J. D. Salinger, Willa Cather, e.e. cummings, William Burroughs, Norman Mailer, Ernest Hemingway, Edna St. Vincent Millay, or any other of the dozens of literary luminaries who are said to have haunted the windowless speakeasy either during or after its Prohibition heyday. It didn't matter that flies swarmed the back room, the jukebox featured only opera, or that sawdust inevitably found its way into your overpriced shepherd's pie and frequently flat beer. With a pedigree such as that, derelictions are deemed charming. I agreed. I loved the joint. I discovered the venerable institution through Lou, the elder of my two older sisters, who lived in the West Village when I arrived in New York. She and her friends, many of whom went to college with her, took me under their collective wing as the kid sister they knew me to be -- emphasis on kid. Lou and I are seven years apart, so those college pals hadn't seen me since the perm. Actually, Lou and I hadn't seen much of each other either. She left for boarding school when I was eight. Of course, we visited over holidays and family vacations, but we didn't have a relationship outside of the family unit. It was different with my middle sister, Tucker, but with Lou . . . I spent more of my cognitive childhood imagining her than experiencing her. I remember trying to picture her New York apartment. In my mind, it had a tree- lined street and simple concrete stoop.