“I should think you’d be thrilled to death.”
“Why?”
“Being out in the thick of things,” she said, “instead of a little backwater hick town where you know everyone and everyone knows you. You can really live your life in a city. There are thousands and thousands of people, unlimited opportunities for contracts and friendships, shows to see, department store windows, decent beauty shops — and restaurants.”
I said, “There is also chiselling, traffic signals, parking limits, one-way streets, grind and noise and confusion, and as for friendships — well, if you want to be really lonely, try a big city. Everyone’s a stranger, and if you don’t have just the right kind of contacts, they remain strangers.”
She said, “It would be better that way than to see the same old faces day after day, to be living in a place that’s eaten up with dry rot, where people know more about your business than you do.”
“Do people,” I asked, “know more about your business than you do?”
“They think they do,” she said.
“Cheer up,” I told her. “You have Charlie.”
“Charlie?” she asked. “Oh, yes, I get you now.”
“If you went to a big city,” I said, “you’d have to leave Charlie behind. Remember, he likes it here.”