door to number 7A, 32 Gramercy Park South, by the director of the society, Shmuley Garbus, who ushers us inside the apartment. It smells of matzo brie and Bengay. The average age in the group is eighty-seven. Three of the seven remaining members of the society are on artificial oxygen. None are ambulatory. When I finally perform my piece, it becomes the second time in a week that people fall asleep at my readings. In my defense, four of the seven people here are asleep before I begin. Happily, no one expires.
The carrot cake is surprisingly disappointing. Garbus, a spry eighty-three, explains that Rose Lipschutz used to bake for the meetings, but she got the gout, and then, sadly, the shingles. So they use frozen cake now.
Frozen carrot cake can be quite good. Sara Lee’s product, from its distinguished line of premium layer cakes, is particularly delicious, with a moist cream cheese frosting that tastes as fresh and rich as anything produced in a bakery. And it is reasonable too, only $3.99 for the twelve-ounce cake, or $5.99 for the super-sized twenty-four-ounce cake, which serves between eight and twelve guests.
But this isn’t Sara Lee. It is from the A&P, which is problematic since there has not been an A&P in Manhattan in more than twenty years.
“Wow,” I say to Garbus. “A&P carrot cake. I haven’t seen the A&P in ages.”
“This is all Rose’s doing,” Garbus explains. “They had a sale down at the A&P on Lexington Avenue, and Rose, who was so devoted to the society that she wanted it to go on forever, went to the supermarket specifically with us in mind and stocked up.”
“When was that?” asks Q.
“Nineteen eighty-seven,” he says.
The future of the carrot cake is assured, at least for the short term. At the end of the evening, I see Garbus wrap in aluminum foil the uneaten part of the carrot cake, which is the bulk of it, since many of the members are lactose intolerant. He places the remainder back in the freezer.
On Garbus’s plastic-covered sofa, as Q and I finish our tea, we are approached by Helen Rosenberg, of the publishing Rosenbergs, who once famously put out a collection of Albert Shanker’s pencil sketches. The teachers’ union gave my father a copy for his retirement.
“I couldn’t help but notice how much in love the two of you are.”
Q and I smile and squeeze one another’s hands.
“You must be proud of him.”
“I am,” says Q.
Mischievously, Helen asks me, “When are you going to put a ring on that beautiful finger of hers?”
“As if she would ever have me,” I say playfully, but the truth is, the ring has been ordered, and I have a grand plan for how to propose.
“If you need a jeweler, I recommend my daughter,” Helen says, handing me a business card. It amazes me that a jeweler has a business card, though I don’t know why one shouldn’t. I have more legitimate cause to be further amazed that the card belongs to the same person who sold me Q’s engagement ring just two weeks earlier.
It is the sort of thing that brings home to one the interconnectedness of life, and I am in these months of semi-fame more sensitive to these linkages than ever. I am contacted by all kinds of people and have all sorts of random meetings, as my universe becomes bigger than it has ever been before.
I eagerly anticipate the tiny and large surprises that each morning brings. And the days never disappoint, in particular the one on which I receive a note asking me to arrange a table for dinner the following evening at Jean-Georges.
Of all the remarkable chance encounters, this is the most remarkable and exciting of all, because I can tell from the unmistakable handwriting that this note is from, of all people, myself.
Chapter TWO
It is no easy matter to arrange a table at Jean-Georges, even at lunch. It is a popular spot for people on their way to the theater or the New York City Opera or the Philharmonic. I call and ask for a table for the next day. The woman on the phone says that nothing is available. I say who I am. “The novelist,” I explain. “I am meeting myself for an early supper.”
“We cannot accommodate the two of you,” she says, “though we do have a table available in early March.”
It is September.
“I don’t think that will work,” I say.
“Well,” the reservationist says firmly. “That’s the best we can do.”
I let the matter drop with her. Instead I telephone my best friend, Ard Koffman, who is a big shot at American Express, which has deals with a lot of these fancy restaurants. Ard has the Amex concierge call the Jean-Georges reservationist and the table is secured. I am grateful for his help, but it is frustrating that the process is not more egalitarian and the reservationists more accommodating.
I know that the people who make the bookings at Jean-Georges refer to themselves as reservationists, and that they are not to be challenged lightly, because I have eaten there once before, during Restaurant Week. For seven days each year, during the hottest part of August, several of the fancy restaurants in New York City offer a cheap lunch to lure the few people who aren’t in the Hamptons out of their air-conditioned offices and apartments. In 1992, the first year of the promotion, lunch cost $19.92. It has gone up a penny each year since.
One summer, several years ago, I decided to take my mother to Jean-Georges for lunch. When I called to make the booking, the receptionist switched me to a person whom she identified as a reservationist.
“Is that really a word?” I asked when the person to whom I was transferred answered the phone.
“What’s that?”
“Reservationist.”
“You just used it, so it must be.”
“Just because someone uses a word doesn’t make it a word,” I say. “Besides, I only said it because the woman who transferred me to you used it.”
“What is it, then … a fruit?”
“It’s not a word unless it’s in the dictionary.”
“That seems very narrow-minded of you.”
“All the same.”
“Well, someone who receives visitors is a receptionist. So I am a reservationist. You should look it up in your dictionary.”
“It won’t be there.”
“You might be surprised.”
What doesn’t surprise me is that when I arrive for lunch, two months later, I am seated with my mother at the table nearest the men’s room. I ask to be moved, but the maitre d’, no doubt in cahoots with the reservationist, perfunctorily says, “That would not be possible.”
For whatever it is worth, I look up “reservationist” in the dictionary and it is not a word. I do learn, though, that “reserpine” is a yellowish powder, isolated from the roots of the rauwolfia plant, which is used as a tranquilizer. I since have yet to have occasion to use this word in conversation, but I am still hopeful.
At first glance, twenty dollars for lunch at a five-star restaurant seems like a great deal, and a penny per year is unquestionably a modest rate of inflation, but what they don’t tell you about Restaurant Week is that nothing is included with the lunch other than the entrée. My mother and I made the mistake of ordering drinks (Diet Coke with lemon for me; club soda with lemon for my mother), sharing a dessert (a sliver of chocolate torte), and ordering coffee (decaffeinated). When the check arrived, I learned that a Diet Coke at Jean-Georges costs $5.75. It isn’t even a big Diet Coke. It is mostly ice, and on the day I ate there with my mother, they gave me a lime instead of a lemon, as if they taste at all the same. When I asked the waiter to correct the error, he said, “That would not be possible.”
Everything