolscap on my lap in case I wanted to jot down anything melancholy. This activity was not new: my List of Melancholy Things pre-dated my break-up and the sprained ankle. It’s my life’s work.
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    LIST OF MELANCHOLY
    â€“ Liszt himself—such bombast, and for what?
    â€“ MimÌ, a torn and tender woman
    â€“ being alone on New Year’s Eve
    â€“ forced marriages among five-year-olds
    â€“ master’s degrees in highway lighting
    â€“ the rushed minimal morning walks of a million Manhattan mutts
    â€“ puppetry
    â€“ pep talks
    â€“ the Great Auk
    â€“ shrimp-eating contests
    â€“ unpredictable air fares
    â€“ pregnant women pushing strollers uphill like Sisyphus—just stop breeding , why don’t you?
    â€“ the existence of Walmart
    â€“ Superman T-shirts
    â€“ Bach’s solo cello suites, especially No. 5; also, 2 and 4. . . aw, throw them all in (they all exhibit “exquisite melancholy”)
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    My kitchen is triangular, which turns out to be the perfect shape for a kitchen to be: everything’s visible and within reach. There’s even a