At the time I’m starting this essay, this is the temperature in New York City and the uptick in A/C use is causing predictable power outages. There’s a scene in The Coat Check Girl where Josie wakes on the first non-rainy day in months to this warning on the news,
“…stretch of dry, hot weather means a citywide surge of air conditioning and a possible overload to the electricity grids. And this, folks, could spell power outages, so take precautions!”
I don’t think I’m revealing any spoilers by saying, Reader, a blackout ensues. This functions in my book quite literally as “the dark night of the soul,” a storytelling trope that I first learned of in Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat.
Someone asked me today—an early reader of my book—where I (we) come up with story ideas. I’ve written about how I landed on the premise of Coat Check, a premise I am drawing from and reshaping for the rest of the trilogy, but I’ve yet to really organize my thoughts on how plot comes to be.
I have written about how we as writers collect stories. In some cases we know as we witness events in our lives that they will wind up on the page, in others they work their way in during the drafting process. In the case of the blackout, I borrowed it from the summer of 2003, a night of serendipity, magic and, as in Coat Check “a Bacchanalian free-for-all.”
It being pitch black in my West Village apartment, I took myself, and my Shiba Inu, Louie, out to a neighborhood restaurant I’d never been to that happened to be open and serving what they could. I chatted with a very nice person I vaguely knew from the area who invited me to their nearby rooftop where there was a party in progress. As we turned the corner I bumped into the man I was dating at the time (on whom one of my characters is very loosely based). What was magical about this reunion is that he’d gotten stuck on a subway platform in an entirely different part of town when the lights went out and walked miles in the general direction of my apartment, knowing I wouldn’t be home, hoping he’d find me, and voila. Had we left one minute earlier or later, he’d have disappeared into the night.
The four of us went to our new friend’s rooftop, then through Washington Square Park where we got pizza, finally winding up at a bar/restaurant that was festive and fun with an impromptu performance by a guitar-strumming local. This was one of the most memorable nights of that era, and of course I had no idea it would inspire a pivotal chapter in the book Future Me would write.
Fast forward many years. My favorite restaurant in New York, Bottino, plays a small but important role in Coat Check. As I honed in on the details of my story I took notes there on details of restaurant culture. I took them every time I dined out, but since Bottino was essentially my living room, the majority came from there. I spoke to staff who’d worked in hospitality in the summer of 2003 about what they did when the power went out, what food they served, how they managed the fact that most of the credit card readers in those days were electric. These details worked their way into my story as did an event I witnessed sometime around 2018.
My friend and I were dining at one of the banquettes by the front window. Seated two tables down was a young couple, a man and a woman. They were, to use the parlance of my days writing for the gossip column Page Six, canoodling. My friend and I didn’t pay them much attention until we glanced over and realized the young woman had been replaced by a different young woman, and this one was mad. Her boyfriend was inebriated, dropping things, struggling to sit up. They were an odd pairing, she fresh-faced and preppy, he in a worn leather jacket, pack of Marlboros on the table, wild black hair. While she was trying to get them an Uber home he passed out but not before pleading once more, “Baby, baby, baby—I’m sorry.”
It was not a pretty scene, we felt for the woman, and after they left, joked uncomfortably that this would find a place in my story. And it did:
Josie pried herself off her barstool and made the rounds straightening up. At a small table off to the side sat a very young couple.
The woman was visibly upset, and the man was talking nonstop, pleading with her for forgiveness Josie was sure he didn’t deserve. They were an unlikely match. She wore a floral dress and ballet flats, her thick, light brown hair tied loosely in a white scrunchie. Her boyfriend, or date, or whatever he was, looked like an East Village musician. A drummer. He was pale-skinned and rakishly disheveled, with tousled black hair, a chip-toothed smile, and a motorcycle jacket that looked as though it had been shredded by one too many collisions with pavement.
“Baby, baby, please!” he begged her, and Josie felt sick remembering [redacted’s] pleas. “I’m sorry.”
The girl wouldn’t look at him. Her big blue eyes brimmed with tears.
There’s a meme making the rounds that says, “Don’t f**k with writers. We’ll describe you.” It’s true, but we will change names and identifying characteristics to protect all parties.
My favorite writing comes from some sort of alchemy. I’ve been struggling to come up with topics for blog posts, having been advised to write more of them. Over the past few months I’ve begun, overthought, and abandoned several potential posts. Today a fleeting conversation with an early reader and a warning from the City of New York converged to inspire this post.
Thanks for reading, and if you have questions or comment that might lead to my next post, please share. Stay hydrated out there, my friends.