Three Lives & Company

Two weeks ago, I went back to work.

In some ways, things are different now.

I pump during conference calls. I longingly (and perhaps a little creepily) use an app connected to cameras in my house to watch my son and husband play throughout the day. And by the time I arrive at the office at 9am, I’ve already been awake for four hours.

But, by and large, my weekdays have resumed the familiar patter of pre-baby life. I race from meeting to meeting. I clumsily juggle a laptop, phone, notebook, pen and water bottle as said racing occurs. And, in lieu of lunch breaks, I visit bookstores.

A few days ago, I spread my lunchtime reading wings beyond Rizzoli, my pre-baby go-to up the block. Instead of heading uptown, I went downtown, to Three Lives & Company in the West Village. It’s a glorious walk – along Sixth Avenue as it transforms from chain store hell to boutique heaven, past the improbable intersection of West 4th street with West 10th, and finally to Waverly Place – one of those quintessentially New York streets so brimming with charm that it scarcely seems real.  

It’s been awhile since I’ve been in a bookstore – Amazon basically got me through the bedrest and babycare months of 2018 – and so I consciously chose Three Lives for my re-immersion. Named for Gertrude Stein’s first book, the shop is (at least according to the staff member who sold me my copy of Andrew Sean Greer’s Less) a “bookstore person’s bookstore:” a place with painted tin ceilings, Persian rugs, endearingly uneven floors, and bankers lights illuminating the novels below. Even with the looming deadline of my next meeting beating in the back of my head, I lingered at Three Lives for more than thirty minutes – thumbing copies of literary journals, admiring the store’s selection of New York City-themed books, and allowing myself to imagine an alternative life where I preside over the desk of this quaint shop rather than the helm of PowerPoint presentations.

In 2016, Three Lives’ building was bought by a developer, and many feared that it would fall victim to the rent increases that have famously forced more than a hundred West Village businesses to shutter in recent years. But the bookstore averted disaster. In a lovely twist on the usual New York real estate story, the store’s owner, Toby Cox, called negotiating with his new landlord “a delight.”  The developer, meanwhile, released a statement saying, “We know how beloved Three Lives is in the West Village and we’re thrilled to provide it with stability.”

Beloved, it turns out, not just by customers but by authors too. Of the shop, Michael Cunningham once wrote, “It’s one of the greatest bookstores on the face of the Earth. Every single person who works there is incredibly knowledgeable and well-read and full of soul … I go there when I’m feeling depressed and discouraged, and I always feel rejuvenated.”

So while I’m not quite depressed or discouraged, after a few weeks of 5am wake-ups followed by 10-hour workdays, I’m not exactly rejuvenated either. But, briefly, somewhere between browsing James Baldwin and perching on a stool to consider a signed copy of Patti Smith’s Just Kids, I felt like I was.