Falling in love in five seconds

A woman on West 23rd Street cackling HAHAHA I forgot how much I love this city.

Two elderly Chinese couples ballroom dancing on a tarmacked tennis court, their classical music drifting to soundtrack the nearby runners and teenagers playing basketball.

City cowboys sprawling on benches without their cattle.

An old guy on the steps of his apartment building with a regal parrot on his lap. It's green with a tuft of feather hair and observational head turns that make it look startlingly human. "Beautiful parrot!" I shout from a distance, and he nods slowly. (The man, not the parrot.)

The Empire State Building, every time it comes into view at the end of a street.

A cute-assed waitress wearing head-to-toe white: Levi's and a James Dean t-shirt and not a coffee spillage in sight. She seems the type to ask More Tea Darlin'? but this is New York, not Tennessee.

Any of the Tall Men on Park Avenue making Bold American Eye Contact while passing me on the sidewalk. The passing bit is important. You never want these men to open their mouths.

Solo margaritas at a bar that's playing the very best songs from B'Day. Green Light. Upgrade U. Get Me Bodied. A huge dog - a Chou Chou apparently- sits next to me. This is the sort of dog I usually laugh at, not with. It's a sheepskin rug. A teddy bear. A Lion with a blow dry. He is called Richard and that alone means I fall in love with him. Richard! He doesn't need my love. He cocks his head and stubbornly looks away every time I try to take a photograph. Every body in the room is pulled towards him.

Three firefighters at Ladder 20 standing around and drinking beer on the warm afternoon of September 11. On the pin board outside there's a sign commemorating Twenty, the Dalmatian pup given to them in the days after 9/11 to boost morale. There's a photograph of her sitting on the steps of an engine. She looks like the kind of dog with a strong tail that mercilessly knocks objects from surfaces, and a sandpaper-licking tongue too loving to refuse. "I can't say enough about what she did to help us," the paper reads. "She went on all the runs, she'd jump in the truck, stick her head out of the window and bark."