Daily Office: Friday
Morning
¶ Santa: After Top Girls at the Biltmore Theatre last night, we headed over to Restaurant Row for an after-theatre dinner at Le Rivage, only to find that they were closing.
Noon
¶ Walkabout: If I have ever walked across Central Park to do something on the West Side and then walked back through the Park on my way home, I’ve forgotten about it. Today’s back-and-forth felt like a first.
Oremus…
Morning, cont’d
§ Santa. Which was no surprise. It was ten thirty-five or so on a weeknight in June, and Le Rivage doesn’t attract the late-nighters who throng Joe Allen’s. The hostess opened the door as we descended the steps from the sidewalk, but she hadn’t quite finished her prepared “We’re closed” speech before she did a double-take. “Oh, it’s you!”
Although we’d only been to the restaurant three or four times this season, we were made very welcome. My extravagant tipping policy may have had something to do with it. They certainly remembered that we’d make up our minds quickly and not complain about this and that in the manner that used to be a way of life for a certain generation of New Yorkers. As the waitress unlocked the door to let us out, she bid me good night, calling me “Santa’s younger brother.” I believe that this was an allusion to something that happened the last time we were at Le Rivage: a woman from Los Angeles came over to the table just to make sure that I was not her friend Mr X. How Santa came into I don’t recall — if indeed it did — and I’m on my way out the door to walk across the Park and meet LXIV and go to the movies (how quickly Friday comes round), so I’m not going to search the site. I think that the waitress was being complimentary, in her dark way, while not letting up on the annoyance of having been kept on the job for an extra half-hour.
Noon, cont’d
§ Walkabout. And what a lovely day for the exercise. This week, which began so dreadfully with soul-killing heat and humidity, ended on a note of fresh breezes and birdsong. It wasn’t exactly cool, but it was lovely, and, although I live here, I felt very much like a visitor, because there are tourists who have spent more time in Central Park than I have. (Adjusted for proximity to domicile &c.)
Before stepping into the Park on the homeward jaunt, I talked to Megan for a few minutes. I didn’t want her to tell me “how Africa was” or anything world-historical like that; I just wanted to hear the sound of her voice — and the sound of her voice was very good. Before we hung up, I told her that she couldn’t have picked a better son-in-law for me.
Passing the Museum, I thought I might as well stop in to talk to a man about a dog, ahem, and as long as I had entrée, I thought I might as well have a glass of wine on the roof garden. At ten of six, it was already hopping with young people, most of them not tourists. The tourists who stood next to me on the elevator going back downstairs — one glass and a sheaf of photos was indeed enough for me — commented on the “average age” of the crowd on the roof, putting it, rather lowball I thought, at twenty-five. Twenty-eight and not a day less, if you ask me. The tourists weren’t quite my age, but they were pushing it, and I think that they all rather missed having had the opportunity to spend an evening in their twenties surrounded by New York’s (and, arguably — for cocktails — the world’s) most glorious twilight view. There was nothing resentful in their tone, just a wistfulness. Good for them. We ought all to be open to the possibility that the world gets better.