Friday 1: 30 PM

■ Avocado egg salad sandwich: mixed greens, crispy shallots
■ Cobb salad: romaine, grape tomatoes, avocado, hardboiled eggs, blue cheese
■ Cajun spiced nuts: garlic, rosemary
■ Diet Coke, ginger ale

MY FIRST full-time job in New York, after months of freelance proofreading and temp jobs, was at W. H. Freeman, an imprint of Macmillan. On my first day, when I walked through Madison Square Park to the black skyscraper that held my modest cubicle thirty-seven stories above Madison Avenue, across from the iconic Flatiron Building, my heart did a little somersault. I had made it. It didn’t last long—I left that job after eight months or so—but it was still a great moment.

I’m in a hurry as I walk through Madison Square Park this afternoon, but every time I’m in the neighborhood I can’t help but look up at that black building to find the window—not mine, I never had one—through which my former boss, Erika Goldman (now the publisher of Bellevue Literary Press), saw the