A friend remembers Nora Ephron

Next, Nora fixed me up with Michael Fuchs, then CEO of HBO. He picked me up at my office with a car and driver and took me to a cocktail party hosted by Woody Allen’s cinematographer Dharius Khondji. Fuchs worked the room while I clung to the baked Brie for dear life.

Coming home in the limo after an expensive Italian dinner in the West Village, he fell asleep, his head slumping onto my breasts, his open water bottle dribbling onto my leg and into my handbag.

“Mortifying,” I hissed to Nora the next day on the phone.

“No, material!” she countered, laughing. “It’s great! People love to hear bad stories that happen to other people.”

Material was one thing I was struggling for as a writer in my 20s. I was also searching for my voice, when all I wanted was Nora’s.

More: A friend remembers Nora Ephron, by Melina Bellows.