Below, they vote

POOF, and I'm gone.

Finally put my finger on what's feeling odd this evening.

There's a meeting in the under-furnished livingroom of apartment #1; my brownstone neighbors are perched and squished in a circle. They're gathered to meet the next me, the next apt. 3.

My buyer faces the only-in-this-city phenomenon of the co-op board. She'll walk into a circle of friendly, largely gay, men. On the lap of each - her life - document form.

I underwent the same in the spring of 2002. Then, thinking my case thin (I was jobless then, as now), I brought along magnolia cupcakes.

Turns out I live in one of the gentlest buildings in Manhattan. To a man they worried more about my having a Republican uncle than a financial future. But they recall the cupcakes fondly and wonder if my buyer will be as wise.

My neighbors-to-be upstate get no such say. Perhaps, as I type, rabbits are weighing in at a meeting in the field, and the deer taking my side.

At the bar in Red Hook, the lawn-mowing guy's betting the snow plow guy I'll tip like a city girl. (They'd drink to that.)

Below they vote-in my replacement - who I may never meet even as I sit in her kitchen now.

Like having your family interview your ex-husband's second wife.

C