Tsunami Hazard Zone on the Upper East Side
I was in a very quirky restaurant on the Upper East Side at 4:30 yesterday. It was, incredibly, a theme restaurant. Kitschy and surreal. Ocean-themed. With tsunami warnings incorporated into the decor. A giant fake shark. Twinkling lights strung through netting.
The waiters seemed drunk. One was drinking. The energy hovered just above depression in a space of whimsy right before a crash.
Lest you think I’m projecting, this was not my current mood. If you’re a fellow empath, you will trust this room-reading assessment from me.
Strange things kept happening.
A good-looking, spry manager, maybe 50, maybe reincarnated many times, expressed DELIGHT when she returned to the floor to find me drinking an espresso. “Are you drinking espresso?!”
Her jubilance was contagious. Behind her was an enormous, high-end espresso machine. So … I could not guess the source of her surprise, but I wanted to feed her delight so I sipped with animated pleasure … and some confusion when she walked away.
The lone patrons spanning the small “surf side dive” were dreamlike figures.
Behind me an otherwise average-looking, maybe Jewish, white fellow in his late 50s sitting with his apathetic teenage son asked the drunk waiter: “What … is a deviled egg?”
The man asked the question with such plaintive simplicity.
I sent thoughts and prayers to the table.
Down the bar from me, a woman with medium-long white hair, another typical-looking affluent Upper East Side denizen, broke with expectation when she began to speak (to the bartender),
“This Delta variant, started on Delta Airlines?”
Her question was sincere and sober. No one answered right away.
The runner served me my pasta and stood just a little too close for a little too long. As if he wanted the pasta or refuge, or both, for himself.
“Thank you! Looks great,” I said, breaking his trance. And he scuttled away (to an undersea dungeon?). My thoughts were of pasta then, but I do wonder about his safety now.
No one offered to refill my beer, to force dessert on me. To add a protein to things that already had protein. The only salesman-y moment occurred when the bartender handed me the check. He struck me as a person incapable of artifice. He gave a big smile dredged from the bottom of his salty soul. I put my Chase card into the pocket of the bill.
“Your card is blue!” He exclaimed.
Maybe because it matched the theme? Ocean? Blue? Hysterical? On the verge of collapse?
“I love this place,” I told him.
“Well, come back tomorrow!” He chirped. The phrase sounded original and fresh when he said it.
I can’t imagine that such a place, if it ever even existed, will still be there tomorrow.
🌊 🌊 🌊