First of all, it was hotter than hell. Very sunny and a bit muggy the entire weekend, but absolutely preferable to rain.

I got to Francine's apartment on Saturday morning at around 11:00. We took the train into Greenwich Village and ate at this very cute little outdoor cafe called Pennyfeather's. Then we walked, and walked, and walked uptown, stopping in random stores and funky shops along the way. We ended up at the Empire State Building, but decided that the lines were too long. So we went to Macy's instead.

At about six we headed home, got a pizza and made daquiris and got drunk rehashing the good old days in L.A. Francine, Dana and I all worked together in various subservient positions at Cannell, and boy, do we have stories.

Sunday morning, up and out and straight to midtown, to Rockefeller Center and the Museum of Modern Art, which had a very cool Hitchcock retrospective and some funky drawings that we didn't understand, which I suppose is the point of modern art. I saw one Magritte oil painting that really struck me. It's called "Empire of Light II," and it's a painting of a quiet small-town street at night, with one soft street lantern lit, except that the sky above the tree line is bright blue with white fluffy clouds, the middle of the day. I went down to the print section of the museum store, and of course, couldn't find it. I asked the girl behind the counter and she said they're fighting with the painting's owners who for some reason don't want a print made of it. They did allow notecards to be made (make sense to you?) so I had to settle for that.

After that, we walked up to Central Park and watched a group of street kids do a very cool dance/tumbling routine. Walked through the park a little, ate hot dogs from a street vendor, came back out and did some more shopping, then back home, where we had more pizza and daquiris until we crashed, early. None of us are used to this much running around, and two straight days really wore us out.

This morning we got up and wandered around a section of Brooklyn called Park Slope. Had some brunch and spent some time in a flea market, then into Barnes and Noble. Usually I'm very particular about not doing anything on vacation that I could do at home, but we all wanted to go and it gave us some time apart from each other.

I only mention that because after we got in the car to head home from B&N, Francine had a little bit of a cow. We wanted to find a place for the henna painting, and Francine had been talking to us earlier about a problem she was having with her phone company where she was being charged for every local call she made. So Dana whips out her phone card and suggests that we just use a pay phone to call some places, and I wanted to go home to get the phone book and put my stuff together since I was planning on leaving straight from the salon (or whatever you call the place where you get that done.)

Since I was trying to drive in completely unfamiliar territory while we were having this conversation, I said I was going to pull over so we could discuss, and Francine just let loose, raised voice and everything. "Jesus Christ, we don't need to discuss, we don't need to have a conference, let's just go home and call, it's stupid that we have to make this into a big deal, the money is not a problem, for God's sake, let's just go home."

I was stunned. It sort of came out of nowhere, aside from the fact that we were all kind of talking over each other about what we should do, but it was very sudden and loud and I thought she was going to start slamming her fists on the dashboard or something.

I can't catch Dana's eye in the rearview mirror because we're both wearing sunglasses, but she doesn't look like she's about to say anything, so I don't say anything. It's been my experience that when people have these outbursts and then everyone stays quiet, once the outburster has a few moments to collect herself, she realizes what has just happened and calmly apologizes or offers some kind of explanation.

Nothing was coming out of Francine. I had no idea where the hell I was going, so I just kept going straight, figuring she would tell me where to turn, but she never did. I ran out of road so I finally had to say something. "I'm sorry to bother you, Francine, but I need to know where to go."

And she told me in a completely normal voice, her usual peppy self. So I took the opportunity and said, "Can you tell me what I said that made you so upset?" And she said, oh, it was nothing, I just didn't want you guys to worry about the money for the phone calls because it's obviously a screw up and I'm not going to have to pay for it anyway.

Now I was able to catch Dana's eye in the rearview, and she gave me a stunned wide-eyed look, which expressed exactly what I was thinking.

Francine has no idea that she did anything inappropriate. Everything went back to normal in a snap, without an apology from her, which really ought to have been offered. It was just bizarre. It was like she was oblivious to the tension her little tirade had created, and that after she was done speaking we were all back to having our fun time.

Anyway, we went home and couldn't find an open henna studio, so I packed up my stuff. Dana was supposed to stay until tomorrow, but we had some whispered conversations while Francine was out of the room and she asked me to take her back to the train station in Manhattan on my way home.

Francine didn't seem too upset at Dana's leaving early.

We talked about it on the way to the train station, and decided that the stress of having visitors just got to her. It's something I can understand... fish and houseguests, you know. But we had plenty of times while we were shopping to be on our own, so it wasn't as though the three of us were joined at the hip 24/7. And both Dana and I are very considerate houseguests, cleaning up after ourselves, chipping in for food and beverage, all of that. And while it would not bother me to have people in my house for a week, much less three days, it apparently was getting to Francine.

I'm going to send her a thank-you card, and while the evil passive-aggressive Grace wants to say something like "I hope my visit didn't cause too much stress," the virtuous adult Grace will make no mention of it.

I got home to seven hang-ups in twenty minutes from a cellphone number that I don't recognize, and one invitation to an A&E Law and Order party (I guess they ran a marathon today) from my friend Ed. Ed's a very nice guy, one of my first friends here at school. We both worked at the school last summer and he would always come down and visit me. He's very sweet but not my type, which is a good thing because he got engaged to another girl in my class. It was so thoughtful of him to issue the invitation, knowing that I was in town this summer, but I'm exhausted and it's too late anyhow.