While in NYC, I had several fancy dinners with The Maverick
(this tongue-in-cheek nickname was approved by the administration). The Maverick and the conversation were much
the same as they always were, but I felt like a different girl. We went to
Tocqueville, a restaurant that was once Our Restaurant, where we
ate almost every week and where the waiters once recognized me when I passed them
on the street. Our Restaurant. Familiar.
But it had been too long. The restaurant had moved to a new location. The wait
staff was entirely different. At the door to the restaurant, the maitre de
slipped my coat off of my shoulders. He opened a concealed door in the wall and
disappeared. He returned with a slip which he handed to The Maverick while
saying in an extremely serious voice, “For the lady’s jacket.” I tried not laugh. The Lady’s Jacket was my
favorite coat. I’ve had it for more than five years. I’ve replaced all of the
buttons and sewed in new pockets, but the liner was so torn it looks like a
tiger has gone at it. And that was when the night began to have that surreal someone-else’s-life
feeling for me.
I was wearing eight dollar shoes. Five year old eight dollar shoes. I wore non descript grey pants and a red shirt but my socks were white with blue stripes. I was too lazy to change them to go to dinner and I knew they’d be under the table. Nothing on the menu cost less than any item of clothing I had on. Me, and my eight dollar shoes.
The Maverick and I were deep in conversation when the waiter brought over a basket of small cheese puff pastries for the table. He sat them down on the table. He smiled and nodded. We smiled and nodded, still talking. We did not reach for a pastry. The waiter turned away, took two steps, and then returned to our table. He pulled lightly on the lapel of his suit jacket and gestured with one curled finger to interrupt The Maverick. The waiter leaned forward with the intensity of something of great import, pointed to the basket and said archly, “They’re wahhhhrm.” The cheese puffs. Critically Important.
We ordered our dinner and wine. The sommelier brought out the wine and a small silver tray. He turned the bottle to display the label to The Maverick. He uncorked the bottle and placed the cork on the small silver tray which he sat on the table next to The Maverick. This silver tray was solely for holding the cork. Its only purpose in existing was holding the cork. Certainly, the cork tray cost more than my shoes, more than my whole, dare I say, ensemble. The sommelier poured a splash of wine into a glass. The Maverick ceremoniously sniffed, swirled, and sipped it. The Maverick and the sommelier made eye contact. There was a minute nod. The deal was done. The sommelier transferred the wine slowly into a giant glass decanter. Then, he turned to my wine glass. One hand was behind him, pressed to the small of his back. With his free hand, he lifted and tilted the decanter so slowly and with such a practiced grace that I do laugh out loud, quietly. He looked as though he was handling dynamite. Meanwhile, I randomly thought that under his perfect black suit he was wearing underwear and black socks, just like every other ridiculous looking man. Really, who can take a man in underwear and black socks seriously? After he poured my wine, he dabbed the mouth of the bottle with a white cloth napkin that had a higher thread count than my bed sheets. A spot of maroon wine bloomed on the white cloth napkin, disfiguring it. Each subsequent time the sommelier returned to our table that night, he carried a new, not yet blemished by wine perfect cloth napkin. Each used once.
The food came in rolling shifts. Everything beautifully arranged. Everything special. Even the butter was “our sea salt butter”. The waiter returned occasionally to scrape bread crumbs from the table with a small curved bread-crumb-scraper tool and a matching silver bread-crumbs-scraped plate. Everything had its single purpose. Everything was used only once. And the truth was, there were moments when I understood all this pomp. When I took my first bite of the California sea urchin and angel hair cabonara, sea lettuce, lime and soy, I closed my eyes and the entire restaurant disappeared. The amazing brisk salty flavor of the sea urchin against the bite of the soy and sweetness of the lime was amazing. For that one bite I understood the small-silver-bread-crumb scraper. I understood the sommelier hand in the small of the back. In fact, I thought that first bite should have been delivered to me by angels carrying forks while trumpets resounded in the background and the heavens broke open with a single ray of sunlight.
And for that moment, NYC didn’t seem so strange and I remembered being a girl whose favorite foods were seared foie gras and caviar and who said things like, ‘yeah, I guess, let’s have a whole steamed lobster for lunch.’ For that one bite, I remembered that. But, I’m not really that girl anymore. Now, I’m the girl who spent a week sharing a twin bed in Chile with a woman who lit the gas for her water heater each morning before she showered to go to work, she couldn’t afford a refrigerator, and she once said to me, “No, I do not walk outside after dark. Not only will I be raped but they will steal my shoes too. Jajaja.(laughter)” – and she was considered well off. I’m the girl who spent a month packing up all the useless crap my Dad bought at walmart and hauling it off to GoodWill where there was more useless crap stacked all the way to the ceiling in the storage rooms. Now I’m the girl who has walked away from a well paying job and is out here looking for something that is even more important than that first bite of Angel Hair Cabonara. I don’t know what I’m looking for. I don’t know what I’ll find.
