This photo of Cynthia at Coney Island really captures her spirit: she's always game.
After returning from London, she rented a penthouse apartment on West End Avenue, about halfway between 47 Pianos and Columbia. It had a balcony where she let me park my motorcycle in the winter. "Just bring it up in the freight elevator," she instructed. Like I said, always game!
Proximity increased the closeness of our friendship, as did the fact that we both were single for much of the eighties. Smokey loved her, too.
Although Cynthia gave up her dream of becoming a veterinarian, eventually earning a partnership at Price Waterhouse, we both were crazy about animals, riding the motorcycle to the Bronx Zoo one summer weekend. Nobody was a better passenger; unlike nearly everyone else, including David, she actually leaned into the turns. However, I took my fashion cues from Elton John, not the Hell's Angels. It's hard to see but my glasses are emerald green.
The zoo had a reputation of being one of the best in the United States, if not the world. But with my 21st century consciousness and after visits to Amboseli, the Lewes Wildlife Conservancy, and Maasai Mara, it's hard not the pity these animals, no matter how humanely caged. And in Nairobi, I actually got to feed a giraffe.
Even at that time, some birds and animals fared better than others with relatively open spaces.
Cynthia eventually relocated to Dallas, but we got together whenever business brought her to Manhattan. On one memorable occasion, she brought Bill, a guy she was dating. Bill had a friend in New York, Kenny, who booked appointments at Kenneth, an exclusive hair salon just off Fifth Avenue (Mr. Kenneth, the owner, had been "Secretary of Grooming" during the Kennedy Administration). I took them all to Coney Island in Herr Cucaracha. It wasn't the first time I declared to my passengers that "this is the New York that tourists don't usually see."
I developed an instant crush on Kenny, fueled by unexpressed and possibly mistaken assumptions about his profession. Not that it really mattered. Kenny knew how to have a good time, and the four of us had a ball.
Cynthia and Bill didn't last. She eventually married another Bill with whom she now has adult twins. Elizabeth, who followed in her mother's footsteps career-wise, recently wed; William graduated from Stanford Law School.
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