Day 46: Monday,
April 3
And what a day
it was!
Sort of a fart
of a day, but I don’t quite know if it was a wet fart or a dry one.
It began
early—way too early, frankly—but I knew we had the cleaning lady coming …
sometime (she was fairly unclear when she was arriving when we spoke on the
phone), but I’d hoped it was going to be around 10:00, which would still give
me time to do … something during the day, even if it was crappy and raining
most of the day.
I woke up
around 8:30, wanting to complete my own ablutions in enough time to allow Beth
to do her own before the cleaner wanted to start on our bathroom (which was pretty
nasty in terms of grime on the floor). I finished and waited and waited and
waited for either my phone to ring or the buzzer from downstairs to sound, but
there was nothing; just a Beckettian void where a housekeeper should have been.
(Give me a break; I’m still depressurizing from the end of the show.)
Beth eventually
got up, so I figured it was a good time to go mail home the box I’d loaded with
stuff I didn’t want to pack. (In retrospect, this was an excellent idea. That
box weighed 37.1 pounds and my two bags at the airport weighed 42 and 44
pounds, so the extra weight and space would have cost me dearly. Of course,
considering what I ultimately paid to send home two boxes, I probably would
have broken even … ) There were (and are, one hopes … ) a number of things in
the box: my costume pieces, the programs from the shows I saw, the Sam and Dede
diorama, some odds and ends; nothing that I’d need immediately (since the
morning after I get home, I’m heading down to Los Angeles for the TCM Classic
Film Festival and the box probably won’t have arrived by the time I leave).
The box (one of
the ones my gift baskets had arrived in) was a little unwieldy, but I managed
to wrestle it onto the luggage carrier that had given me so much grief on Day
2, and wheeled it all down to the mail center on Avenue A between 9th
and 10th only to find it wasn’t there. “What the hell? I saw it just
last night!” I checked Yelp (which has really become my constant companion) and
saw that it was on 1st Avenue, a block over. Relieved that I wasn’t
out of my mind (in this regard, at least), I hauled the box another block
(seeing many interesting-looking establishments I hadn’t seen and would now
never get to patronize), losing control only a couple of times before arriving.
I went to the
counter, and got cut off by one of “those guys” who was expecting a very
important letter in his mailbox and needed to be notified as soon as it
arrived. (This request was put in after he’d asked the clerk about 15 times if
the mail had come in yet.) Finally, I got to the counter, placed the box on the
scale, and was quoted a price in mid-$100s. I gulped, but realized there
probably wasn’t an alternative, and paid up.
My home away from home away from home
From there, it
was back to Tompkins Square Bagels for a snack (maybe the best blueberry muffin
I’ve ever had). I phoned Pidge to say hello and explained my frustration over
the cleaner neither arriving nor calling. She came up with a novel solution
that had not occurred to me: call her. It was such a good idea, I did it. I
dialed and got an immediate cutoff. I re-dialed and got what I assumed was a
“number is out of service” message in Spanish. Almost immediately, I got a
callback from another number, but it was an odd call to say the least. The
woman who answered (not the woman to whom I’d previously spoken) asked for
Olga, the woman whose place we’ve been renting (even though I was calling from
my own phone). Even though the earlier problem of my poor Spanish and her poor
English continued, we reached an agreement that she’d come that afternoon to
clean up after us.
Almost as soon
as I hung up, I realized that if she arrived at 5:00, even if the whole thing
took only two hours, that’d be 7:00, and it’d probably be too late for me to do
anything. I called her back and asked if she could come by Tuesday at 11:00.
She agreed, then almost immediately texted me to confirm the address and the
time: Tuesday at 9:00. I immediately texted back a confirmation of the address
and asking if we could make it 10:00. She agreed. (In retrospect, this worked
out to be all for the best. If we’d done it earlier than Tuesday, we probably
would have gotten things all messy again, and if she’d come at 11:00, she might
have finished too late for me to get to the airport on time—which was its own
adventure. More on that in good time.)
I was now faced
with the prospect of having time to do something, but what? There were no shows
I wanted to see that were playing on Monday, there didn’t seem to be any
restaurants I wanted to go to, and there was no one to see, but I didn’t want
to just sit home. I suddenly had a brainstorm, though. Long-time readers (dare
I say “constant readers?”*) may remember the tzuris I underwent in trying to
decide if I wanted to see Vince Giordano and His Nighthawks play. I didn’t
then, but what would be a more perfect way to leave New York? I called to make
a reservation, only to be told that the show was sold out that night. I suppose
I could have walked up to the club and made my case, but I just felt too
thwarted.
What to do, then? I figured I’d take myself out for a last meal, but where? As always, I had a hankering for meat, but what kind? Steak frites is always a good choice, as is a burger or fried chicken. I’d asked Pidge for some ideas the night before, but when I looked them up now, all the top places were closed on Mondays. There were only three places I thought of for chicken, but one was the chaotic place from Saturday night (and I didn’t think I could take that again), one was very good but not quite what I wanted, and one seemed possible, but had mediocre ratings.
I searched on a
number of places, but kept running across the problems of their not being open
or having later reservations than I wanted.
Ultimately, I
came across a listing for Westville East, a place down the block, someplace
I’ve walked by pretty much every day but never gone into. They had both steak
and burgers, so I figured I’d make the call once I got there. When I did get
there (and it was always a strange experience leaving the apartment with no
backpack or carrying anything), it was packed to the gills. While there were
plenty of couples waiting for tables, being solo I was able to get a seat right
at the counter. Making a decision was not easy, but I figured I could really
get a steak anywhere, but their burger seemed special, so I went for it. They
also had soup, so I ordered split pea—which turned out to be out of stock, so I
ended up with tomato—which actually came after I’d gotten the burger. It was
all very good, and I was sure I’d made a correct choice after all. I did want
dessert, though, and even though Pie Is Emperor of Desserts (and looked very
good indeed) “coconut chocolate cake” listed as an option, and I couldn’t
resist. It arrived, and to my disappointment, it was basically German chocolate
cake; good, but not pie, so I did regret that one.
First course
Appetizer and main course, eaten simultaneously
Not pie
There was a
delightful highlight in that while I was waiting, a very New Yorky woman in a
leopard-print knit schmatta was trying to order something to go, but being very
demanding about it. She apparently usually orders the kale salad. I know this
because she repeated it about a dozen times in the ten minutes it took her to
order whatever the hell she ended up with. She kept complaining that she
usually ordered the kale salad, and that it cost “X” amount, and this was
roughly the same price, so why wasn’t the total the same, because she usually
orders the kale salad and that’s how it all works. She finally got the order to
her liking, then started to ask if she could get a discount on the final price
(I guess it was more than what the kale salad costs … ). It got to the point
where the poor waiter had to bring in a relief pitcher of a manager to deal
with the woman. When she was finally done (and I’m not exaggerating about the
ten minutes this all took), the guy next to me sympathized with the manager,
who remarked about how this happens “every day.” Whether it’s with this
particular woman, I have no idea.
After that, it
was home to do a bit of packing (which really meant reorganizing stuff from one
suitcase to another), then some television and bed. Beth had gone to see
Anastasia because Ramin Karimloo, her musical theatre crush, was playing the villain, but she
was appalled at how bad the show was and, since there were so many people at
the stage door, the actors weren’t taking photos, just autographing programs.
She managed to position herself in back of some short people and handed her
programs over them, being successful twice.
Stolen from Beth's page. Damned if that looks like "Ramin Karimloo" to me
Since I had to
get up early in anticipation of the actual arrival of the cleaning woman, I
turned in a little early and had my last night on the World’s Hardest Bed.
*I might if you
promise not to frow up
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