Dear Diary: Stuffed
What a lot of eating opportunities presented themselves today, largely because other people hadn’t eaten earlier. I never ate a great deal at any one time, but I seemed always to be at table. When I wasn’t eating, I was working here. I did see a movie — Humpday — but of course I was munching on a bag of popcorn all the way through that intense indie, which more than any other recent film I can think of reminded me of the talkily confrontrational French films that we were expected to admire in the Sixties. I did, honestly, admire Humpday, though.
When I came back uptown after lunch with LXIV, I did a bit of housework and then settled down to work. Work on Friday afternoon means taking all the drafts that I have scribbled during the week and turning them into handsome Portico pages, with correct spelling and navigation. While I was working on the Book Review review, Kathleen called to say that one of her best friends from Smith was in town and wanted her to take somebody’s ticket for Billy Elliot. I was fine with that, and, besides, I had alternative plans of my own. Nom de Plume was in town, and said that she might stop by. Stop by she did. When it turned out that she hadn’t eaten all day, I proposed running across the street to Tokubei, the Japanese pub. Like Kathleen’s brother, Kevin, another aficionado, Nom de Plume loves to order off-menu sushi at Tokubei; she says it’s some of the best that she’s ever eaten. (Perhaps she will post a comment itemizing all of her treats!) It was a great pleasure to talk in person.
Back at the apartment, there was a message from Ms NOLA. Ms NOLA and friend JA had called earlier as well, to invite me see Whatever Works with them. They knew that I’d seen it already, but they knew that I liked it enough to see it a second time. I had to decline, though; I’m saving that second time for Kathleen, and in any case I had my Friday publishing to see to (although that didn’t keep me from taking Nom de Plume to dinner). Ms NOLA and JA agreed to drop in after the movie, which was now.
They weren’t hungry, but they hadn’t eaten since lunch, so I handed Ms NOLA a menu from Wu Liang Ye, the Shanghainese restaurant down the street, and phoned in her selections. (The ribs that I also asked for were not delivered, but I wasn’t charged for them, either.) We enjoyed the food out on the balcony, sitting through one of the summer’s more violent thunderstorms. When the rain let up, my guests said that they had to go. How did it get to be 10:15?
Kathleen just now got home from the theatre, minutes after I finished my Friday jobs. She hasn’t eaten, either. This time, I’ll fix her something myself, in the kitchen.
***
Walking from the Angelika to the Chinatown Brasserie, LXIV and I talked about the friendship between Ben and Andrew, the reunited college chums in Humpday. I remarked, somewhat wistfully but mostly with relief, that I had never had such a “relationship.” LXIV all but sputtered. “What about Fossil?”
Fossil! Ha! I told LXIV, hardly believing that he didn’t already know this, that Fossil and had “hated each other” when we were prep school roommates. “Hatred” is too simple a word. We were more like Taiwan and the PRC, if you can imagine a rough parity between those entities. Officially hostile, we were actually too tired and distracted to remain on a footing of open war. Although neither of us had ever heard the term “passive-aggressive,” we both got very good at driving the other crazy while seeming to mind our own business.
We became friends later, when Blair was behind us. Perhaps “became friends” is an overstatement. At no point was there the backslapping, high-fiving, Sons of the Desert-type bonhomie that gets Ben and Andrew into so much trouble. Our tracks, though close, have remained rigorously parallel, which has made it easier to proffer the occasional friendly wave — as the other chugs in the opposite direction. Something that, on our comfy and now rather tidy little model railroad, happens all the time.