So when the call didn't come to hop a plane to California, I felt something akin to Celebrity Justice/Court TV withdrawal. I missed the camaraderie of the courtroom, lunch with fellow reporters, the stirring sight of TV satellite trucks as far as the eye can see.

It must have been that desire to get in on the pop-culture conversation that prompted me to put my Michael Jackson glove up for sale on eBay. The glove in question admittedly never graced the pop star's slender fingers. It's not even an actual garment. It's an invitation, printed on a cheap white-cloth glove, to a black-tie gala that I attended in 1984 at the American Museum of Natural History to celebrate the debut of Michael's Thriller album. But with the hype surrounding the trial, you never know how much some sucker might pay for it. If Jackson fans were willing to quit their jobs to sit vigil at the Santa Maria courthouse, is it too far-fetched to believe that one or more of his psychotic followers would bid up my glove into the thousands of dollars on eBay?

But before offering this valuable collectible to the public, I figured I ought to check with my 16-year-old. Even though the glove has been sitting in my sock drawer for years gathering dust, has an ink stain on the fourth finger and is developing liver spots, it is arguably a piece of Americana.

My wife always regretted the way her parents sold her childhood summer home in the Thousand Islands. Would my kid hold it against me if I let this family heirloom slip away?

But she gave me the green light. "I don't like Michael Jackson," she admitted. "He freaks me out. I don't even like his music that much."

She just thought my timing was off. She thought I should wait until the end of the trial, when interest in Jacksoniana would inevitably crescendo. I wasn't so sure. What if the rock star was convicted? Even a celebrity-crazed culture would draw the line at child molestation … wouldn't it?

Once the trial was getting under way, the moment seemed perfect to strike. But what was the glove worth? Ten bucks? Ten thousand? And how many existed? Were there lots of nuts like me who never throw anything out? Or did I own the only one in existence?

I decided to call Sotheby's to get an accurate estimate of my keepsake's value. Unfortunately, Matthew Weigman, Sotheby's spokesman, turned down the opportunity to put me in touch with one of the auction house's experts. Mr. Weigman explained that Sotheby's long ago ceded the kitsch end of the market to eBay and its ilk (Kennedy family tchotchkes notwithstanding, of course.)

"We did a Jeff Koons porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson with his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles," he recalled. "It sold for about $5 million a few years ago. It would be the upper range of things associated with his celebrity."

Mr. Weigman tried to convince me that the sale of the Koons had little relevance to my situation. The Koons, after all, was a work of art, a cultural marker even, akin to Warhol's Marilyn series. My glove was-well, a glove.

I begged to differ. If anything, my glove was the superior cultural artifact. It was a purpose-driven object, a historical document even, radiating none of the smug, self-conscious irony of Mr. Koons' work. I found myself growing attached to the glove.

Since Mr. Weigman was of little help, I went on eBay in search of similar objects. But my glove seemed to fall into a nether region-neither a mass-produced five-and-dime-store replica of a Jackson glove (of which there were dozens for sale), nor an authentic glitter glove worn by the rock star in concert or on a video. There was one of those on the block, handsomely framed, complete with a letter of authenticity; it carried an auction estimate of several hundred thousand dollars.

In the meantime, the trial was slipping by. There was Jeffrey Toobin every night offering Paula Zahn and Aaron Brown his patrician Harvard Law take on the proceedings, and Nancy Grace ripping the heads off dolls.

Part of my hesitation about pulling the trigger was that I'm a technological naïf. I took a snapshot of the glove and opened an eBay account, but I had no idea how to put the picture on my computer, let alone paste it on eBay for the masses. And then there was my budding resistance to be a player-even a bit player-in all of this bloviating seediness. Might not the high road be to have a dinner party and ceremoniously burn the glove?

The jury was deliberating by the time I placed a call to Susan Blond, the rock 'n' roll publicist who put together the Jackson bash at the American Museum of Natural History back in '84. I was calling less to reminisce about that evening than to learn how many similar gloves might be out there.

"I have a few," Ms. Blond conceded cagily, adding that they were in perfect condition. "I've never even thought of selling any of them.

"It was a certain moment in time," she went on. "He had just sold 35 million records. He was the biggest artist in the world. He had just gone on fire from the Pepsi commercial earlier in the week; we were just hoping he could make it. He had to stay in the V.I.P. area longer than he'd liked because he was kind of fragile."

I felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me as she spoke: nostalgia for my 20's, nostalgia for the People magazine reporter I was dating at the time, who had invited me to the party. In fact, Ms. Blond and I shared the same vivid memory of that night.

Michael walked out onto the front steps of the American Museum of Natural History to greet his hundreds (perhaps thousands) of fans cordoned off behind police barricades across the street, on the park side of Central Park West. I followed him out to experience the vicarious thrill of celebrity. As he appeared, the crowd roared and seemed to rise off the ground in delight.

"It was unbelievably exciting," Ms. Blond remembered. "Even to this day, I don't think anyone has become as big a star as he was at that moment."

I asked what she thought the glove was worth. "Priceless," she said, predictably. "I wouldn't sell it. I was thinking I should have another party; anyone who has a glove can come."

When the trial ended in Michael's acquittal, my teenager came up with a selling hook. "Call it, like, the Freedom Glove," she said.

But I've decided to keep it. You never know-the King of Pop may make a comeback. I can imagine him retreating to Neverland, hiring a stern British nanny to keep his flunkies and the young boys at bay (and the liquor cabinet under lock and key), and writing some dark, redemptive song cycle, an updated musical equivalent of Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy.

Throughout the whole ordeal, no one ever denied that Michael has talent. As for my glove, it's going straight to the safe-deposit box-or at least back into my sock drawer.

South of Washington Square, the park's trees feathery in first bloom, there was a five-story walk-up where, at an age not much more advanced than my son's, I occupied one of the world's narrowest apartments. I pointed up at the window where my neighbor was Alex Chilton, lead singer for the Box Tops. "You know," I said, humming: "Gimme a ticket for an airplane …. " The boy shrugged, unimpressed. In L.A., he goes to school with bigger stars.

Heading west on Bleecker Street, I said, "Here's where Bob Dylan used to play." The kid doesn't care much for Dylan. Across the street was the Café Au Go Go, where Lenny Bruce was busted. He doesn't know from Lenny Bruce. Walking back up MacDougal, the Café Wha? was where Hendrix used to play. My son likes Hendrix, but of the Café Wha? only a question mark remains. A few steps further brought us to a doorway where a friend of mine used to live. Guessing that an upstairs front apartment on MacDougal would be abandoned only if the owner died-and the name was still there on the mailbox-I thumbed the button. A surprised but familiar voice invited us up.

That apartment-dweller smell wafted through the opened door: cooking, old clothes, cockroaches, kitty litter and pot. The kitchen table heaped with dope also held a row of prescription bottles. My old friend looked old and unwell. He didn't ask us to sit down because there was only one chair, and he was about to sit in it and eat his dinner out of the pan that was smoking on the stove. We hadn't seen one another for a few decades since the tumultuous times when we stood together on the front lines of the countercultural wars. He'd dug in for the long haul. I'd gone to Hollywood, to fight other battles.

"Good to see ya," my old comrade said, and we stood looking at one another across an unutterable divide. My boy was politely scanning a virtually intact 60's-era crash pad, complete with mattress on the floor and evidence of the outlaw life strewn everywhere. Any moment "the pigs" would come through the door and take us all downtown. "You can crash here anytime you want," said my friend to my son. "Thank you," the boy replied, with all the enthusiasm he could summon. "Good to see ya," my old friend said again, and we gave each other a hug before we split.

"I'm glad we let him go back to his dinner," the boy said gently, and I felt ashamed. I was acting like a tour guide on a sightseeing trip into my own past. What was I trying to show him? What was I really looking for? Whatever it was, it was too late to stop now.

Rambling east along Eighth Street, we came upon five guys in an acoustically perfect doorway, performing "Blue Moon" a cappella. I stopped to drink in the quintessential New York moment. "It's doo-wop," I explained to my son, snapping my fingers to the rhythm. "I know what it is," he said, shifting restlessly beside me. "C'mon, Dad, let's go." "Wait just a minute," I said, and we stood there on sidewalk arguing absurdly over doo-wop's pivotal role in the universe. I finally relented, letting him lead on while I silently fretted over his future without a proper grounding in doo-wop.

The street opened wide at Astor Place, where I once twirled that big cube sculpture, argued Marx and Melville with N.Y.U. classmates, ran riot with the Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers, tripped goggle-eyed on numerous cross-town acid experiments, shepherded nameless young girls to my East Village pad and once stood in tears transfixed by Ornette Coleman, or somebody who looked and sounded a whole lot like him, blowing his sax at 3 a.m. silhouetted against the sky atop a Bowery rooftop on a balmy spring night like this one. I was unsure what meaning any of that would have to the boy who strode coolly beside me-not even sure what it meant to me anymore-so I omitted mentioning all but the cube, which, along with everything else except for the spring night, was missing.

CBGB's stood stalwart, however, and we breezed right by the doorkeepers and took seats by the stage. I bought two beers and illegally handed one to the boy. He took a manly swig and looked around appraisingly. The same smelly dump I remembered from when Hilly Kristal first opened it: It was here my bar-band buddies and I played on the same bill as some guys calling themselves the Ramones. Onstage now was a very earnest bar band with a bald, pot-bellied lead singer playing earnest rock. The guy was about my age. I have more hair, remain at fighting trim and can be smug about it. But it might as well have been me up there ….

"They suck, Dad," was the boy's critique. He plays drums with his own band and stocks his iPod with early punk. He's steeped in CBGB's legend and lore. The New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders and the rest that sparked here, flared up and flamed out brilliantly. The overripe geezers onstage and the listless crowd around us offered no hint of that time or place. My son drained his beer, stood up and said, "Let's get out of here, man."

O.K., man. We headed up the Bowery and across St. Mark's Place, past Gem Spa, past the storefront where I once ran the White Panther office, skirting Tompkins Square Park, where I used to hang with the all-day conga fanatics, up Avenue B past my very first apartment, detouring into a crazy upstairs joint where no one asked for ID. We had some more beers, my son and I, ogled some girls, and I heard him say the music they were spinning was cool. But it was about 2 in the morning, and he was yawning. I was blotto.

On the way back to our rather elegant townhouse crash pad on 18th Street, I only fell down once. My son laughed, and I laughed, too. But when I looked up, as he helped me to my feet, I caught a wild green flash of Manhattan freshly blooming, the way it looks when you're seeing it for the first time. Is that what I've been looking for? I wondered as we headed up First Avenue, and the young man at my side was saying, "You know, Dad, I think I want to live here someday." Yes, I thought. Yes, of course you do.

To understand how intensely provocative a statement it was, you need to know this: My father is a psychoanalyst. He has made a career of listening to people and their problems. For much of his adult life, he has sat in a room with strangers. They tell him their fears and anxieties and regrets; they weep and yell. They confess deeply irrational phobias. There are, my father has told me, long, often difficult periods of silence, full of hope and expectation. (Ironically, he's a man who is rarely quiet outside of his office. He has the manic energy and talkativeness of a restless child.)

From a very early age, I knew that my father did something that most other dads did not-this despite my growing up in one of the more therapist-infested towns in America. His office, which I called "the workhouse," didn't look like the workhouses of lawyers and businessmen. There were the doors: The entrance to his office was actually two doors, one sandwiched right against the other. This was for soundproofing. And then there was the couch. Before I even knew its significance, I sensed that it was some sort of talisman. It was simple and pale orange, with a white square-the kind draped on airplane headrests-lying on the triangular pillow. It looked like it had a different purpose than our sectional sofa at home.

Gradually, I learned what my father did. People entered those double doors, lay down and started talking. For 50 minutes, they spilled themselves. Then they came back the next day and did it again. Some patients came four or five days a week. Some saw him every day for more than a decade. He has seen them through marriages, divorces, births and deaths. Their sessions are littered with reports of dreams, recollections of childhood, dark fantasies, memories both real and manufactured. It is sobering, really-there are strangers out there whose lives are deeply enmeshed with my father. Sociopaths, saints, neighbors maybe. Aside from an occasional disembodied voice on the phone-"Is Dr. Hauser in?"-I will never know a single one.

All of which is to give some context for my statement in the car that day: It's the equivalent of Martha Stewart's daughter saying, "What's so great about votive candles anyway?"

I don't recall his exact response, but I suppose my father tried to explain to me that it was indeed helpful for people to discuss their problems. If he weren't a shrink-indeed, if he were a little more like Martha Stewart-maybe he would have smacked me in the head, a far more effective rebuke to my teenage insolence; it would have spared him two decades of debate as well. The Sox were on the radio, toying with our hearts yet again; year after year we believed, and year after year we were devastated. (That was a problem I could have used some professional help with: how to deal with the annual heartbreak otherwise known as the Boston Red Sox.) I didn't know then that I had just started a conversation that would last 20 years.

Partly because I am stubborn, and partly because I genuinely believe it might not be helpful for people to talk about their problems, I have clung to my argument. I have relented a bit, since it's not as important to me simply to be right anymore-one of the great freedoms of outgrowing the strident teen years. I have also witnessed the growth and peacefulness of friends who have been in therapy. Some have the zeal of religious converts.

The past few years, my father has groused that I remind him of all the managed-care philistines, the executives intent on abolishing psychoanalysis. I point out that I'm not convinced, as many of those efficiency experts are, that the answer is a pill. The answer, I believe, might be in shutting up. My father shakes his head and says, "I can't imagine you actually think that. No one who writes the stories you do could possibly believe people should shut up."

This is where our argument has veered, after two decades: It now encompasses both his career and mine, as a fiction writer. The characters in my stories, according to my father, are sensitive and troubled. (He also believes they are often based on him and my mother-they aren't, except in this particular story.) "They even talk," he reminds me. "True," I acknowledge, unsure just how these two things are connected. "They speak," I say, "because that's what people do. People talk to each other."

Our argument reaches its apex every January, when my parents venture to New York for the American Psychoanalytic Association meeting. It's held at the Waldorf-Astoria, which produces striking juxtapositions: the old-world Europeans in their minks, the analysts very much not in fur coats (they're more likely to wander out to Park Avenue absent-mindedly without any coat at all, just a tweed sports jacket). They used to tote my brother and I along, and we poked around the hotel while they attended seminars. One year, we skulked by the doors of one of the ballrooms, gazing at a debutante ball. The girls in pearls and gowns, their dates in military uniforms-where did they come from? Where will they go?

One night during the meeting, we go out to dinner with family friends with whom there is a neat symmetry: The fathers are analysts, the mothers are social workers, the sons are writers. Pictures of grandchildren are trotted out, current events dissected. At one recent meal, the parents discussed a colleague who had gotten a face-lift. When I didn't express a suitable degree of surprise, they were taken aback. Maybe, I explained, it's because I've worked at fashion magazines. Plastic surgery is about as remarkable to me as forking over $200 an hour to talk about your problems is to them.

Later, fueled by wine and nostalgia, I might revive our argument. My father dutifully takes his opposite corner. Sometimes it continues as we venture back to the hotel, amid the sparkling avenues. There's something comforting about our redundancy, something unspoken in the familiar choreography. The cabs and buses stream by us. We will talk again.

Having a lesbian affair, you ask? Nope. Nor am I a Single White Female trying to take over someone's life. I'm not a cat burglar, a dog-napper, a couch-surfer or a freak-nothing so exotic. I'm just enjoying that very Manhattan summer ritual: apartment-sitting.

I'm good at it. In fact, I've thought of making up a home-minder résumé. Competition for these jobs can be fierce-it's New York, after all-and I have top-notch qualifications. I've taken care of abodes in the West Village, Chelsea, Tribeca and Turtle Bay; off Central Park; around the corner from Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side; and even in two D.C. neighborhoods. I've looked after multiple cats, a poodle, a mutt, a shorthaired Lab and a chocolate one. But maybe most importantly, I'm a writer with a flexible schedule and an impoverished existence-this is the only way I can take a vacation anyway.

Whenever I arrive at one of my temporary pied-à-terre, I inevitably find some kind of missive waiting for me on the kitchen counter. One included a long paragraph on the "personality" of the hound I was tending: "I began calling him Dale Peck after he, as a baby, pissed on a pile of Rick Moody novels," it started. Another note detailed essential facts about the neighborhood, like "It's worth walking the extra couple of blocks for Murray's Bagels." The laid-back friend I'm currently sitting for usually leaves this: "Have fun! Eat anything and finish the opened wine."

Anything? After solemnly noting that "Max enjoys having his belly brushed while he lays on his back and chews his rawhide," I sack the fridge. Leftover pizza, blueberries, baby carrots, poached salmon, home-made chocolate-chip cookies-but only things that would go bad before the owner's return. I guess I could replace those gourmet fat-free brownies, but what if they cost as much as a decent pedicure? What if I can't find any place that sells the same kind? What if the apartment's rightful owner realizes I ate that entire bag of blue-corn chips and thinks I'm a gluttonous pig?

And, most importantly, never asks me back!

I hiccup guiltily as Max stares at me, his tail thumping amiably on the floor.

In Raymond Carver's famous apartment-sitting short story, "Neighbors," a discontented couple's sex life perks up after the husband begins sipping from his friends' booze bottles, masturbating on their bed and trying on their clothes-including a bra and skirt.

I've never done anything as transgressive as wearing other people's undies.

But I have tried some pretty fancy beauty products. Like organic free-range egg-yolk conditioner, which was in my hair before I noticed the water-corroded price tag: almost exactly what I spend on my haircut. With tip. But it's O.K. to use that stuff-right? I think so. After all, I'm helping these apartment owners out; they couldn't possibly begrudge me a little soap or some shampoo. Still, sometimes I've wondered if I should fill the Bumble and Bumble bottles with water to hide how much I've used, like a teenager would doctor her dad's gin.

I probably crossed the line when I once squeezed someone's high-end L'Occitane hand cream on my legs (with a strange splurge of pleasure, I might add). Spritzing perfume seems downright illegal. A particularly tempting French variety sat on the bathroom vanity table of a friend, Z., who actually owns her charming Chelsea one-bedroom, which features hardwood floors and exposed brick walls. I held out against the call of that eau de toilette for five days. But by the sixth-a Friday night-I greedily grabbed Z.'s bottle and promptly dropped it on the hard tile floor. The impact smashed the dispenser.

I took that Pandora's perfume to the jeweler; he couldn't fix it. I tried to find a replacement in shops, online-anywhere! But the more I looked, the worse my fears became: The broken thing had to be exotic and expensive. I couldn't find it.

When Z. finally returned, I confessed, offering to repay her, silently imagining myself washing dishes, selling my hair, perhaps scrubbing floors, to make the money I owed. I felt like a character out of a Maupassant story. Z. laughed and told me to forget it: The stuff was some discontinued model she'd gotten for free at the magazine where she worked.

But the single most terrifying experience of my sitter existence occurred one night while I was in a video store. Before entering, I'd tied Henri-my poodle companion, who shares a lovely West Village three-room walk-up with a friend who was out west on a ski vacation-to the parking meter. I figured that since every dog owner in the city seemed to do it, it must be O.K.

(On poodles: When W. told me her dog would want to sleep with me, I thought, Not over my L'Occitane-smeared body. But by my second night with Henri, I was so in love with him-he was polite, smart, affectionate; so different from all the other men in New York; so French!-that I was soon pounding the duvet for him to jump up next to me.)

So I was considering Fellini versus Fassbinder when I saw a woman undo Henri's leash and walk off with him. I dropped the VHS boxes I was holding and bolted over the store's turnstile.

Skidding onto the sidewalk, I screamed "Fire! Fire!" (Isn't that what you're supposed to say in emergencies?) People looked at me like I was crazy. I shouted, "She's stealing my poodle!"

The vigilante halted and, after informing me that she was a friend of W., publicly scolded me. Henri was a pricey, rare breed, she said; leashing him to the meter was emphatically not allowed. Never again, I told myself as I walked away, cooing at Henri. These gigs are not worth the anxiety!

Yet here I am again-in an enormous, deliciously air-conditioned apartment in an elevator-and-doorman building-escaping from my life. Why not? I can't afford a summer place. But for a few weeks, while the Hamptons set is off enjoying their second homes, I'll enjoy mine.

And I'm sure my friend will never find out I fed the dog an extra cup of food this morning so I could sleep in.

What makes this so dispiriting is that the transformation seems to have as much to do with the actresses' aspirations as with Dick Wolf's fantasies. I may be wrong about this. For one thing, it's possible they're about to be canned and are trying desperately to hang on. Still, there's a thin line between keeping your crime-fighting cred and devolving into eye candy for the presumably randy and much-coveted 18-to-49-year-old male viewers, for whom television is awash with women who purport to swagger and swashbuckle, but whose grooming and bedroom eyes tell a different story. Meanwhile, the aging male star, comforting in his wisdom and authority, can go on forever, like a favorite leather shoe (think Jerry Orbach), whereas the female was put on Earth (or at least on movie and television screens) to supply visual variety.

How the various women on the crime shows handle this conflicted mandate-looking brainy and serious enough to handle a "man's" job while radiating the necessary quotient of sex appeal-makes a fascinating reflection of the contortions of women today, for whom dress and behavior are no longer easy or automatic, and for whom every decision, from makeup to marriage, is freighted with upsides and downsides. Shopaholism versus workaholism, skin-deep beauty versus inner drive: every piece of jewelry, every strand of exquisitely groomed hair, every inch of exposed flesh signifies some sort of choice between preserving professional, feminist integrity (we know how long it takes to look like that!) and succumbing to crass youth-and-marketing ideals in pulchritude.

Mariska Hargitay, Kathryn Erbe and Bebe Neuwirth on three different Law & Order shows; CSI's Marg Helgenberger and Jorja Fox; CSI: Miami's Emily Proctor and Khandi Alexander; Kathryn Morris on Cold Case; and Poppy Montgomery on Without a Trace: That there are so many interesting actresses doing plausibly serious work, in shows rich with the plot, character and narrative drive so sadly lacking in most Hollywood movies, is cause for uncorking the champagne. And one of the things that allows these women to develop as full-fledged people with recognizable personalities is the ensemble format of the weekly show, with its surrogate-family motif, its internal battles and turf dramas. The bond between the women and the men, the women and the women, the men and the men on these crime shows is as intense and varying as a love affair. Indeed, what slows the shows down for me, no less than "inappropriate" dress, is when their "real lives" take over, back-stories intrude, family skeletons rattle around and come out of the closet.

What's just as interesting as what my friend Caroline sees as the increased glam factor toward the end of these women's tenure is their remarkable evolution on the shows. They begin as interchangeable pretty girls with a few personality tics to distinguish them from each other. For example, Emily Procter-coming off her saucy Southern-Republican-in-the-liberal-woodpile role on The West Wing-is suddenly, on CSI Miami, a crime-scene technician in love with bullets and bullet holes. It takes them a while to get their footing, to create distinct personae, and it's playing off the other characters that enables them to do this organically. By now, who else but Kathryn Erbe can work with Mr. Know-It-All Vincent D'Onofrio on Law & Order: Criminal Intent? O.K., she's a subordinate, but she's smart-and, crucially, they've molded and adapted to each other in a classic duo of flyaway flamboyance versus common sense. Mr. D'Onofrio and David Caruso's Horatio are the amusingly grandstanding honchos of their respective shows; Gary Sinise and William Petersen the quietly confident savants, the ones who allow the women to emerge.

I have a few gaps in my understanding of these character "arcs"-e.g., I'm not sure when and why Ms. Helgenberger's Catherine Willows took over as boss lady from Petersen's Grissom on CSI-an ignorance I must here explain. My husband and I, despite making a living from watching and writing about movies, are techno-dummies who rely on our assistant, now removed from New York to Kansas, to supply us with our weekly videotapes of these shows. There are occasional hitches, such as when Eric goes on vacation, or when the broadcasts themselves are interrupted by Kansas' famous Storm Team. In case you didn't know from The Wizard of Oz, the weather is a very big deal in Kansas, a flat state, home to many storms and tornadoes. Even the absence of weather is a very big deal. Weather, you might say, is the state sport, a 24/7 operation. The Storm Team peremptorily and periodically interrupts the show to provide storm warnings, including one announcing that "there are no storm warnings." When there's even the remotest possibility of a downpour-not to mention a tornado-in any corner of the state, not only is CSI or Law & Order interrupted for advisories that include detailed maps and updates, but a continuous crawl provides moment-to-moment instructions such as: "All fallen branches should be brought to the schoolyard on --- Street." Or: "The Baptist Ladies' Bible Club will not be meeting at --- Church on Wednesday." What these offer is not so much a reality check as a reminder of the flatness and dullness of a weird landscape and culture that produces (along with nouveaux Republicans) some of the most lurid crimes in recent memory.

Why is there no CSI: Kansas, where they really need it? Because-to return to my original theme-there are no babes in Kansas. CSI: Miami's lab ladies can look serious as all get-out because frivolity is all around them and exposed bronze flesh is as unremitting as the sun. Who needs décolletage over the microscope when South Beach provides yards of barely clad hedonists in 24-hour-party mode; ditto Las Vegas! And New York's CSI (much improved since it dropped the gloom-and-doom look) has its own kinkiness in post-mortem nudity, outer-borough élan and gallows screwball wit. The growing comfort level and sparkle between Mr. Sinise and Melina Kanakaredes as the show's two leads suggests how actor chemistry can sell an improbable setup. Not only am I beginning to suspend disbelief regarding the exotic Ms. Kanakaredes and her look-at-me coiffure; I'm even ready to believe that it's New York humidity rather than eight beauticians with gel that create that billowing mountain of curls. Well, almost.

A man showed up at the address printed on my first business card and asked the receptionist if anyone had lost a wallet. These days, I barely remember to take business cards with me when I leave the house. Then, I was so thrilled by their shape and texture and significance, I'd carry no less than 10. I offered to pay the man, but he refused; he mumbled something about being in the neighborhood and took the elevator out of sight. Of course, after he left I discovered that he'd already paid himself $17 and a monthly MetroCard.

The important stuff, however-the wallet itself, the credit cards, the all-important driver's license-was all there and untouched. Which might explain why, two years later, when I left my wallet in a cab again, I made none of the usual motions to erase myself. I canceled no accounts, changed no codes and threw away no keys. Blessed with an often-inconvenient mix of faith and practicality, I decided to give my hunch a week before I called Visa. A game of financial roulette, if you will. And on the seventh day, my wallet showed up in my mailbox. And it was good. Even the cash was still inside. (The bad news was that my lost-wallet inflation rate had apparently gone up only $1 in two years.)

This stuff happens to me all the time. It's not that I think I'm particularly lucky; I'm not. On some level, I'm conscious that it's a numbers game. For example, everyone I know who grew up a true New York City kid has been mugged at least twice. Logical. The other night, I thought I felt someone sneaking up on me and I knew my time had come. I just knew it. I felt a hand tug at my arm and turned, wide-eyed, to see a very tall woman who said, "Sorry, but ..." and then tucked the label on my collar back inside my shirt. I laughed, touching where the tag had been, and thanked her. It was then I decided the city is looking out for me. As they say, "Now more than ever." And perhaps that's it-perhaps it's a post-post-post-9/11 humanity that's trickled down to everyday courtesies like not stealing other people's wallets. Perhaps it's simply that niceness has always been New York's best-kept secret, constructed and maintained to keep the tourists out. Sort of like how it really doesn't rain very much in Seattle.

In all likelihood, it's not even as romantic as a shared front, but rather a basic sympathy for our fellow urban dwellers. It's inverted "do unto others" selfishness. I probably wouldn't leap in front of a cross-town bus for anyone only because I wouldn't expect someone to do that for me. But I would expect them to tell me that my fly is undone and take a certain amount of pride in informing others of this myself. In the past five years alone, I have left my wallet in a cab an astonishing-nay, impressive-6.7 times. (The .7 is for all the times I would have gone ID-less into a bar had someone not gotten out of the back seat after me and said, "Forget something?") With the exception of that first $17 idiot's fee, my wallet gets returned to me every time. Every. Single. Time.

Do I think I am jinxing this streak by coming out in the open with it in this manner? That I am courting a trip to the Herald Square D.M.V.? I did consider that. I also figured this would be the ultimate test of my theory that it's not me, not just my luck, but something more organic about the way the city works.

I was absent-mindedly picking at my nails and pondering all of this on the subway platform when a small Korean woman came out from behind the median map barrier and smacked my arm down. "Slun!" She shook her head and held my fingertips in a bunch. "No bite!" People turned to look. Apparently my mother had found a way to morph into this meticulous woman who, in reality, had painted my nails three weeks prior at a local salon. After that, the question was no longer whether the city was looking out for me, but whether it was butting in. I like the barely-there idea of a guardian angel. I could do without the baby-sitting police. When does neighborliness become meddling? It's got to rain in Seattle eventually.

With few exceptions, our actual neighbors who share our addresses are strangers as well. Recently, I came home to a note pasted on my door with duct tape. Apparently I had been throwing my trash bags in the incorrect bucket outside my brownstone, thus leading to some bad bucket overflow. This deviant behavior had to stop. I felt the note was on the brusque side, but perhaps that was just the duct tape talking. Shaking it off, I plucked said note from my door and threw it out in the kitchen. One minute passed before something occurred to me, and then I flung open my kitchen cabinet, reread the Sharpie scrawl and realized: This guy was going through my trash. How else could he know it was me? Yes, I was creeped out. Yes, I now pulp my receipts and double-knot my trash bags. But the thing is, in his own inadvertently selfish way, he meant well. The man didn't want trash outside his house. And his casa is my casa.

In the end, it is rare that our random acts of kindness do not achieve their intended effect. It doesn't take much more than those magic words "Hey, you've got toilet paper stuck to your shoe!" to make me fall in love with this place again. Maybe I'm easy. Maybe it's all about inverted selfishness. That Cuticle Cop was well intentioned, but because I would never do what she did, it pissed me off. I'm just not a good enough person to smack a stranger.

Thus, as I stood there waiting for my train, I felt my understanding and empathy for my fellow New Yorkers swell like a big glowing orb of Care Bears and butterfly kisses. I said the absent-minded professor's prayer of gratitude for every glorious time a wallet-shaped envelope appeared in my mailbox. I smiled at people holding my same subway pole, and they smiled back. Because this is the beauty of strangers: We're all just trying to do our best to help each other out, motivated not by karma or luck but by a natural instinct to aid the greater whole, one stray clothing tag at a time.

Except for the old guy on the corner of 13th and Seventh two nights ago who saw me smoking a cigarette and told me it would kill me. Asshole.

I don't know who these invisible geniuses are who actually will be accepted to college, but I'm envious of them, and more so their parents. They must be a far less stressed group of individuals than my friends and me. We peruse guidebooks and consult the Internet, meet with college advisors and attend school meetings. It consumes a good deal of our lives.

I desperately wanted the college process to be fun. I imagined walking arm-in-arm with my beautiful child through tree-lined campuses discussing Big Meaningful Issues like "Why are we here?" and "If women ruled the world, would there be war?" We would walk into libraries with great, tall stacks just to inhale the scent of the books and hear the creak of the wooden floors. Ah, life, I would say. It's a beautiful thing.

My daughter feels differently, though. She's totally overwhelmed by the application process and feels somewhat incapable of moving forward. Her junior year of high school is tough; the demands upon her intense. First there are the Advanced Placement exams to worry about, then the SAT's and, after that, the SAT II, which I knew as the Achievement Tests. And, oh yes-she needs to make straight A's, except for two A-minuses to prove that she's not an obsessive perfectionist. It's all making her a little testy.

She does well enough in school. She speaks French beautifully and, for reasons that are inexplicable to me, she excels in courses like physics and chemistry. It's not enough, though, they say. Applicants have to have an edge: perfect scores on their SAT's, play an obscure orchestral instrument, be environmental scientists and create the most briliantly written college essay ever. "I have an idea," I advised her. "Why don't you write about how much you adore your mother?"

I could certainly do likewise for her. I think of the things my daughter does well, the joy she brings to every day of my life, the sparkle in her clear blue eyes. It's the way she laughs that makes her special, I think; the fact that she named her fish, Fish; her bohemian sense of style, with my scarves swagged around her neck. It's not the colleges that I want to appreciate that, though. It's her.

What would it matter if she got into Harvard or Princeton or Yale anyway-all schools she assures me are impossible to get into? Would it really make her a better person? I wonder. I didn't go to an Ivy League school and I turned out, well … odd, perhaps, but happy enough. And besides, I once dated a man from Harvard, and he managed to drop the "H-word" (as I came to refer to it) into the conversation approximately every 15 minutes. Grace escaped him, Harvard or not.

But still, I was awake half the night worrying that I had handled the College Fair badly. I thought about my daughter's friends, whom I saw marching around purposely with their parents from booth to booth, engaging in conversation, shaking hands, befriending those in high places. What did they know that I didn't, I wondered, and how did they get their children to cooperate? Maybe I should have tripped them up, I thought, stuck out my foot just as they were passing. Instead, I stood paralyzed in the corner and waved as they passed.

My wise daughter sized up the situation the minute we walked in the door and dismissed the event as pointless. "You can get this information on the Internet," she said as she eyed the stacks and stacks of brochures. "I want to go home." We stood there, right in front of the representatives from Duke and Dartmouth, arguing about how to proceed.

She had a point. After some discussion, we surmised that the purpose of the evening was to make face-to-face contact with the college reps, look them in the eye and say something memorable. But what would that possibly be? With hundreds of students elbowing their way to the front of the line, the only way I could imagine they would remember you would be if you gave them a diamond tennis bracelet, perhaps, or burst into a rousing rendition of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" or maybe "Old Man River." Now that would make an impression.

I heard one woman telling a tale to a venerable Southern school about her youth in Texas and the summers that she spent visiting her grandparents in Alabama. "The South is in her genes," she said as she patted her child on the back. "She can't help but be attracted to it." You're pathetic, I thought. Shut up! Dear Reader, that woman was me, competing with the masses, trying to exhibit some edge. My daughter rolled her eyes and asked me to speak no more. I happily obliged.

Perhaps I've got it all wrong. Maybe instead of believing that my child is going to end up in the school that's right for her, I should be contacting heads of state-or possibly Oprah-to write letters of recommendation in her behalf. Maybe we should both learn to say clever things, like "How many ways can I kiss up?" in 17 languages.

But that's not going to happen. Instead, I've decided to tune out the noise and tune into that place in my head that is full not of expectation or entitlement, but of hope and wonder and infinite possibility, and try to convince my child to do the same. Not to sound hopelessly naive, but isn't that what a college education is all about?

The uniform is more than 50 years old, but he can still get into it. Sure, he has to suck in his gut to button the Eisenhower jacket, and the pants have a big "V" of new material in the front where he has them let out to the max, but if you weren't looking for it, you wouldn't notice.

Honestly, I'm feeling a little embarrassed about the notion of walking down the street with this old guy in a World War II uniform. But the fact is that I love him, this man who came so late into my life, and I want to be with him, today especially. Not that I'm going to watch him march in a parade or even take part in a ceremony for veterans. No, his is a one-man Memorial Day observation. He will do what he does every Memorial Day: He will take the No. 5 bus up Riverside Drive to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, where for a few moments he will remember "Grandma."

They met in basic training in Fort McClellan, Ala., in September 1944: He-a skinny, 16-year-old Jewish kid from Brooklyn who had run away from home and lied about his age and even his name to get into the service-and Grandma, a burly, red-haired 19-year-old farm boy from Murfreesboro, Tenn. His real name was Frank, but the other Southern boys in the squad dubbed him Grandma because of his many stories about his pipe-smoking grandmother and her tales of the Tennessee "hollers."

At the monument, the old soldier circles around to the back, where he can be alone. The edifice hasn't been kept up; there is litter and crumbling stone and the stench of misuse. He has written to his assemblyman complaining about the conditions, but nothing has been done.

Now he stands facing the base of the rounded structure, his head bowed, his arms dangling, his hands clasped in front of him.

Is he remembering the beginning, back in basic training, where all the members of the platoon except him were Southerners and didn't take to the Yankee in their midst? Remembering the "tricks" they played on him-stuffing sand in his rifle or cutting a button off his uniform to get him in trouble just before an inspection? He had accepted it as a hazing ritual at first, but then, after a particularly nasty K.P. duty resulted, he confronted them. After all, he might be skinnier than the rest of them, but he wasn't a wimp. He had known the streets of Brooklyn.

He demanded to know which of them had done it. When one stepped up and said, "I did, Yankee-what are you going to do about it?", the scrawny kid from Brooklyn did what was appropriate back home: He punched him in the mouth and promptly took a beating for his trouble.

It became a sport every evening for each of the others to take turns at beating the Yankee. That is, until it was Grandma's turn. The quiet, red-haired boy from Tennessee had hung back until the last and, finally, was forced to admit that he didn't want to fight. Goaded by the others, the big farm boy took some half-hearted swings, endured the punches of his opponent, but then, to the noisy disapproval of the group, walked away.

It was the beginning of their friendship. During those long days on the troop ship, he and Grandma played gin rummy and swapped stories of home, the kid from Brooklyn and the one from Tennessee-the only company each needed.

In a frozen foxhole in the Ardennes, they shook with cold and fear, huddling together for warmth in that bitterest of winters: three days and three nights without sight of another human being, with no sound other than the cracking of ice-laden branches, unsure if it was the enemy hiding there in that frozen forest.

On this peaceful holiday, quiet except for the steady hum of traffic on the West Side Highway, maybe what he hears is the sudden, terrifying, ear-blasting noise of mortars hitting so close that the concussion lifted them off the ground, showering them with frozen chunks of dirt as he and Grandma clung to each other. When silence fell that night, still crouching in that frozen hole, they heard German voices on all sides and realized that they were surrounded. Before it was light, they crawled, belly down in the snow, toward the forest.

Is he trembling now with the memories of those days-weeks, really-that they wandered lost, without food or shelter, hiding at night in deadfalls or burrowing into the snow like animals? Frozen bodies-Americans and Germans, no enemies in death-were like downed trees half-buried in snow. They made a cracking sound as he turned them, searching for food, weapons, ammunition.

But most likely, on this Memorial Day as on every other before and since, he is recalling their last moment together. Giddy with the realization that the war was almost over and that they had survived after house-to-house combat across Germany, they found the duty easy, searching the elegant villas south of Munich for hidden Nazi bigwigs. They joked along with the others as they rummaged throughout a lavishly furnished home, discovering a real bathroom with a forgotten luxury-a flush toilet. He and Grandma laughed about who would go first, in their high spirits mimicking an old vaudeville routine. "After you, Mr. Gallagher." "No, after you, Mr. Sheen." Grandma went ahead while his friend shouted "advice" through the closed door. Then-crazily-the door against which he'd been leaning flew off, throwing him across the room and knocking him unconscious. Thankfully, he didn't see what had happened to Grandma, didn't know until later that his friend had been blown apart by that booby-trapped toilet.

Now, he stands silently, head bowed before the crumbling memorial. At last he straightens, takes a step back, squares his shoulders and executes a crisp salute, holding it for a long moment.

When he turns to face me, I'm not surprised to see that his face is wet with tears. I take his hand and, in the melancholy light of an overcast sky, we head back along Riverside Drive.

When we get home, he will unpin the ribbons from his Eisenhower jacket and lay them neatly in the plastic box he keeps on the shelf in the closet. He will remove his uniform and hang it carefully in the moth-proof garment bag, as he has for 57 years now, ready for the next Memorial Day, when he will once again pay a private tribute to his long-lost friend.

Though we haven't known each other long, conversation among the mothers turned immediately toward the personal, not to mention the physical. Our WASP-y husbands shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. "Ladies, there are children present," they pleaded-but we plowed on, undaunted.

Between bites of chicken fingers and animal crackers, Anna said she used to love her breasts; for a large set, they had always been perky and firm. Now she feels more like a subject in National Geographic. Lamenting the effects of motherhood on a smaller bust, I reached my hands inside my shirt to illustrate a deflated balloon. (I swore I'd get a boob lift once childbearing is over, but reiterated my friend Holly's warning: "Never let a doctor from a culture that subjugates women work on your tits. You need a nice Latin man to do the job-a guy who worships a woman's body.")

I want another baby, so I'll willingly turn my body into a science project again. I'll welcome the inflated mammaries, the swollen, veiny legs, the purple stretch marks. And while I'm not usually a sucker for sympathy, I cannot wait for the women of New York to kill me with kindness.

Let me explain: When I became visibly pregnant, people here were nicer to me, but it wasn't the people I expected. On my daily commute to Wall Street, men would pretend to be engrossed in their Wall Street Journals rather than relinquish a seat on the subway. A man my father's age once darted up the block to steal the taxi I had hailed.

But suddenly it felt like I'd become a member of a secret girls' club. A world of kind, supportive women became available to me. The same single women who would have previously given me the once-over before stealing my bar stool eagerly gave up their chairs. They let me cut in line at the restroom. The same skinny girls who sneered and vied for prime mat positions in Pilates class were now cheering me on at the gym.

Other pregnant women and seasoned mothers asked how I was feeling, when I was due, whether I knew my baby's sex, at which hospital I planned to deliver. They thought nothing of sharing the intimate details of their labors and deliveries. Women I'd never met talked about how long it took their nether regions to heal and the amount of time required before they felt comfortable having sex with their husbands again. For one new friend, it was six weeks; for another, it was six months, three weeks and four days. (Her husband was counting.)

One woman felt guilty for breastfeeding only four weeks, while another couldn't get her 14-month-old daughter to wean. One pined for her corporate-career days, while another felt deficient because she "just" wanted to stay home with her son. Yet another was convinced that her son would be shut out of the Ivy League because she placed him in front of the television while she took her morning shower. All bemoaned the sheer exhaustion of those first sleepless months.

A pal of mine who defected to Stamford, Conn. agreed that this unique condition-either one's own or proximity to another's-brings out the best in New York women. When she was pregnant, she said, men were often quick to comment on her size, but women avoided discussing weight and were generally more compassionate. Similarly, an Upper West Side mother-to-be of my acquaintance cited the knowing glances she receives from women on the subway or in meetings when she winces. They understand that a jab to her ribs is a welcome fleeting pain, as it ultimately means that her baby is healthy and active. Women who have been pregnant understand that each kick builds the connection between mother and child.

Despite my friends' cuddly commentary, I have another, more cynical explanation for strangers' sudden sweetness: FAT. When a woman is fat, even as a result of pregnancy, she becomes unthreatening to other women. She's promptly out of the running; she's no longer competition. Even though she's a symbol of fertility-some even say an über-woman fulfilling her biological role by continuing the species-she's not a sexual being by society's standards.

Aside from a few fetishists, men aren't inclined to think that a pregnant woman is "hot"-and, regardless, their first assumption is that she's taken. One evening when I was five months along, I was out for dinner at Le Bilboquet with a friend when a man at a neighboring table glanced playfully my way-first toward my eyes, then blatantly at my rack. I was wearing my "sexy mommy dress," a sleeveless, body-skimming little black number with a dangerously low V. I knew I didn't look pregnant, seated behind my table at a banquette. Yet, mid-meal, nature called, and I labored to shimmy my ever-expanding butt past an apologetic couple. Mr. Flirt turned away, embarrassed and ashamed. He blushed, his friends began to laugh and I just beamed.

"No matter how gorgeous you are when pregnant, it's a visible sign that most likely you're in a relationship and you're about to have a lot of responsibility on your hands," said my friend Christy. As a result, many pregnant women simply stop seeing themselves as appealing, much less as potential sex symbols. An Upper East Sider who's expecting her second child told me that she felt more at ease being pregnant when she and her husband applied to become members of an elite country club. "We interviewed with mostly men, and I was glad to have that issue off the table," she said. "There was no way I could have been attractive at that point!"

Sadly, the special treatment ended once I squeezed back into my "skinny jeans." Manhattan ladies are once again rude. They'll rarely make way for my stroller on the sidewalk. They'll cluck and scold if, God forbid, my toddler throws a tantrum in a store. I'm just another chick on the treadmill, just another bitch elbowing her way to the bar-when I actually manage to make it out, that is. But every time I see a pregnant woman, I jump to attention. I offer her my seat, I help her with doors, I carry her packages. Most of all, I ask her to tell her story. I eagerly spill my own. I welcome her to the club.

Like most urban parents, the sleep of our children is a fragile, easily disturbed and deeply precious commodity. There are few things in life we cling to with such desperation as that brief window of time each night after our kids conk out but before we go to bed. We have neighbors who live with their twins in a one-bedroom and sleep on a futon, colleagues whose erratic schedules made hooking up a challenge even before they had kids. They say every child is a miracle. Now I know that's because sex is damn near impossible.

Our place isn't large, and the floor plan is open, so even a low-volume conversation in the back reverberates to the front. Spooked just sitting in the living room talking or watching a movie, we're flat-out petrified at anything requiring somewhat more enthusiastic noise, or the ill-timed squeak of a bedspring. We confine our lovemaking to the maximum quiet and dark we can muster. It's mostly because we're just not the sort of parents who ever want their kids to have the vaguest idea they have a sex life-but also because if, God forbid, we were to wake them, we'd never get laid.

Romantic spontaneity went out the window right around the time our elder daughter was 6 weeks old and I got the thumbs-up from my doctor to resume sex. The hormonally horny creature I'd been throughout pregnancy was already gone, replaced by a sleep-deprived woman with sagging belly, leaky rack and below-the-waist disaster zone. Nevertheless, I've always been a plucky, up-for-anything sort, and I figured I could put aside my recuperative blahs long enough to get back on the road to wanton sex goddess. A short time and few less articles of clothing later, I realized there was one small factor I hadn't considered-something that screamed a lot and dozed in 20-minute bursts.

A couple of years and another child later, sex is as calculated an aspect of life as RSVP-ing to birthday-party invitations. My mate and I look at our calendars before plotting out when we might have any energy. We plan for a night, have an extra cup of coffee in the afternoon, and cross our fingers that the kids go down soundly at their appointed bedtime. Then, a while later, we stealthily crawl under the covers for a brief grope fest and hope any ominous thumping from the crib doesn't erupt into a full-blown wail.

It hasn't been an easy adjustment. I'm not one who enjoys uncertainty. I prefer my Mr. Coffee machine to wondering if there's going to be a line at Starbucks. Similarly, I was never into dating and the agita of never knowing where my next roll in the hay was coming from. I was delighted when my husband and I moved in together. Booty on demand-it was better than cable. We could spend whole weekend mornings lolling in bed together. We could set an evening mood with a few candles and a little Isaac Hayes. Now we've gone from "Shaft" to shhhhh. The threat of discovery may be sexy when you're trysting in the bathroom of some club, but it's a stone-cold libido killer when you're in your own home.

Reliable seduction has become, like sleep and a wardrobe unstained by applesauce, a luxury I can no longer afford. So I've adapted. I don't need an aromatherapy massage, a bubble bath for two or a roaring fireplace. Flimsy lingerie? Who even sees it? That stuff all strikes me as hopelessly girlie now. Instead, I've become as efficiently goal-oriented as any guy. Where once I could offer a coy come-on or a teasing promise of things to come, my repertoire of dirty talk now consists of a single phrase: "Make it snappy."

When he was still at his old job, my husband was able to take the occasional day off, or sometimes just nip home for a nooner while the kids were out of the house. Even then we had to contend with our largely stay-at-home neighbors clomping through the halls, reminding us of the acoustic limitations of our dwelling. Do I feel super-erotic when there's a loud squabble in the stairwell about who didn't recycle their beer bottles? Not so much.

I can't remember the last time my mate and I were truly alone. The relentless exhaustion of working and parenting takes its toll, but I sometimes think that if only we had a real room, a place with a door and no need for a noise machine and no one else sharing it, I might actually feel a little more like the contented little sexpot I once fancied myself. When I entertain vague fantasies about leaving our cramped quarters and buying a house, I get hot thinking about how we could have more sex-that, and a washing machine. Hell, we could have sex on the washing machine.

But instead we remain here, quietly scoping out the Lowes and wondering if our landlord would raise an eyebrow if she saw us hauling lumber and doorknobs in. And we bide our time, nodding our heads sagely when the old folks in the neighborhood look at our chubby-cheeked offspring and sigh that it all goes so fast. That's the attitude I'm going with. It's just 17 years till they're in college. And if, by then, we creak when we go at it, at least I won't have to worry about the noise.