Pompeo lunch still a hot item

Ellen Pompeo's engaged, but the actress from Everett is still very much in demand. Lunch with the "Grey's Anatomy" star is the hot item in an auction benefiting the Home for Little Wanderers. The high bid was $4,100, but two Pompeo partisans began a bidding war yesterday that topped out at $7,100. The auction at cmarket.com is on four more days.

Friends and family members of the late William Styron gathered last night at the Boston Public Library to remember the literary giant. Pulitzer Prize-winning wordsmiths Norman Mailer, Geraldine Brooks, ART founding director Robert Brustein, Globe critic Gail Caldwell, and Suffolk University dean Ken Greenberg were set to attend. . . . After recently sponsoring the Citi Performing Arts Center -- formerly the Wang Center for the Performing Arts -- Dan Eastman of Citibank and wife Joan Quinn Eastman hosted a reception in the theater's balcony the other night, treating VIP guests to a performance by the Rockettes. Among those attending were the bank's Boston honcho, Tim Sullivan, arts center chief Joe Spaulding and wife Joyce, comedian Steve Sweeney, movie producer Laura Bernieri, and actress Christy Scott Cashman, who'll start work soon on the Cape-based film "Chatham."

The Barenaked Ladies -- Ed Robertson, Tyler Stewart, Kevin Hearn, Steve Page, and Jim Creeggan -- took the stage at Symphony Hall yesterday to rehearse with Keith Lockart and the Pops. Last night, the Pops and the pop act performed "A Company Christmas at Pops" the 23d annual benefit concert for the BSO.

Everyone knows the Hub isn't exactly Hollywood -- heck, it isn't even Providence -- but that hasn't stopped Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz from getting into the movie business. The couple, cofounders of the Boston-based PR firm Schwartz Communications, have just bought the rights to Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, "The Road," and they've enlisted Aussie filmmaker John Hillcoat to direct. "It's an extremely powerful vision of a post-apocalyptic society," said Steve Schwartz, whose PR firm represents high-tech and healthcare firms. "Unfortunately, this is a story for our time." The pair plan to produce the film with Nick Wechsler, whose credits include "The Player" and "Requiem for a Dream." "Nick and I have been looking for a project to collaborate on, and we were both haunted by this book," Schwartz said. The Schwartzes, who live in Gloucester, have other irons in the fire. They've given Oscar-nominated director Terrence Malick some seed money for his next film, and are producing a thriller about rock climbing with Barbara De Fina, a frequent collaborator with Martin Scorsese. (Called "Eager to Die," the movie will feature "real climbing, not Hollywood climbing," said Schwartz.) How are he and his wife planning to produce movies while running a PR firm? "We're blessed with high energy," Schwartz said.

It isn't only Sox fans who are happy to hear that Daisuke Matsuzaka is on his way to Boston. The city's sushi joints were also rejoicing yesterday, figuring that Matsuzaka may spend at least some of his millions on sashimi. "It's very exciting that he is coming to Boston," sushi master Ting San of Oishii Boston told us yesterday. "And it would be very exciting to see him come to our restaurant." Might we suggest that Matsuzaka and his wife, former Japanese newscaster Tomoyo Shibata , also try Fugakyu in Brookline, which happened to be former Sox pitcher Pedro Martínez's preferred sushi spot. Of course, there's always Oga's in Natick, owned by Toro Oga, and Sakurabana on Broad Street.

Why aren't we surprised that "High Fidelity," the Broadway musical that got its start in Boston this fall, is closing just 11 days into its run on the Great White Way? Based on the book by Nick Hornby and the movie starring John Cusack and Jack Black, the show opened at New York's Imperial Theatre to mostly withering reviews. It will close Sunday. Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, a South Boston native, adapted the story for the stage, and Harvard alum Jay Klaitz made his Broadway debut in the production. . . . Senator Ted Kennedy and wife Vicki paid a visit yesterday to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center , where they handed out Sox hats to wounded soldiers. . . . Gregory Maguire read from several of his books at the Borders in the Back Bay Tuesday. "Wicked," Maguire's best-known novel, was adapted into a Broadway musical.

Names can be reached at names@globe.com or at 617-929-8253.