They say martinis are like boobs. One is fine, two is perfect, and three is just too many. Obviously the person who coined it hadn’t seen Total Recall as a kid. I just had four with Hamilton Leithauser, and we forgot to talk about his new album, This Side of the Island.

I took a train uptown to meet Hamilton at the Carlyle, a fancy Manhattan hotel. I always feel like I’m in a budget version of Paris when I get off on 77th Street: old ladies in fur coats walking their dogs, boutiques, and people so hot it makes you feel karmically unblessed. But I was an hour early, so I called a buddy who works nearby at the Met. He let me chill in their members’ lounge where I had martini No. 1, looked at some European paintings, and killed time envisioning my own Upper East Side life, until I had to make it back over to the Carlyle. I walked back to the hotel and plopped into a booth at their bar Bemelmans, a gold-ceilinged room with a piano in the middle and murals all over the wall painted by Ludwig Bemelmans, who did the art for the children’s book series Madeline. I ordered martini No. 2 and waited for my subject to arrive.