The streets and avenues of the city, especially midtown are practically unnavigable now, thanks to the holiday season upon us. I went over to Michael’s which was swarming, teeming with the clamoring crowds. The place, which ordinarily looks like a bright and light, cool restaurant in Southern California with its ivory walls and artwork by Hockney, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg, and Kim McCarty (Michael’s wife), now looks like Santa Claus is comin’ to town. The place is full up with the feeling, the anticipation those days just ahead of us. There’s the cold draft by the entrance way where everyone is checking their overcoats and furs — and then the big warm room filled with the rumble and clatter of the crowded tables, its walls and windows covered with thick swags of evergreen draped and suspended from big red satin bows.

At the table in the bay, Vogue’s editor Anna Wintour was awaitin’ hand-on-chin, with her editor-at-large Andre Leon Talley looking like he was awaitin’ too. And a few minutes later it was revealed – a tall beautiful brunette in dark glasses in black skirt and black shawl with a black fur collar, looking like every inch the star – Melania Trump. It’s interesting to observe the marvelous transformation, the confidence that the lady (and she is a lady) has adapted so confidently and comfortably once she got that M-R-S.

Holly Peterson, DPC, and Pamela Gross at Michael's. Both women are wearing Douglas Hannant.

At the table just in front of them was Liz Smith with her ole pal, the Mayor of Michael’s, Texas Joe Armstrong, who between the two of them have seen the world come and go before their eyes over the past decades, seeing much if not all, hearing more if not all, and saying very little. Two tables away from them: the distinguished newscaster Bob Schieffer and Mrs. Scheiffer, a lovely lady who looks as nice as her husband is. They were with Meredith and Tom Brokaw. A couple of tables over were Vanity Fair’s Vicky Ward with Newsweek’s Holly Peterson. Nearby: Wall Street’s Stan Shuman, Court TV’s Henry Schlieff, Broadway’s Gerry Schoenfeld, publishing’s Alice Mayhew; the magazine world’s David Zinczenko (Men’s Health) with Andrew Essex (Absolute Magazine), and not far away – US Magazine’s Janice Min. I was lunching with Pamela Gross, editorial director of Avenue magazine. Ms. Gross and I are, in fact, in direct competition business-wise although we’ve both worked at each other’s magazine at different times and have known each other too long to give it much thought.

After they finished their lunch, Vicky Ward and Holly Peterson joined us. Holly has just finished her first novel, called The Manny and the street is buzzing with the deal she made (I didn’t get this from her – she wouldn’t confirm when I asked): $1.6 million for the book and movie rights. Mrs. Peterson has written about people she knows – having grown up on the Upper East Side of New York (her father is Pete Peterson of the Blackstone Group, and former Secretary of Commerce in the Nixon Administration). She grew up on East 72nd Street where she and her husband and their two children live today.

The subject of The Manny is an upwardly mobile, Upper East Side couple – he in the big money business, couple of kids; she in the business of The Climb. And what happens to them. The first line of the book is when one young mother tells another while picking up their little ones at school just before the town takes off for the holidays, “Oh I forgot you fly commercial,” one of the great sez-it-all lines ever to be (really) uttered in the presence of the author (while picking up her little one at school before the holiday break).

One thing that happens to Ms. Peterson’s fictional couple is they hire a Manny (a male nanny) to look after the kids. Eventually he begins looking after the wife who by this time hates her great life and the “perfect” husband who supports it. It’s a story that’s been repeated and lived out all over the UES (and East 72nd Street) many a time. It is not autobiographical, as it happens, as Ms. Peterson likes her husband (a man named Rick Kimball) and likes her work (and her kids) as well. She told me yesterday that actually none of the characters are based on real people, although there is a male editor of a society magazine who holds a lot of sway over the girls who are engaged in The Climb. Not me, she swears.

Vera Wang and Susan Sokol

I left the scintillating company of Peterson, Ward and Gross and Michael’s and with my little Digital (Casio – pocketsized), went over to Bergdorf’s where Vera Wang was appearing with her “trunk show.” I went because a PR person told me there would be a group of NYSD subjects looking over Vera’s new collection. A photo-op of some sort. When I arrived, even Vera was nowhere in sight (she was out getting coffee). However, she was soon on the premises, surprised to see me. I got a picture of her and her company president Susan Sokol, as well as a couple of her company’s staff, and with that called it a day.

It was brisk and chilly on Fifth Avenue outside Bergdorf’s. I walked several blocks up the avenue and across 61st Street to Madison Avenue, before I found a vacant cab. The streets were mobbed with shoppers, and there is a lot of pedestrian maneuvering just to move forward but there is something exciting about it, especially at this time of the year. You’re likely to see people you know or people you recognize, and in a funny way, at times it’s like being in a small town. A very large small town.