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sapling in 1950. (Grandpa Reuben was given the hard sell by a Jewish charity to fund a forest in the new State of Israel; the oak was his defiant I’ll-plant-whatever-damn-trees-I-want gesture.) Out of the Ultrasuede flies a terrified black squirrel that immediately runs up the bark.
    “Ohmi- gawd , a squir -rel!” The cutesy salesclerk laughs. It amazes me that nobody ever thinks of cuddly-looking squirrels as the disease-carrying vermin they are, but the clerk is so much mellower now that I’m not about to go into semantics and whip her into a frenzy all over again. Beneath her blond, the girl-woman has dark roots that are fashionably meant to be there. With her exotic face, I’d venture she’s half Japanese and half Anglo. “I’m Sukie by the way.”
    “I’m Heather.”
    “Take a blouse or skirt, any one that you like. I’m soooooo grateful.”
    “You don’t have to do that. Really. Besides I have to head over to the Greenblotz factory right now for a meeting.”
    “No, you were so great the way you picked up the boot. You were, like, fearless.”
    “Tell you what instead. Give me a good discount on that polka-dot dress in the window, and I’ll snap it up.”
    “You’ve got a deal. I knew someone happening would get that dress. Don’t you love polka dots? So Valley of the Dolls .”
    “A knockout. I have a launch party coming up that it will be great for.”
    “What kind of launch party?”
    “For a digital-film magazine.”
    She pauses, and decides to continue her thoughts out loud. “You’re in marketing, something like that? Those matzo guys need a community-relations lesson, they don’t give their neighbors the time of day. Any store that is new is garbage to them. They keep to themselves, those people.”
    “I’m a film producer. Heather Greenblotz . One of those people.” I’m taken aback by Sukie’s prejudiced comment, but I know what she’s saying has some truth to it. Jake doesn’t get the young boutique owners at all, and got into an argument with a prose poet over Jake’s meager ten-dollar donation to Phlegm , a failing e-zine published in an apartment around the corner from the factory. The factory workers are also outright annoyed by the funksters. Their presence has jacked up neighborhood costs, so there’s no longer a dollar hamburger at the corner joint. In fact, the restaurants in the surrounding blocks have some of the hottest tables in the city. You have to wait a month to get a reservation at both 71 Clinton and even longer at über-chef Wylie Dufresne’s newest restaurant, WD-50.
    “Oh! I didn’t mean to insult—”
    “We’re a bit old school, Sukie, but we’re not so bad once you get to know us. I’m sure my cousin Jake would love to give you a tour. If not I will. I only work there around—”
    “I really wish I could take that back—”
    I check my watch. Almost eleven. “No problem, trust me, but I got to fly. I’m taking over a media tour today for my cousin. I help him out when there’s too much going on. Don’t think twice about what you said. My cousin is brusque if he doesn’t know you. And I’ll be back for that dress after my meeting is over.”
    “I’ll put it aside ,” she says, the last word an octave higher than the rest of her sentence. She decides on a spur-of-the-moment hug.
    I gear myself up for the task ahead and open the front door of the factory, a sprawling five-story building with eye-straining industrial light. There’s not an iMac or track-lighting rod to be found—we’re one of the last Age of Manufacturing holdouts in downtown Manhattan. If a developer could ever talk my family into breaking the no-sell wills that are kept in the factory strongbox, he or she would be hard-pressed to remove the musty scent of ninety years of flour caked into the walls and floor.
    There’s a chorus of “howsits” from the staff as I walk toward the back area where Jake’s office is. The majority of the thirty or so workers have known