QUOTE : How many times had she heard women in New York - maybe women everywhere, for all she knew - speak lyrically of how they wouldn't see friends for months, perhaps even years, and then it was as though they had never been apart. "Picked up where we left off" was the common phrase. It was supposed to signal some magical communion, but if you looked it right in the eye, it came down to this: the kinds of people they considered friends they might not even actually see for a long long time.