CONNOISSEUR
We aren’t all crazy. I mean, we are all a little crazy — me, you, everyone. But not everyone in my present situation is crazy in the way that everyone else thinks we all are.
I’ve been off the grid, so to speak, for a few years. Before this I worked in restaurants. The last one was a French restaurant that you’d have heard of.
They hired me in ’17, and promoted me to “second sommelier” in ’19. Late shift on weekends, early shift on weeknights. I was still learning, and I was barely earning. But between the restaurant and a day job, I could afford an apartment of my own. I was becoming the guy I’d come down here to become. Down here where people come to become the people they want to become.
I’d grown up in one of those mill towns up in New England, and I never really fit in there. Everyone was fascinated by baseball. It was always on the TV — everyone’s TV, my family’s TV… from the first pitch in April to men spraying each other with Champagne in October. I had to sit through it all, with all of them — father, mother, older brothers… It wasn’t sports — it was baseball. The other sports had always been a panacea — a chance to win something because baseball wasn’t going to happen, until it did a few times, but then it didn’t again, but you were supposed to watch and pray and hope the day they’d win it again would come sooner than the day Jesus came back, and nobody was sure how that would play out. They’d watch anyway, though, from April to October.
Then they’d shut the TV off — just when it had come to the good part: the Champagne. That was my fascination. It’s a bottle. But it’s not just any bottle. It’s a bottle that for generations has been associated with victory and pleasure and everything good. In high school, my friends and I convinced my French teacher to buy us a bottle. He was retiring and moving back to France anyway, literally flying out that night, and so he had nothing to lose, and we asked him. Well, I asked him. We watched him go in from across the street, and he came out with two bottles of Feuillatte. We drank them both, right there behind the liquor store — opened the first, passed it back and forth, finished it. Then we looked at each other for a moment, each thinking about what to do next — but before anyone said anything, I decided that we should open the second.
It was the start of some problems for me, and I got into trouble at home over it, but I was hooked. My brothers started calling me “Champagne boy.” My friends heard them, and then everywhere I’d go, I was Champagne boy. Not us, just me. I thought that I was “ Champagne boy” instead of us being “ Champagne boys” because it had been my idea.
Within a few weeks, I’d convinced guys from my after-school job to buy for me. I’d spend hours on the internet, reading articles about the best vintages, travel websites about the best vineyards, reviews... Nobody suspected that the 40-year-old from work was buying a Syrah-Grenache blend or a light and tasty Loire Valley red for me. I took a second job, because I’d spend half the paycheck from the first job on wine. And then I met more people who could buy wine for me.
Mostly Champagne, though. You didn’t have to wait to drink it once you’d opened it. But you had to drink it right then and there, because you couldn’t just put it in the family fridge. So, at first, I would invite my friends to partake, rather than waste any of it. But by mid-August, I stopped inviting them, because by then, I could drink an entire bottle.
That’s when I undeniably earned the nickname “Champagne boy.” I thought that I’d done my friends a favor, by sparing them the embarrassment of being secondary members of a trio called “ Champagne boys.” We never discussed it. We stopped hanging out for a while. I was working or I was drinking Champagne or I was reading about Champagne. We met up again in school in September, and by then, they’d changed. They’d taken the inebriation part of it further, and they’d done it far, and fast — too fast for any nickname to have stuck, or to have been funny. Meth boy. Cocaine boy. Heroin boy. Away-for-six-weeks boy. Then one, then the other, became what-ever-happened-to boy. I don’t know where they got any of it. I never saw either of them again. Nobody did.
I was still just Champagne boy. Nothing else. Never outgrew it. It wasn’t really about getting high for me. It was the whole experience, and the dance it did on the tastebuds. And everyone knew, it seemed, and they kept calling me that. My parents hated that. I liked it — though I would have preferred “ Champagne guy.” That’s what I wanted to grow up to be: a Champagne guy, however I could make that happen.
I went off to college — the same college my father had attended, and my uncles. But all they had at college was beer — they say “applesauce,” but really, all they have is beer. After first year, I came down to New York to stay with some classmates, and we got fake IDs and went to a restaurant. We’d saved up to go, and I’d lied to my parents about going to the city for internship interviews so that they’d buy me a suit, and we got ourselves all dressed up and went out, and then I knew what I wanted to do, and when, and where. I spent the rest of the week going into restaurants looking for jobs until one of them offered me one.
Then I found a room in a walkup with five roommates in Murray Hill — they needed a sixth to make rent. There were only three on the lease. But they were doing what they had to do. Chasing dreams. Not just dreaming them.
Then I went back up north, packed my things, dropped out of school, told my parents what I was doing, and left. No hugs, no kisses. They didn’t even want my new address. That was it. They only sort of half-assed it through the speeches about how I was throwing my life away, or I should finish school, get a degree, not waste all their effort — I reminded them that I was the one who, despite developing an expensive drinking habit, had finished near the top of my class and made it to that college in the first place, and that I’d paid for my habit by myself. Then the discussion ended. It just ended. Like that. They just walked into the other room and shut the door, as if I had left already. I might as well have died. Or worse — become Protestant.
It was hard the first few years. NYC-or-Bust — and it wasn’t going to be Bust, not for me. I worked two jobs, sometimes three, and kept moving up in the one that mattered. By ’19, I’d made it, as far as I was concerned. I was 23 years old, and I was the second sommelier. I had learned so much — and I was learning more. Now, they sent me to seminars about wine, and terroir, and all the regions and the growing techniques and the grapes. I was a star pupil again, but on my own terms, pursuing my own calling. I never drank more than a bottle a day, and I branched out into other wines — I mean, I had nobody to hide it from, and my roommates weren’t going to pop open a bottle of Saint-Émilion or Sancerre. I started to drink better wine, and a little less of it in a day, to keep it going. And before work, I could drink a little, just so that I would know what I was recommending.
For almost a year, I was living my dream. I was saving up to visit Champagne country and visit some of the houses that produced the bottles we served.
Then the unthinkable happened, and we were all shut down. Our restaurant, all the restaurants, anything that moved.
And that was it. The restaurant never re-opened after lockdown. Most of the regulars were over sixty. God knows where they went. The rest were rich enough to flee the city in April of that year. Lockdown dragged on. I didn’t know how long that would last. I stayed with friends, slept on their couches, did chores for them in lieu of paying rent. I tried to get real work, but the whole city was closed. Then one by one, my friends moved out of the city. I went from couch to couch for a while, working under the table a little, for the few places that could stay open. But I ran out of friends. They weren’t really friends — they were people I’d worked with — managers, buyers, suppliers with studio apartments of their own. And after a year and a half, first in isolation, then in semi-isolation with no real prospects, one by one, when the lease was up, they moved back home, wherever home was.
I didn’t know how to do anything else and I didn’t want to do anything else. It just took too long for restaurants to come back to the way they had been. And bars were kept closed, not that I wanted to drop down that far. Liquor stores — $16/hour. That would have worked alongside the sommelier gig, but not in its place. There were restaurants, first with outside dining, then inside, but even in ’22, only a few that needed a sommelier, and when they did, they needed just one, because even after indoor dining came back at the better restaurants, they weren’t open past nine or ten, and so there was only one shift. By the time it all came back in full, and they needed to hire people like me again, I’d run out of couches, and I’d been without an address for too long, and I was starting to look the way I look now. I could do other things, and I tried to for a while, but the pay didn’t cover rent. That’s how I ended up off the grid.
The people who’d let me stay on their couches had figured this out before I did, and they’d left. I’d stayed, and there was still nothing for me. Going home wasn’t on offer — if it ever had been, it wasn’t anymore, after all the years. And I still wasn’t of a mind to give up — I stayed here, in the city. Someday I will figure out a way to get back in the game.
Oh, but you know all that. We’ve had that conversation. We’ve had it so many times. Let me tell you a story that you don’t know — a new story — I can see that you want to hear it. You have that look.
It was tonight, in fact. Just a little while ago. I was on the subway. When it’s cold, the subway is the best place for us. But you can’t just sleep the whole time. Most of the subway lines are not loops, and when you reach the end, they often kick you off, and you have to pay to get back on going the other way. Some places, there aren’t people to give you money to get back on. Others, the people will sometimes take what you have on you, even if it is hardly anything. You need to plan your loops by continuing to change trains, until you’re hungry and need to get out and go up to the street, which of course has to be the right street. Some stops allow you to change directions on the same platform, or with a quick walk within the subway station, without having to get out, pay and come back.
You have to know those. Otherwise, you run out of money.
You probably think that in the summer it’s not too bad — take the A train, but the other way, down to the beach. But you can’t really go swimming. There’s no place to dry or change. You can’t just ditch the uniform — the jeans and the coat. And there’s nothing cheap to eat, and nobody who is likely to give you something to eat or give you any money.
I was on the Q. The Q is almost a loop. It’s a loop on one end. You can take it down into Brooklyn. Kings Highway, Sheepshead, Coney Island. Some of those stops, you can just cross the platform and get back on a Manhattan train. Others, there’s good food cheap. I’d gone down to Kings Highway and shuffled over to the Manhattan-bound. There wasn’t a crowd getting on, even though it’s New Year’s Eve— everyone from down there had come home already, and folks down there don’t go out and party.
In the summer, the furthest you want to go is on the Q is 57. You can walk up past Carnegie Hall and into the park at night when it’s not too hot, and get fresh air and a bench. They let you stay until 1AM. In the winter, I don’t take the Q uptown past Times Square. At Times Square, you can get off and change trains, go anywhere, keep the loop going.
There’s usually no reason to go further uptown on the Q in winter... At 63rd, you can get on the F out to Queens — really extend your ride. But the train goes through Queensbridge. One of our poets came out of there, but still. It’s dicey. People from there get on and you don’t know what they’re going to do. Past 63rd, you can get out and go up to the park, but it’s cold. There are more affluent people north of 63rd than almost anywhere else in the city, but the people are less likely to give you anything.
It’s not because the UES is conservative. It’s because they have regulars. They have their own, full-time, neighborhood homeless people, and each of them has his or her own corner. The Asian lady outside the subway entrance at 83rd street never wants for food. The lady who says she’s from New Hampshire always does well. She is always sitting in front of CVS on 1st and 82nd — except when she’s in New Hampshire, or so she says. They’ve been there for years, those two women, and there are others — most of the corners are spoken for, no matter the season
At 96th, where the Q ends, there’s a McDonald’s, or you can walk up to 116 and there’s a BK, and you can jump from there to the Downtown 6 if you have the $2.90 left over after your hamburger. I knew about the BK before I fell into this existence — the one Mexican restaurant I’d worked for, we’d sourced the smoky cilantro at El Pueblo. They liked me even though I don’t speak more than six words of Spanish. I’d walked past the BK a few dozen times on the way to pick up the cilantro and peppers, and that knowledge became useful to me in my present state.
So, I guess if you want to eat, 96th gives you a few options.
But if you don’t, then it’s better to get off at Times Square and change over to the other side or another line.
Even on New Year’s Eve.
But you know that isn’t what I did tonight, and I’ll get to that.
One of the worst things about my situation is knowing better. I never owned any of the restaurants. I never owned anything. I never ate in restaurants, other than when I was working in them. But I was always working. So, I could eat and drink wine like I was Louis XIV. And I did, until one day I didn’t. And it’s impossible to maintain standards when you depend on other people. I try to make most of the few excursions to 96th and then 116th and the juxtaposition of tomato and catchup, with mayonnaise for good measure, paired with Coca-Cola, with fries on the side — I even ask for mayonnaise for the fries. But it’s painful when you’ve paired a fruity Bergerac from a tiny vineyard with a duck Maigret, preceded by fois gras and cornichons and an Aperol spritz. It’s painful when you know that so well because it was your job, your role, to know about it and introduce other people to it. You can still taste it. The fruit, the spice, the tannins, and what it does to your mouth, where you taste it, when you taste it, and how it works with the food.
The Q was cold. The platform was cold, and inside the train was cold. I’m not sure why I’d taken it all the way down, especially the part that’s above ground, just to come back up. The train is heated, but when it’s this cold, it doesn’t warm up until it goes back underground. It went under a tunnel, then up again, and then back down and then we reached Atlantic-Barclays.
That’s underground, and it’s another hub like Times Square, but the connections there don’t take you anywhere good — mostly dead-ends where you have to get off and get back on, usually pay another $2.90, and you’re in the middle of nowhere. I stayed on.
Worse than knowing better is having hope. See this? I have on the same coat I wore the first time I got on the subway without a destination in mind. It’s going to be a few months, I told myself. Just the winter. Then nothing came in the spring, and it was going to be just the summer — sit in the air conditioning until fall. Then it was another winter, and another and now it is going to be 2026, and I still have the same clothes on. The lifers don’t wear the same clothes they were wearing the day they went off the grid.
I’m not a lifer.
We were held at Barclays for a while, and then the train left and we stopped at DeKalb — I don’t know why the train stops there — and then we went up again above ground and up further still and onto the Manhattan Bridge, and we crossed the East River to Manhattan. I ride the Q over the bridge almost every day. I still sit up and look out, every time. I just look. I look out in wonder at all the lights. Tonight, I could see up the river, and down the river, and I could see the skylines — I remember when they were still building the skyline on the Long Island side, from LIC to Dumbo. Tonight, the train seemed to slow down, and I stood up from my seat and I just stood there looking out, and I could see all the lights. Bridges, buildings, traffic … You can even if you stare at the same space, and squint, make out individual people below.
I’m sure you know what I mean.
That’s why I never leave New York. It doesn’t stop. The game — I’ll be back in it. I don’t know how yet, but I will. I can taste it. I can never leave that. It’ll be mine again. And until it’s mine, or yours, or anybody’s, you just look at it, especially when you’re up riding across the ridge into Manhattan, and to look at it is to realize that every light is a beacon, every window a kaleidoscope, every room a story, every night an adventure.
We descended gradually, like an airplane coming in for a landing, down and then underground, beneath all the tall buildings, but we were in Manhattan.
First stop, Canal. Canal is always the same people, and they live in their own world. It’s like they don’t even see you. They don’t even have the same New Year, and so for them, tonight is no different from any other. They probably think the same of us — I’ve never asked. There were people talking to each other, getting up and exiting the train, but I understood none of it. There were a lot of them. I hadn’t noticed.
The single worst thing about this life is loneliness. I don’t miss my friends — or, colleagues, as it were. They were good enough people, and they gave what they could, and for that I was grateful. But they’re long gone. I don’t miss my exes, and I’d built up a list of them, which is normal in my business. The breakups were mutual and long overdue by the time they’d happened. Even to sleep in a bed, I still wouldn’t get back with any of them. I didn’t hate them. I just… just…. no. And they’re probably gone too. I’d have enjoyed dating some of the women who’d come into the restaurant, but their husbands or boyfriends were always with them, and to them, I was the guy from the restaurant — Champagne guy — so that was never going to happen. I’d flirt though, just a little, not enough to lose the job. And they’d sometimes smile. And that was enough. In that world, with a place in that world, with my place in that world, that was enough. It’s enough to be in that world. Their world.
14th. Union Square. A couple got on, and I was immediately intrigued.
The husband was a douchebag. I could tell. Looked like a douchebag. Dressed like a douchebag. You know what I mean — I don’t need to describe it. But I will. One of those guys who works late every night, and who leaves his wife on Sundays to golf with his B-school buddies — because golfing with clients happens mid-week. He had a big bag — a few big bags. None were golf bags — it’s December. They’d been out shopping. Buying things to bring to a party, I figured. Then I saw — lots of wine. Good wine, actually — from Flatiron. They must have chosen it over Mr. Wright.
The wife got onto the train after him and sat down between her husband and me. She had bags too. She glanced over for a second, and then I realized that I knew them.
Well, I didn’t know them. I recognized them. They’d been in the restaurant a couple of times — that last one. I hadn’t recognized the husband right away because they’re all the same guy, the douchebags. He’d come from work to meet her at Flatiron, to help carry the wine. It was probably too late for delivery. I can imagine the argument over whose fault it had been that they hadn’t ordered a week earlier. I’d bet even money that he’d told her he was too busy at work to do it any earlier. I could tell that, tonight, he’d come straight from work. Under his outer jacket, he had on one of those Patagonia vests with his company’s logo on it, and even a total douchebag doesn’t wear that on his day off. He was trying to do something on his phone, even though there’s no signal once you’ve left the station. He didn’t look up, didn’t engage with the wife… which meant she was all mine for the looking.
She was as stunning as she had been the last time I’d seen her, when I’d given them a wine recommendation — and that was years ago. But I remember it. I don’t forget people when there is something exceptional about them— something indicative of character. I even remember the recommendation — a particular Pomerol. Chateau de Sales. They had the 2016. In 2019, I’d recommended the 2015 — I’d taken a risk that night and popped a bottle open at the beginning of my shift, and they’d come in an hour and a half later. It was the only time I’d done that, and they’d both ordered meat — lamb maybe? I’d considered the risk to have been a success. And I peeked into her bag and could see that they’d bought a few bottles of the 2016. Different vintage — they said that by now it’d open up right away, though I don’t know that first-hand. But she did. That made me smile.
She was dressed for the weather — wool hat and coat, scarf that she took off, and gloves — well, glove — on her left hand, but not the right. With the right, she held another bag from Flatiron, this one with three bottles of Champagne. On that hand, she wore a ring too big for a glove. She’d chosen to wear the big ring instead of a glove. “Good for her,” I thought to myself. The ring didn’t have a big stone — it was almost a nest of what looked like gold threads, encrusted with tiny diamonds — not something you’d see in a magazine or on a billboard, more like a work of art, designed and produced by some small jeweler with a following. She had style. Grace. Her eyes were big and blue and deep and she had this perfect little white nose, and her mouth seemed to smile even if she wasn’t smiling — she had this look about her, like she knew everything and could see through you, like that painting in the Frick, only not portly like the lady in the painting — not petite, either, just… perfect.
The ring was something else. The diamonds looked like tiny snowflakes.
She could see me, but she did not make full eye contact. I assumed that she didn’t recognize me. Part of hoped she did, and part of me hoped she didn’t. Not like this. She looked over at her husband, but her husband was still looking at his phone.
I decided to stay on the train for as long as they stayed on, and I knew that that meant 86th Street. They were in their 30s and had some money but not fuck you money where they didn’t have to work, and the husband didn’t own his own fund, or he wouldn’t have had the jacket. And they wouldn’t have been on the subway. So, 86th. That meant I’d probably get out with them and cross the tracks and go back down to Brooklyn or take the escalator up and go to the park in the cold, and eventually cross the park to the west side — or stay to 96, be directed by the good people of the MTA to take the escalator up to the corner of 96th and 1st, and then end up here. Choices.
I’d have appreciated a bottle of something to drink. Obviously, I was not going to ask them for one of theirs — I can’t open red wine without an opener, and with my fingernails, even that would be a challenge. And Pomerol, I’d have to wait another hour to even start to drink it. Could you imagine me asking them for a bottle of wine, in the first place?
But Champagne . . . that I can still open. It’s best chilled, and it is quite cold tonight. There it is again. Knowing better. The hamburgers I can live with, I said to myself. But the kind of bubbly that I can afford to buy with what people give me, I can’t bring myself to drink. So I have not had bubbly of any kind in almost six years. They had the good stuff: Lanson, Pol Roger, and another one from a small house I knew near Épernay: Laherte Frères — I was not hopeful that anything would come from this encounter, but I felt a connection nonetheless — I’d helped this couple in a small way, a long time ago, and it had stuck — they had the wine I’d recommended, and they had good taste in Champagne.
The Champagnes they had were very different from each other, perhaps for different stages of a carefully planned evening.
Pol Roger is the opener. The starter. Nobody doesn’t like it. To open a bottle of Pol Roger to begin festivities is to arrive in a white Bentley and a Dior dress. It’s a blend of the three main grapes but it’s balanced and their fermentation method results in a smoother sip, crisp with tiny bubbles, but smooth. Lanson is very good. Dependable, I’d call it. They pretty much stick to a formula — Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Pinot Meunier, 50-35-15, viola, violin, cello. Well-rounded. Balanced a little more toward the dark than Pol Roger, and not as smooth, but more deliberate. Careful. Stately. I don’t mean stuffy — elegant and smooth, yet robust, but… cautious.
Laherte is a different sort altogether. It is a small house — ten hectares on the main property, and a few more spread out across the region. Where Lanson has caves that reach to the center of the earth, and achieves complexity through aging, the small houses don’t have the space, or the capital, to wait to sell the product for much longer than the required waiting period — fifteen months for non-vintage, and three years for vintage. Laherte waits a little longer than that, but not as long as Lanson. It achieves complexity with a great deal more variety by not having a formula and blending the different grapes based on that year’s harvest — what is good and when. The different sub-regions of. Champagne country produce the different grapes, and have different microclimates, and so the same weather shifts can impact some sub-regions and grapes more than others. But then they’re able to smooth that out by using slightly more reserve wine — from prior years — than Lanson. Laherte, by not committing to one ratio of 50-35-15 like Lanson, achieves more flexibility, more variety, more… spunk. They start with grapes from their own vines, and they grow all varieties, including the forgotten grapes, not just the Big Three. They’re really into the forgotten grapes. They use more reserve wine to smooth it out, and they age in barrels.
And they “go there” — they make Blanc de Blancs, in various levels of “Brut,” out of the Chardonnay, grown in their chalky soil, but they also do a full-bodied 100% Meunier — like the wine equivalent of a cello suite. They’re more willing to make something new out of whatever is different about each harvest, from one year to the next. They’re a nimble, versatile house, in its seventh generation. There’s something about achieving complexity through versatility, through the grape selection, rather than primarily the aging — and if aging is your thing, nobody stops anybody from letting a bottle age further in one’s own cellar. It’s in the bottle, not a cask, but it’s still aging, even in a bottle in your own cellar. Not that I ever had a cellar. So, there’s your comparison — safety or spontaneity; consistency or character; no surprises or follow your bliss.
I was impressed by the selection. And although further surprises this early in their evening seemed unlikely, I found the situation intriguing — or, I guess you can tell what it was: I found her to be captivating. I remembered her, everything about her, after more than five years. I think she’d come to the restaurant only three times, but I remembered her, and I remembered liking her, maybe dreaming about her a few times. And I remembered leaving it at that. I really couldn’t tell whether she remembered me. She’d have remembered me differently, but maybe a part of me was still dreaming. The first time I’d seen her, she’d struck me as “follow your bliss,” and then I saw her tonight and she looked just the same, though five years older — maybe late 30s? But just as delightful.
I pulled my coat closed. I tucked my hands underneath it. I reached down with my right hand. I knew I had a few stops to go, and the husband was still busy with phone and the wife wasn’t paying attention as far as I could tell.
Doing this for people like us is like doing it in the bed next to your girlfriend who may or may not be asleep, when it’s over but neither of you can afford a separate apartment, and you don’t want to wake her up, and don’t want her to know what you’re doing. Except that with your girlfriend, it’s dark. It’s also quiet though. What you need to worry about with the girlfriend in the dark and quiet bedroom, even if you’re quiet, is the smell afterwards. I already smell, unfortunately, but it isn’t dark on the subway, so under the cover of your jacket, you have to do about it surreptitiously. There is not good place for this. Especially when it’s cold. The subway is kind of the only place, and it’s got people on it.
You can’t just grab and tug, and hope not to be noticed, despite how fast that would be. You have to just kind of reach down and place your thumb under it and your forefinger over it and start going parallel to it in circles, small circles, putting a little pressure on.
You have to make it look like you’re doing something else. You can’t just look at her. You have to look around, and act like you’re not doing what you’re doing. And you have to breathe ever so quietly. Act like nothing’s happening. No pinching. No twisting. Gentle circles. Gentle secret circles.
I started and I looked down at the wine. And then across at the windows. There wasn’t anyone sitting on the other side of the train, as everyone who had been there got off at 34th or Times Square. I could see the wife’s reflection. I stared at it. She didn’t see me staring.
Her face was delicate, warm despite the cold, feminine but strong. She looked intelligent, if you know what I mean. Insightful. Her eyes were perfectly round, and her brunette hair peeked out from under her hat. I caught the smell of her perfume — subtle, French, I’m sure, but not Chanel. Goutal? I wasn’t sure. I think she was French, or part French perhaps. She hadn’t aged since I’d seen her last — I knew she had, because that was so long ago, but she didn’t show it. She looked tonight like she looked before.
Her reflection disappeared after 57th and we turned toward the east side. I looked down at the wine and then her boots. Classic black leather boots, stylish but nothing overdone. I liked them. When we turned in full, I adjusted my right arm and pretended to lurch with the train’s movement, and I brought more pressure on it with the thumb.
I thought I’d been discreet.
She glanced in my direction, though not directly at my eyes or at what I was doing.
I looked at her shoulder, then her feet again, then her knees…. I was afraid at this point.
She looked down at her glove. She took it off and then turned her engagement ring around so that the rock was on the palm side of her hand. Then she put the glove back on. Even her hands were pretty.
63rd was past us now. I was getting closer but not fast enough. But I couldn’t do more because I couldn’t risk her knowing and saying something, or, heaven forbid, telling her husband what was happening. I looked at her ears, her emerald earrings, her soft neck. The earrings were as unusual as the big ring. I liked that you could see them because her hair was cut short and it looked like it had just been done, and it was dark and it contrasted with her face, and just the way she’d put herself together said that she had the taste of some Grand Dame from the ‘60s but with a quirky attitude. She’d never said a word, but I thought I understood her — understood how she thought about everything.
I looked down, and then up at her face, at her blue eyes, and it was getting closer and closer, then her jacket, her dress, and then my cheeks flushed and I looked down at her boots again and I hoped she hadn’t seen me staring at her face, her eyes.
We stopped at 72. Nobody got on or off. And I didn’t get off. I just couldn’t get there. Nobody looks like her, has ever looked like her, smells like her… She’s a misfit. Like you. Like me. A different kind of misfit, but a misfit. Nothing like her husband. One of the forgotten grapes. You know what I mean. We had that in common. She wasn’t just pretty. She was special. To me, anyway.
The doors shut and I went faster and almost but not quite, and I stopped caring about whether she could see me, as long… as… I… got… there… Then suddenly I felt something — It felt as if something pressed down right there just for a second, like flat and soft but firm and there was a bump in the middle. It was just a little tap. A little pat — just for one second. But it was a glorious second, the most glorious second. One second that I will cherish for a very long time, and…. Yes.
86th. She smiled with her eyes. Then she looked away.
The train pulled to a stop. She stood up, and she and her husband picked up their bags and left the train and walked back in the direction from which the train had come, toward the 83rd Street exit. I watched her walking away, but she never looked back. He was still trying to figure something out on his phone. They didn’t hold hands or look at each other.
They were gone. The doors closed. I sat up and regained composure. I finally looked down on the seat next to me, at the bottle of Laherte Frères.
Someday I will make it to Épernay. And I will return, the triumphant hero, with bottles and stories and experience and knowledge and connections, and I will set the late-night dining scene on fire again. That’s why I came here in the first place to where that life is I know—I know—I can do it. I can taste it. And maybe, perhaps, she’ll come into my restaurant again. I’d like that. But that’s a thought for tomorrow. Tonight, we will have a Big Mac and fries, hot and fresh from McDonald’s on 96th and 2nd, and a fine bottle of Champagne that only a few of us in this city know about, on this bench, looking out on the East River, nothing to do but sit here and eat and drink and enjoy each other’s company until the sun comes up.
Just us, you and me, having a quiet evening, like any other.
Just me and the moon.
Happy New Year.