At the Marquis
Here’s an idea: visit Times Square on a late Saturday afternoon in early spring. The weather is unlikely to be pleasant, but the chances are that the crowds will owe some of their effervescence to the joy of not being all bundled up.
Meet an old friend for a drink and a very early dinner. When the friend goes on to the theatre, head for home and, since it’s right next door, stop in at the Video Room. Rent something new that neither of you has ever seen. In view of the time change, retire earlyish.
A great way to enjoy a weekend in the city — if you’re one of the lucky people who receives regular Social Security statements.
One of Kathleen’s camp friends — in this household, “camp friend” means someone who spent summer with Kathleen at Sebago Wohelo – comes into town every so often to take in a couple of shows, and we snagged her in between the matinee and the evening curtain. We met at a venue that, as New Yorkers, Kathleen and I might never have discovered on our own: the Atrium at the Marriott Marquis in Times Squre. Located on the eighth floor of the hotel, it sits at the bottom of the sort of vast interior space (hardly an atrium) that the Hyatt Regency chain introduced in the Seventies, and that always makes me feel that I’m in some version of a Poseidon movie, surrounded by funseekers heedless of the impending disaster.
In spite of which, I had a great time, as I always do now that Kathleen and our cohort are old enough to catch up on the doings of one another’s grown children. (Would that our parents had found us half so appealingly amusing.) Kathleen’s camp friend — as a regular reader of The Daily Blague, she certainly counts as one of my friends, too; but I’m being super discreet — has a daughter who’s in The Industry, as Hollywood so ironically thinks of itself (“industry” would be an improvement). Between the fantastic uncertainties of her career and the ordinary uncertainties familiar to anyone who hopes to make a companionate marriage, this young lady has a very full plate, one on which, not surprisingly, serving sizes change weekly.
I thought of her (our friend’s daughter) when I read this week’s Modern Love column in the Times. A gent named Ben Karlin — a man, for a change — writes about how he came to figure out that the girl he’d been on-and-off dating for a while was, if not Miss Right, then the woman whom he ought to marry. The scene: a deserted beach in Baja. The setting: an Outward Bound ordeal.
I stood up and instantly knew I had to marry Paola.
A signal in the sky told me as much. Moments of pure beauty, I realized, are not handed out like a free newspaper as you dash into the subway. You have to make them. Work for them. Sometimes, it’s a huge pain and you don’t know how or when they are going to happen. But it is flat-out wrong to expect them.
Paola was work. Like my best friendships and the best jobs I had ever had, life with her had to be cultivated, curated, fussed over. Then came the bliss, in arrhythmic spasms. I had saddled her with an impossible demand: Be my foregone conclusion.
“Forgone conclusion,” I thought — that’s good. I made a note to send a link to our friend, so that she could send it to her daughter. The last thing you want to do, I thought, is fritter your life away waiting for Mr or Miss Foregone Conclusion to waltz into your life.
I felt quite sage about this wisdom for a minute or two. Then I looked up from the paper and saw Kathleen, who was taking a little nap after breakfast. Boy, if there was ever a foregone conclusion for me! That’s what she was the moment I met her, and that’s what she still is. So I’m sorry to say that I have no good advice to offer — which is all the better as none was sought.
My idea for a screenplay, though — now that was hot.