Thomas drank himself to death. Lou and I stood in line for cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery and caught a scene of Sex and the City being shot on her block. When my lease was up in August, I decided to move to the corner of Perry and Hudson streets. My friends thought I was crazy; the apartment on Eighty- Seventh was a block from Central Park, had a private garden with a tree and a hammock, and my portion was $300 less a month than I'd be paying on Perry. Why was I moving to the West Village? "I don't know," I said and shrugged my shoulders. "Sounds cool." Unfortunately, Lou wasn't there anymore. She'd moved back to North Carolina the month prior. She lived in New York for seven years, but we overlapped for only one. Oh well, at least she'd had a chance to show me the ropes, for example, how to get into Chumley's. The main entrance was hidden in the back of a courtyard on Barrow Street, and the back door was unmarked at 86 Bedford; during Prohibition, when a bribed cop called to warn the barkeep of an ensuing raid through the courtyard, the crowd was instructed to exit on Bedford, or to " eighty- six it," which is the origin of that famous idiom. Patrons could also escape through a secret bookcase that led to an alley. Apparently, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre consummated their marriage in one of the booths. And it's