It takes a while to settle into a new place when you move. The way you think furniture is going to work within a space isn’t usually how it ends up, so we spent a lot of time rearranging. We finally decided we were happy (for now) on where everything was and we would just live with it (for now).

I was meeting people at work, but it was on a professional basis and Susan was writing again, which means she spent a great deal of time by herself. We would cook dinner, have some wine and talk about what we did that day. Susan told me of the progress on her book and how she hoped to wrap it up by the end of the year. I told her stories about my boss and colleagues at the investment firm. We are settling in, we would say, finding our place here.

Warmer weather and longer days had come as we approached Memorial Day. Every morning when I got up, I would look out the kitchen window at the flower boxes. By now, the plants had grown and I could see buds appearing. The promise of summertime flowers.

One day, Susan called me into the kitchen as soon as I got home. “Hey, look at this,” she said. Across the driveway, a woman was weeding and watering the flowers in the flower boxes. She had on a light colored, flowing dress and her long hair would spill over as she tended to her plants. Behind her, I could see two place settings on the table with candles and a small bouquet of flowers. A date?

As we were cooking our dinner, a car we hadn’t seen before, a grey BMW, slowly pulled down the driveway and parked awkwardly on one side of the parking area.
As Susan finished sautéing the salmon, a man with a bottle of wine in his hand carefully made his way toward the balcony, unsure of where to go. Our neighbor appeared, greeted him and asked him in.

We ate our dinner and after the last sips of wine, decided to take a walk through town. It was still warm out with almost no breeze. A perfect evening. As we made our way back up to our place, we heard talking and laughing. We went into our kitchen and took a peek out the window. The date was going well. The candles were flickering, the wine was flowing. But before we went to bed, the BMW started, and the man was gone.

For the next few Saturday nights, this pattern continued. Spring had given way to summer and the flowers in the boxes were now in full bloom. The colors were spectacular and our neighbor made sure her plants were well cared for. Then I woke up early one Sunday morning in July. I thought I heard a noise outside and took a look out of the kitchen. A dog was digging around in the bamboo. After giving up chasing whatever he was chasing, the dog lifted his leg on the tire of the not-so-awkwardly parked grey BMW.

Later that morning, I told Susan that BMW guy had spent the night. “Good for her”, Susan said. “Good for him”, I said. We decided that we would get to know our neighbor a little. I am constantly amazed at how much information Susan can come back with after what always seems to me to be the most idle of chats. Later that week came the report: her name is Pamela, she is about our age, she works at the jewelry store in town, she likes classical music, she moved here 12 years ago and is, or maybe was, single.

August was hot. Early, before the heat of the day would melt everything and everyone, I would go for a run on the beach. On my way out, I would admire the flowers in the boxes, standing bright and colorful, hopeful before another day of baking in the sun.

Cool evenings became the norm as fall pushed summer into the past. The days got shorter. Susan’s book was almost on schedule and the editors at the publishing company were pleased with the progress. For me, it was business as usual. Markets go up and markets go down. There is opportunity in both.

Pamela and BMW guy were together every weekend. While Susan and I cooked and ate in our apartment, they would sit out on the patio, even when it got chilly, late into the night, talking and sipping wine. Good for them.

Then, for several weekends, there were no late evening conversations, no sipping of wine on the patio. Maybe BMW guy was away on business. Then, he was back for a weekend.

We were expected to get a cold snap in the last week of October. Pamela had, in the past covered her plants with a plastic cover to protect them from the cold. I was surprised at how well it worked. The flowers were still beautiful. Then, one weekend, we had a storm. The temperature dropped to freezing and the wind blew 40 miles per hour. The plastic got blown off of the flower boxes. The next day, the sun came out, but the temperature struggled to get into the 30’s.

After a couple of days, it was obvious that the flowers had died from exposure to the wind and cold. We never saw the grey BMW again.

What bothers me is when they leave and I see their tip.

Hordes of European and South American tourists come through the restaurant and leave paltry tips or none at all, unless we add it to their bills. Just last week a family of eight from Colombia spent a hundred and twenty dollars on dinner and left a ten dollar tip. They waved at me when they left, thinking we were best friends because I spoke to them in Spanish, have a friend living in their hometown and plan on traveling to their country soon. I felt bad for resenting them, but it was a slow night and I needed all the tips I could get.

It’s not their fault they’re unfamiliar with our tipping system. They don’t know that, as a waitress, my hourly wage is less than the Mexican dishwasher’s. But fortunately it’s not the restaurant that pays most our check—it’s the customers and their tips.

The West Village restaurant I’ve been working at for four months serves Balkan and Mediterranean cuisine. We also have a wine bar, and though we do have wine from Italy, France, and Spain, many of the regulars come here to try our wine from the Balkans—stuff they can’t really find at other restaurants. But the French are different. They come here to drink Bordeaux.

On slow nights we pass out wine coupons. A customer with a coupon gets a free glass of our house wine. Usually when people get free wine, they feel inclined to order food, drink more wine, or at least leave a cash tip. It’s because of the coupons that a young French couple ended up at the bar.

Though they finish their glasses of our house red—a Pinot Noir from Italy, they make it known that it had not met their expectations. It is not my favorite either, but I’ve never complained about a free glass of wine. At least our coupon ploy worked because they decided to buy two more glasses of wine, and because they are French they felt entitled to sample over half our wine list.

Most customers, when they dislike a wine, will politely ask to sample something else, but this French couple made a histrionic show of their disapproval. Their lips, which arched and curved gracefully when speaking to each other in French, puckered grotesquely and they vigorously shook their heads at every wine they tried until they finally settled on two glasses of Bordeaux.

“Eet reminds us of home,” they said, and ordered some meats and cheeses to accompany their wine. Their cheeks got rosy as they imbibed and spoke softly. If they were bitching about our wine selection I would not have been able to tell by their tone since the French language seems to be devoid of hard consonants. They could have been comparing the Tempranillo to horse piss and it would have all sounded like docile cooing to me. There are some moments when I almost thought the French couple was cute, but I always managed to recover my senses.

After sipping the same glasses of Bordeaux for two hours they finally requested the bill twenty minutes after we were supposed to close. The man left a tip of one dollar and twenty cents after spending over twenty dollars. He smiled at me as they grabbed their coats to go, as if the experience had been equally endearing for both parties.

A buck twenty? Oh no, buddy. You can keep your smile.

With that smile he is in the same club as the Colombians and numerous other international visitors. The whole herd of them will have grinned and waved their way through countless New York City restaurants by now, blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are a waitress’s worst nightmare. The Colombians were a lost cause, but it was not too late to reach this Frenchman. It was not about the money. It’s not like a bill of twenty-something dollars will ever fetch a large tip. It’s just hard for me to let bygones be bygones.

For my mission to be successful I had to quickly engage the French couple in this small talk before they left, and I had to do it with a smile—though all I really wanted to do is fling a glass of Bordeaux in their faces.

“So, how long have you been here?” I asked, trying to look casual with my elbows on the bar.

“Oh, I hev been here fur a monz,” explains the girl. “I hev an intairnsheep,” she added. “He eez my friend. He eez visiting for a week,” she said of her male companion, who offered another ridiculous smile.

“Okay!” I said, hoping the foreigners would not detect my false enthusiasm. “And how long will you be staying in New York?”

“Fur two more weeks,” replied the guy. I didn’t know about the girl, but estimated that since he was a tourist he would probably eat out every meal, which meant that there were at least forty-two different waitresses he would be shortchanging.

“Hmmm, okay….that’s great!” I gushed, causing the French man to look at me expectantly, perhaps thinking I would tell him some important insider information. Like where all the actors hang out. The girl, on the other hand, had already put her jacket on. That was my cue to hurry up and stop beating around the bush.

For dramatic effect I quickly dropped my smile and peered straight into the Frenchman’s pupils. “Well, since you’ll be here for a while you might as well know that in New York City you are supposed to leave at least a fifteen percent tip.”

I guess my affectations worked because the girl suddenly started to get anxious.

“Ow much did you leave?” She asked her compatriot, her face beet red instead of cute red. In the time that she’d been here she already figured out about gratuity, but it didn’t matter what she knew if she wasn’t paying the bill.

The guy looked at me for an answer. He hadn’t even looked at the bill when he put down his cash.

“You left one dollar and twenty cents,” I said.

Words were exchanged in rapid French. The man blushed. I wish I could have sugar coated this learning experience for him, and perhaps it was bad form to educate him in front of his female companion, but as most Americans know, getting schooled on another country’s dining etiquette while abroad is hardly ever a graceful experience.

Most people react by getting defensive or repeating the obvious. “Well, it’s not like that in my country,” they say before expounding on the virtues of their way of doing things. I waited for the Frenchman’s rebuttal, but never got one.

“I’m sorry, I deed not know,” he said, which surprised me.

The man seemed so genuinely remorseful I felt obliged to dish out some good old American optimism. “Well, it’s okay, because now you know!”

He put two more dollars on the bar, which I did not expect him to do. Now it was my turn to feel remorseful. I decided to appeal to the French’s sense of patriotism in an attempt to uplift his spirits and quell an impending sense of guilt.

“Yeah, things are different in France. In France your waitresses get a wage …and….and…gratuity is included in the bill…” My discourse devolved into babble about living wages, vacation time and health care, until eventually the Frenchman’s smile crept back onto his face before the couple left.

“Good bye! Come back again!” I said out of habit, knowing they wouldn’t.

Robin Kilmer graduated from Bard College in 2007 and worked for three years at a public school in the Bronx. She hopes to one day successfully converge two diametrically opposing forces: writing and making a living. Until that day she is working as a nanny (and a waitress).

I usually pass by and pick up a cup of coffee on my way to the subway, at about ten o’clock most mornings. The cavernous space is always completely deserted. There’s a large, wide-open counter area where various pastries and bags of High Point brand gourmet coffee are displayed, and an enormous adjoining room with dozens of empty tables and chairs. The radio plays strange old songs, like “Somebody’s Watching Me,” by Rockwell. Behind the counter stands one of two men: (1) A friendly, round-faced, round-bellied African who is usually on his cell phone when I enter, but who’s also courteous enough to put it down right away and say hello, or (2) a laconic Hispanic man, who smiles at me and averts his eyes slightly when we speak and moves very slowly about his business, as if everything around him is a dream.

I always order a large coffee, dark, then ask if I can have the thermos of milk. (Since there are no other customers, the milk is always in the fridge.) As the only customer, I feel especially obliged to be friendly, which is good, since that is sort of a project of mine. "Practicing to be a person," I call it—and I want to put on a convincing show. I always say hello and speak confidently, then thank the man as I leave, sometimes even being so bold as to say, “Have a good day,” or “See you later.” He always reciprocates in kind. Sometimes, if I am feeling giddy that morning, I almost feel like crying. I feel a bit guilty, like maybe I should buy more. One cup of coffee a day is not much, especially in such an enormous coffee shop, but it’s all I want.

I have heard other people disparaging High Point, anecdotally. Once, when I suggested to a friend of mine who also lives in the neighborhood that we go there, she said dismissively, “Oh, I heard they have really bad coffee. Plus, it’s always so weird and empty in there.”

“But you don’t drink coffee,” I smartly pointed out to her. “And I don’t actually understand what people mean when they say 'bad' coffee. I am not able to evaluate coffee objectively like that, or even subjectively—this is 'good' coffee, this is 'bad' coffee, this is just 'average' coffee. I don’t drink coffee on those terms. Plus, I like that it’s weird and empty in there! That’s why I go there. Come on, let’s go!”

What a snob everyone is, I think to myself, as I stand on the subway drinking my tall dark coffee ... which always tastes fine to me. One day, however, as I was sipping my coffee, I glanced down at my shirt and saw several drops of coffee spreading out across it and felt my chest immediately constricting in annoyance. Dammit! How had I managed to let that happen? I began to sip more carefully, but noticed drops of coffee were still falling from the cup—into my beard, onto my jacket, all the way down to the floor. After a few minutes of investigation, I was able to determine that the coffee was actually dripping from the back of the cup, from along the top rim. Apparently the lid did not fit tight enough! Somehow I must have gotten a dud. I was annoyed, of course, but also soothed by having found the source of the trouble.

The next day, when the same thing happened, I became even more frustrated. Two dud lids in two days—that’s really a stroke of bad luck. On the third day, a pattern had been established and I could no longer attribute this misfortune to “luck.” I had to admit that, amazingly, there was a coffee shop with lids that did not fit the cups. Such an essential thing. And such a frustrating problem. I couldn’t go to work day after day with coffee running down my hands and onto my shirt because of the crummy lids at my coffee shop! But as their only customer, I couldn’t just stop going there either. More than that, as I said, I liked going there. It was such a relaxed, easy way to practice my “being a person” routine ... I couldn’t just give that up. I wondered if perhaps they had a suggestion box. That would take care of the problem nicely. I decided to do another day or two of reconnaissance as I tried to determine a solution. I could deal with sticky coffee-hands that long.

Not surprisingly, there was no suggestion box. Just a long table lined with mysterious flyers for events that probably no one ever attended. On the fourth or fifth day, I almost felt bold enough to tell the African man about the problem with the faulty lids—but as I was about to speak, I suddenly became too shy. I felt that my words would not be understood, and not even because his thick accent suggested a communication barrier, although it did, but rather because the problem was so trivial, so absurd, and yet so important, that I did not feel I would be able to express it. I often think life is like this—that the most trivial things are actually the most important, and therefore the hardest to express. I knew that these simple words, “These lids do not fit,” once uttered, would become hopelessly complex and incomprehensible.

I needed a few days to think this over. Perhaps I could just write them some kind of note? That had an appealing element of mystery to it! In any event, in the meantime I still needed my morning coffee, so I started stopping off at the bodega near my apartment instead. I felt somewhat guilty, as if I was “cheating” on High Point—but I told myself this was just temporary, until I could figure out a solution to the lid problem.

So then, on that warm April evening, as I passed by with my groceries and saw that the windows were already dark, I was immediately concerned. I rushed up to the window and peered in, but I already knew what I’d see. The place was completely empty. The counter, pastry display cases, tables, chairs, everything—all gone. The floor even looked dusty and ragged, as if even it had been stripped away. A note on the window said:

Marshal’s Legal Possession
Civil Court of the City of New York
County of Kings
The Landlord has legal possession of these premises.
For information, contact Landlord or Agent immediately.

I didn’t fully understand the words—but I knew I had done this. I had been their only customer, and I had deserted them, just because the lids didn’t fit right, and now the whole place was gone. This was a problem I could have done something about. If I didn’t learn to speak up soon, I realized, to be a person, or at least a better approximation of one, eventually there wasn’t going to be much of a world left ... and trudging home, my bags felt very heavy indeed.

Rob Williams is a mercenary copywriter and copy editor who currently lives above a meat market in the East Village.

Viva Pancho is a Mexican restaurant in Times Square, on West 44th Street, just off Broadway. It’s verde awning reads, “Viva Pancho”/“Home Of the Sizzling Fajitas,” in chili pepper script. Neither quaint holdover from the old Times Square, nor modern day restaurant group vision, it could very well be situated in a New Jersey strip mall. I suspect most of their business comes from Red State tourists who are relieved by the unassuming nature of the exterior, and reasonable prices on the menu in the window.

The entrance takes you into the bar, which features a rectangular counter that’s pushed into the corner, and seems too big for the small room, like an unfortunate sectional in a Manhattan studio apartment. The walls are mirrored, I suppose, to give the illusion that the space is bigger than it actually is, while having the consequence of forcing you to see yourself sitting there. The other, better option is to look up at the muted soccer game on the TV hanging overhead. A single strand of colored lights dangles above the dining room archway, as though someone forgot to take it down after the party. During the day, the room is awash in anemic sunlight.

Though I’ve waited tables at Virgil’s, the barbecue restaurant next door, for a decade, I’ve only been to Viva Pancho three times. The first was shortly after being hired. Several of us, who had all started at around the same time, and were destined to become the next senior staff, went there as a group following a shift. Everything was new, and we’d yet to discover ourselves, or our regular spots, Jimmy’s Corner and St. Andrew’s, the other direction down the block. Though no one complained, it didn’t feel right. And we never went back. It was kind of like Freshman Orientation Weekend, and making out with the girl in your dorm, who would eventually ostracize herself for the stuffed animal collection overcrowding her bed. The memory is slightly fuzzy, and somewhat embarrassing, but mostly just weird.

On another occasion, while leaving work, I happened to glance in the window and notice a coworker and friend, sitting alone at the bar, smoking, and sipping a slushy red margarita. Impulsively, I reached for the door. He seemed uncomfortable with the encounter, like I’d caught him waiting on a tryst. I begged off when the bartender approached, and made a hasty exit, purposely avoiding looking back in the window as I hurried past. Maybe he was meeting someone. Or maybe he was embarrassed to be discovered alone in Viva Pancho. Or maybe, after a particularly trying shift, he didn’t want to be bothered; which was why he was there in the first place.

The last time was when a new-hire waitress, whose drink was margarita, felt like a margarita after a lunch shift, and convinced me, as we happened to be getting off at the same time, to join her. Said waitress always felt like a margarita after a lunch shift. Viva Pancho was her hangout. She headed a regular Viva Pancho clique. So I had no expectations. But what the hell, I figured. After an hour of our venting about dealing with the public, and two or three margaritas, or maybe it was two hours and four margaritas, I looked in the mirror and saw our miserable faces at that sad bar in the middle of the afternoon and knew that wasn’t going to work out.

Everyday, I walked past Viva Pancho without giving it a thought. On my way to work. And on my way home. Five days a week. For ten years. If I ever did consider it, it was in regard to how it had remained in business for so long. Restaurants come and go in this city. New Yorkers swarm a new place, like wolves on a fresh carcass, then abandon it to the vulture Bridge and Tunnel and tourists who pick over the bones until there’s nothing left. Yet, Viva Pancho had survived the revitalization of Times Square without so much as a facelift.

When the economy slumped, Viva Pancho took to marketing in order to foster business, in the form of an ancient Mexican man in traditional sombrero and sarape -- or, at least, a kitsch version thereof. He didn’t call out to you with a deal, in the manner of the Little Italy barkers. Or shove a menu at you, like they did on Theater Row. He simply stood there, the embodiment of Viva Pancho. For months, I passed without acknowledging him, and without receiving acknowledgement. Then one day, while on my way to work, we looked at each other.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied.

It was not a casual hello. This was a friendly greeting. One that recognized a relationship. He knew me, and I knew him, even though we’d never so much as exchanged a glance. The next day, it was back to our agreed upon anonymity, even if the dynamic was altered, a level of self-consciousness added. Everyday, I passed. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.

How many of these stealth friendships was I involved in? There was the thin security guard who walked with a transistor radio tuned to NPR, seemingly always just ahead of me on the ramp to the Staten Island Ferry in the afternoon. There was the older lady with hair like Marie Antoinette, and a penchant for paperback thrillers, who sat across from me on the ferry on Tuesday mornings. There was the middle-aged African American man in the skullcap from the 1 Train, who was quick to give up his seat for a lady. On the corner of Broadway and 44th, there was the man with the kabob food cart, and the man who sold New York street scenes and celebrity 8x10s, and the caricature artist, and the Chinese calligraphy artist, and the fortune teller, and the guys that hawked knockoff designer handbags from a sheet unfurled on the sidewalk, that they snatched up when the police approached. And the kids that asked, “Do you like comedy?” -- which counts, because they didn’t ask me. And Batman, and Spiderman, and Elmo and Cookie Monster. And, of course, there was the man in front of Viva Pancho who, one time, broke the fourth wall and said “hello.”

Sometime ago, while passing Viva Pancho, I realized the ancient Mexican in the theatrical Pancho Villa costume was gone. Maybe he ran into immigration problems. Or finally had enough of that oversized sombrero and gold lame sarape. Hopefully, he didn’t meet a worse fate. Most likely, since he wasn’t replaced with another Pancho, he’d been given the pink-slip. I guess the economy had recovered sufficiently, or the summer tourists invaded, or gone back to work, as the case may be. Or, perhaps, it was determined, in a Viva Pancho departmental meeting, that it was no longer cost effective (re: someone’s bonus was on the line) to employ a living, breathing Pancho. Who knows, maybe one day he’ll suddenly reappear. Viva Pancho.

Tom Diriwachter's new full-length play, "Age Out," runs to the end of January at Theater for the New City

All meals arrived with gobs of potatoes—baked, boiled, mashed, au gratin—and vegetables—peas, string beans, corn, the usual. My father always made a huge salad in a wooden bowl with oil and vinegar, eaten after the meal which lore has it he learned in France during the War. And if every crumb wasn’t devoured, we heard the hysterical admonition about starving children of China. So if I finished my mound of mashed, all the little Chinese kids would be fat and happy?

My Mom’s specialty was gravy, near perfect and never to be tasted again since she took all recipes to the grave, including her Thanksgiving apple pie. “It’s too much work,” was her bored response to pleas that she write them down. After her death, we found recipes on index cards, but in shorthand which she mastered in secretarial school and used all her life. Especially when she attended college after my father died. All her class notes were in shorthand. “Mom, what do you take down?” I asked scanning pages of wavy lines. “Everything the teacher says,” she replied with indignation.

Meat, potato, vegetable. Not exactly haute cuisine but way above average considering many families in my Brooklyn Irish neighborhood wouldn’t go near vegetables, fish, spaghetti, even Chinese food. And no one thought it odd. “Can’t even stand the smell.” So I always believed we were culinary royalty until I dated Nancy Cirrito and was invited to Christmas Eve dinner.

I thought I knew Italian food cause on special occasions we would go to Monte’s on Carroll Street for veal parmagiana with a side of spaghetti. And pizza was eaten nearly daily along with fat meatball heroes from Romano’s on 13th Avenue. But to be honest, my exposure was just a trifle parochial. Right after we married, I tossed away an omelet sitting on the counter. “What did you do with my omelet?” Nancy asked. “It was bad, green, threw it away.” “It was a squash omelet. It was supposed to be green,” as she rolled her eyes and tried to figure out whether the “in sickness and in health” vow included stupidity.

Back then any dinner at a girlfriend’s house was a big deal. It isn’t like today where you never know who or how many will be mooching down your favorite foods. It signified serious romance, meeting the relatives, using a napkin, eating stuff you hate. And since Christmas was the grandest, being invited to her family feast probably broadcast that I was The One which was kinda funny since we were babies--19 and 21 and were dating less than a year. And I didn’t even try to wiggle out of it since I was clueless and my Christmas Eve only meant last minute shopping.

And you’ll play Santa for my sister Marilynne’s three kids? So along with chatting up her relatives, attending midnight Mass, exchanging presents, I had to make sure I didn’t screw up the beard and the ho ho hos. Nice.

The Cirritos owned a two family red brick across from the monastery in Borough Park. Simple, small with plastic covers on the beige couch, some fancy lamps and an oriental rug. Whenever I arrived to pick up Nancy, her mother, kind smile gentle voice, would inevitably ask:

Would you like something to eat?

No thanks.

Have something.

No, thank you.

How about some soup?

No, that’s OK.

Chicken?

No, I’m not really hungry.

Macaroni? I can heat it up.

No, really.

How about a peanut and butter sandwich?

No thanks really.

Sweet of course, but different from my world where the first question involved drink and, if you were lucky, a handful of pretzels.

So at 7, wrapped present in hand, jacket and tie, I rang the bell. The Christmas tree sparkled. The dining room table was loaded with china, crystal glasses, fancy napkins. Then the food started. And never ended.

I had eaten shrimp, and some clams on the half shell from Lundy’s in Sheepshead Bay. I once had a lobster, but that’s about it. Everything else was, well, different. And all home-made. Hot, light sfinge sprinkled with powdered sugar were the pre-appetizer appetizer while milling about, saying hello. Have one more.

Cold fish salad—lobster, shrimp, squid, calamari, scungilli, crab, octopus—in a huge bowl, with green and black olives, celery cut small, capers, peppers, lemon, parsley, olive oil. After a bowl or two, the main courses began: fried smelts and eels; linguine in white clam sauce and macaroni in red sauce with cabbage; fried and baked shrimp; baked clams; stuffed calamari in red sauce.

“Be careful. The stuffed calamari are sewn closed with thread.” “Thread?” “Yes, like when you sew a button.” “So your Mom sewed these, er, what are they called, closed?” “Yep, they’re called calamari, and she stuffed them and then sewed them so the stuffing wouldn’t fall out.” “Never had a meal with cooked thread before.” Who would have the patience, care enough to spend hours on just one of the myriad dishes. No one I knew.

Thin slices of broiled sole in butter, lemon and white wine. Lobster tails and baccala, “It’s what we call it, really a cod like from Cape Cod.” Just when I thought there couldn’t be more, there was another dish, another food I never tasted, could barely pronounce.

Shiny string beans sat in oil and garlic; artichokes with breadcrumbs. “How do you eat these things?” Stuffed baby eggplant covered with homemade tomato sauce and dripping with mozzarella; broccoli steamed littered with slivers of garlic shining with olive oil; stuffed mushrooms. Sometimes my Mom would serve peas and corn because Bird’s Eye frozen foods packaged them as one, but a half-dozen vegetables at a meal? Ha.

Crisp loaves of Italian bread were used to soak up the sauce or the juice or whatever was left on your plate. “I don’t see any butter.” “You don’t eat Italian bread with butter.” “No, what do you eat it with?” A few chuckles told me to shut my trap.

Everyone ate everything. Even the kids all under 10. No one screamed, ewwww eels, disgusting. The family ate and talked and laughed and ate some more. At home, hearty meals were cooked and eaten quickly. Not at the Cirritos. After one serving, dishes were collected, cleaned. We’d shuffle into the kitchen or living room and soon another course would appear. I started strong, eating seconds and remaining silent as food was heated on my plate. How much more could there be?

Desserts included shiny strufoli—honey balls—covered with sprinkles. Cannolis, sfogliatelle, a huge platter of Italian cookies, homemade cheese cake and a pie or two. There were more desserts than people. “Try this.” “Have a small piece of this.” “One more.”

We’ve eaten that meal on every Christmas eve for more than forty years. First sfinge, now made by my children, and then cold fish salad the same as that wonderful evening so long ago. The food is the passion, art really, to be savored, cherished. Yet it is more—family, love, memories. Santa with the pillow still appears and my kids and their cousins, now mostly grown, climb on his lap laughing, excited. Presents are opened. Look what I got. Hold it up, let’s see. After a bit, we wander back for dessert: strufoli, cookies, cheesecake, a pie or two.

Ken Nolan is a lawyer who has always lived in Brooklyn.

That was back when sex wasn’t dangerous and the breakfast special was a dollar twenty-five with meat. Between me and my roommate Cynthia, our railroad flat saw a lot of action. In those cocky pre-Evian days of my youth, after a one-night love affair, my guests were lucky if they got a glass of tap water. But, alas, age and time humbles us all. Now, I dream of the day when I’ll be able to make a guy pancakes and serve them to him in bed. I aspire to be the kind of guy that makes pancakes for his devoted lover. There’s even a Post-it on my refrigerator. Buy pancake griddle. It’s been up there for a couple years. Not sure what I’m waiting for.

Until then, the egg, cheese and tomato sandwich will have to do. Fashioned after the great egg, cheese and bacon numbers from all-night delis, I have substituted tomato for the bacon. In my world, fat is tantamount to death. Most New York guys are shocked if you actually own the apparatus to make them a cup of coffee in the morning without having to run down five flights. They can hardly believe it when you bring it to them in bed. I tell them: In my apartment civilization is not dead. They always seem delighted just before the look of dread falls over their faces. You see, guys always worry that you’re falling in love with them too fast. So not everyone gets the egg, cheese and tomato. You have to save something for the wedding night.

I always feel like I’m taking a chance when I serve the egg, cheese and tomato. Like I’m going too fast or something. Probably because as I’m frying up the egg and hoping the toast doesn’t burn, and laying on the cheese, I’m really preparing an offering to the Gods of possibility. That maybe, just maybe, he’s the one. The one that will see the real me. The one that will stay. So he gets the egg, cheese and tomato. And we settle back in bed and enjoy. Crumbs and all. And he is always amazed. Whoever he is. Because this simple food, the food of street-sweepers and cops, cabbies and indie filmmakers, is the food of love, strength and survival. If you can dream of the possible, you must be willing to let it go. And, if you can make it there, well, you know…

I don’t have anyone special in my life right now, but I think I’ve been pretty lucky in love. A number of wonderful men have passed through my life. But the Post-it is still on the fridge. Buy pancake griddle. Maybe it’s time.

RECIPE

The Egg, Cheese and Tomato

• Heat 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (not the cheap stuff, this might be love after all) in non-stick omelet pan until oil is hot and thin.
• Break 3 egg whites & 1 yoke into oil. Make sure yoke breaks. Do not scramble.
• Start toast of choice, bialy, bagel or Portugese roll. In New York the sesame bagel from H&H is a classic. In Los Angeles the onion-pumpernickel from Cantor’s is meaty, sweat and tart. But never ever feel shame about preferring white toast.
• Flip eggs when brown around the edge and after they are firm, fold into half-moon and lay on a slice of imported (from Italy, not Sacramento) aged provolone cheese. You may substitute cream cheese with scallions (imported from Philadelphia) spread right on the toast for a smoother, perhaps more comforting experience.
• Cut half-moon of eggs and cheese in half and layer on toast.
• Add 2 thin slices of ripe tomato. Halve sandwich and serve hot with salt and pepper in bed with a nice cloth napkin.

Victor Mignatti is a film director and screenwriter. His work includes the romantic comedy BROADWAY DAMAGE, the outrageous Grammy Award nominated hip-hopera TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET 13-22 and the documentary THIS TIME. He’s on the web at www.victormignatti.com
 

I had to use my Firm Resolution not to bore these beautiful strangers to death with first-settler stories of back in the day.

The day being the late 1970s, under very different conditions in Williamsburg, when I lived in a second-floor apartment overlooking the diner from across Broadway. I owned an indestructible 69 Dodge Dart which usually slept quietly, unmolested, somewhere in New Jersey. Once in a while (rarely, trepidatiously) I did park that car in my Williamsburg nabe, where the local thieves were so very dexterous that they managed to use an inch of play in the chain that locked my hood to walk the battery all the way over the engine block and drop it out on the other side. From this experience I learned to take the battery up to the apartment whenever I left the car—a bit of trouble but it did make for a surer start on cold mornings.

The diner was open then, under previous management, with no arugula or anything like it—you could get fried eggs and hash browns there, and strikingly lousy coffee. It was cheap! No customers though. The owner-operator-cook had the look of a recently retired All-Star wrestler—styled long hair and a brown Van Dyke, his bull neck festooned in gold chains. Despite his powerful build he always closed up and left the area before dark. There were no white people living around there then (okay, me, my roommates and one other 20-something boho I tried to follow home, out of harmless curiosity, the night I saw him get off at the same subway stop as me. The other guy grew ill at ease, picked up his pace, eventually climbed atop a dumpster. I passed by without attempting any conversation….)

The diner guy was a shade of pale that probably commuted from Bensonhurst. Or maybe once upon a time Williamsburg had been more like Bensonhurst than what it had become at the time that I lived there. Back when a tree grew in Brooklyn. Indeed the same indestructible acanthus that gave that novel its title were still omnipresent, seeming to nourish themselves on root-crumbled cement. The diner guy fried eggs and slopped coffee, and appeared to be waiting for the fog to clear and the planet he came from to reconstitute itself under his size-eleven feet.

So one day around dusk I happened to be looking out the window and out comes the guy—he inserts his bulk into this hulking yacht of a beat-up seventies sedan, then presumably turns the key. Nothing. Out he gets, pops his hood, guess what?

The guy stands for a moment between his vehicle and his enterprise, staring down, ham fists cocked on his meaty hips. Then he shrugs, goes to the car that’s parked behind him, steals that battery, installs same into his automobile, and off he goes into the gathering night. I’ll vouch for it.

The beautiful simplicity of this solution improved on an idea I’d had earlier—to wit, I could probably have bought the batteries I’d lost back from the guys who stole them at half price, probably more than they’d get from fencing them anyway. But now I realized: this neighborhood didn’t need all its batteries all the time anyway! Hell, it probably didn’t need half of them. And we could have put the rest into a fund to support the arts, or maybe educate a few children….

Madison Smartt Bell is the author of twelve novels. His most recent book, Toussaint Louverture A Biography was published by Pantheon in 2007.

My office is on Hudson and King Streets and I take the C train to the Spring Street Station. It’s only a five-minute walk. I had some money on me and was planning to stop for a bagel, but kept thinking how dry bagels are even with the cream cheese and having eaten nothing all morning I didn’t really have that much saliva to facilitate the mastication process.

As I ruminated on my hunger, I came up above ground to see before my very eyes a much spittier and even more delicious solution. Just across 6th Avenue was a fruit cart and its little peddler.

Fruit should hold me over for five hours, I thought, crossing the road. The Fruit Man is dark olive-skinned and very short and has a trim mustache. Even in the sweltering mid-day July heat he was always wearing Khakis and long-sleeved button-downs, all tucked in like he was at the office.

I looked over his selection and saw that “Juicy Peaches” cost seventy-five cents a piece, or three for two dollars. He noticed me looking and grabbed one off the top and shoved it in my face.

“The peaches,” he said admiringly, through a thick accent, “So fresh. Soooo delicious.”

Remembering from grade school never to smell anything a strange man sticks under my nose, I lowered the peach from my face and took it from him, pretending to examine the firmness and ripeness of the skin.

“Okay. Can I get two for a dollar?” I asked. Whatever, I had the two bucks but I’m a cheap bastard and didn’t want three peaches. But two…two is the magic number.

“No. No no. Three for two dollars?”

“No. I only want to spend a dollar. What else can I get for a dollar?”

He looked around his cart searchingly, not wanting to lose the sale, and finally picked up a small banana off the top of a stack and put it in a small plastic bag.

“Here. Banana and peach for one dollar,” he handed it to me smiling, adding that he was losing a dime on this transaction as special favor to me. I returned the smile and thanked him kindly, because who knows what a dime is worth in his native country? Peach in one hand and banana bag in the other I headed down Spring Street to work.

Now I’m not usually in the habit of agreeing with fruit vendors, but this guy was right. It was the juiciest and most delicious peach I had ever eaten. The slightly green banana was kind of disappointing afterwards, but hungry as I was I had eaten both of them by the time I reached the office.

The next morning I went grocery shopping and was so in the mood for more peaches, I decided to pick up a couple. I had the option of .99 cents a pound or a 1.99 a pound. I went for the good stuff. I had tasted peach ambrosia. I didn’t want to be disappointed. I picked out three peaches, checking each for firmness of flesh, ripeness of skin, and what I figured to be its juice potential.

When I got home, I checked the receipt. Three peaches had cost me $2.91. That’s like a half a pound each. Growing up in a world where a pound of Swedish Fish can make you deathly ill and a pound of cocaine can fetch several thousand dollars, I guess I had overestimated just exactly how much you got in a pound of peaches. And these really didn’t seem like any extraordinary peaches.

It was this line of thinking that made me say, “Fuck it, it’s cheaper just to go to the fruit man, who has awesome peaches.” So even though I had three peaches for which I had just paid $2.91, when it came time to pack my lunch, I made a sandwich, but did not pack a peach.

Off the train and across the street, I approached Fruit Man with my two dollars at the ready. He finished up with his customers and I said in a strong clear voice, “Three peaches please,” thinking what a compliment I’m paying him by actually wanting to spend more money on his fine produce today. Proud you should be Fruit Man. Proud you should be.

He selects three peaches from the pile, puts them in a small bag and hands it to me. I thank him kindly with a smile, thinking what a nice morning tradition this will become. I’ll be a regular. He’ll get a new shipment in and recommend the plums, very ripe in August. Or the nectarines, too tart now, but give them a week. My own personal fruit vendor. He’ll pack up in the late summer or early fall and say goodbye, and then remember me next May when he sets up shop on the corner again. We’ll meet eyes across the Avenue and smile and wave and he’ll ask how my winter was as I approach. Just fine Fruit Man, just fine!

I took out the top peach as I walked away and consumed it with relish. Juice dripped down my hand but I artfully avoided getting it down my chin. I finished it about the same place as the day before and discarded the pit through the same chain link fence in front of a parking lot. Future generations will know it as the Peach Tree Parking Lot, I thought, feeling quite satisfied with myself.

I arrived at my office and out of curiosity I casually looked in my bag at the remaining pieces of fruit. What I saw, to my dismay were two lumpy, brown, squishy, shitty, shitty peaches. Two of the shittiest peaches you could ever see. Two peaches you would assume have been sitting forgotten in the fridge behind a bag of oranges purchased after you forgot you had the peaches in there. I stopped in my tracks and checked the clock in the lobby. Was it worth going back? Surely he didn’t mean to give me, his new friend and regular customer, shitty peaches! Did he?

The truth of it started to set in. I was livid. I was no more special than any of the other rubes he cons every day. Put a pile dog turds in a bag and single bunch of grapes on top. That’s how he makes his living. He’s ruining the image of the honest American Fruitseller. Or at least the image of the honest Foreign Fruitseller Selling Fruit in America. He’s hurting his own image! Destroying what so many of us hold so dear. The friendly neighborhood fruit vendor. I should have known, with his khakis and long sleeves in the middle of July. What ever happened to trustworthiness? Standing behind your product? Winning repeat business? I was really pissed, but I already five minutes late, so I went upstairs.

“Hey man, how’s it going?” I was greeted by Josh, the head of my department as I walked by the front desk.

“That mother fucker, the fruit guy sold me these shitty rotten peaches!” I said, still completely indignant and thankful to work in a casual office where cursing is encouraged as a means of expressing extremes of both anger and joy.

Josh didn’t seem understand, “What, didn’t you pick your own fruit?”

“Well…” It hadn’t occurred to me to do this, as I was inherently trusting in Fruit Man’s willingness to sell only the finest of produce.

“You gotta pick your own fruit, man. You didn’t know that?”

“Well, yeah but,” I began, trying to defend my now obviously foolish actions, “he was standing there, you know… by the peaches.”

“Huh ho. Man, he saw you coming a mile away,” he laughed at my idiocy.

Josh was chuckling more inwardly than directly at me, truly enjoying the situation, which pissed me off more than if he had just been breaking my balls over it. He was taking time away from his busy day to let the scene play out in his mind like some ridiculous Buster Keaton film in which the hapless protagonist’s actions are so transparently the opposite of what any normal intelligent person would do, the audience is simply left to groan at the screen and shout, “Don’t do it!” to the deaf ears of poor luckless Buster as he purchases the bag of dog poo from the unassuming fruit vendor wearing a top hat, cape, and Dali-esque mustache.

“I’m tempted to go back and say something. Exchange it or get my money back,” I said, testing the waters, essentially seeing if my boss would let me leave work to harass the man who sold me bad fruit.

“Uh huh,” he said, probably just getting to the part where Buster opens the bag and sees the dog poo.

“I guess I could do it at lunch,” I said and walked away, my head hung low.

At lunch I sat alone at the long kitchen table prodding the peaches, looking for spots that weren’t mushy and brown, hoping I could take a few bites. From the two, I ate maybe a third of a peach total.

I decided it wasn’t worth going back and making a big stink about it. What satisfaction would I get from calling this guy out on what he already knows he does, something he does intentionally, and will continue to do regardless of my actions? Even if other people were there to see me protecting their consumer rights, calling him out on his shady business practices, they would probably just say, “You’re buying something from a man who can literally pick his store up and run. What did you expect? And why didn’t you pick your own fruit?”

No, there would be no justice served cold for this man today. I would swallow my pride and the two dollars and take away a valuable lesson that apparently everyone else had already learned. One more nugget of truth to go along with “don’t smell gifts from strangers” and “the more you touch it, the longer it will take to heal.” Always pick your own fruit and never trust a man who does not sweat in 90-degree heat.

Connor Gaudet is a recently laid-off, 27-year-old male, living in Brooklyn, surviving on government assistance, and trying to “make it” as a writer. He keeps track of his triumphs and humiliations at thedailyhell.

“Of any sports bars around here?” I interrupted.

The towering man paused, chapped lips parted in a bewildered grin revealing white teeth caulked with white material. “You looking for one too?”

“No,” I said, “you asked me that last week.”

We stood this December afternoon on 22nd off 6th. Last time, 19th and 5th. He smiled a smile of forced recognition–having probably leaned into the faces of a thousand Manhattan pedestrians–then thumped my chest with the back of his red hand. “Hey man. What are you doin’ around here?”

When I started to tell him I interned at a nearby publishing house, he swung his 6-foot frame so close that it cast me entirely in shadow. Sour exhalations engulfed my unfortunately unstuffed nose, and I changed the topic to keep his boozy eyes from wandering. “So did you ever find one?”

“Sports bar?” he said. “Sure, just came from one.”

Football, baseball, related social events–all my personal Martian terrain. I could recommend more Christian fiction and brands of pickled herring than sports bars, and I’m a herring-hating atheist. But sensing a slight drawl, I suggested Blue Smoke, figuring if it drew a truly down-home barbecue crowd, it might have a sports bar. Or one where well-dressed execs yelled at a TV.

“It’s not that good,” he said, then, with the rehearsed hyperbole of the publicist I worked for, described Duke’s, a Southern comfort food joint down the street.

“Sounds regal,” I said.

“It’s not.”

With this, he stared. His sapphire gin bottle eyes locked on mine, gaze a west Texas pumpjack probing past my cornea and into my cranium. Pedestrians streamed around us. He never uttered a word. Even the African man selling socks from the corner fold-up table looked concerned.

“So,” I said, taking two steps back from his smothering presence until my shoulders hit the Barnes and Noble wall. “Have you lived here awhile?”

He never answered, just said, “Duke’s passes my Southern taster.” He patted his chest like a vigilant primate, displaying fingers as puffed as pub sausages, tips chapped as his lips. “I checked Blue Smoke out,” he said. “See, we Southerners are nosey like that.”

“Oh yeah, where are you from?” This time he patted himself with his palm, gently, the way you might rouse a sleeping child, then threw back his head as if to tell all of Chelsea: “South Carolina.”

Layers of thin, mismatched clothing covered his chest: a white tee under a tattered gray V-neck sweater under a red and blue plaid flannel under a tan Dickies jacket. All sections framed the base of a startlingly hairy neck.

When I told him my girlfriend was from Alabama and that I loved barbecue, he poked his knotty sweet potato finger into my shoulder and said, “You know what you’d like then? Sylvia’s, at 328 Lenox in Harlem.”

Before I could mention that my girlfriend had suggested it, he belched and said, “I’ve been there lots. Soul food’s good for around here. It’s not as good as it used to be since her son took over and started franchising and publishing books with William Morrow, and not as good as joints in Greenville or Charleston.” I studied him as he lectured. The way his hands waved when he conjured surprisingly evocative descriptions of Sylvia’s dishes, the way he stiffened from a clumsy, forward-leaning tilt into a cocksure column, feet out, back straight, he assumed the worldly swagger of a sophisticated traveler. The encyclopedic pride he took in detailing the restaurant’s history and Sylvia’s heritage and recent health problems, mixed with the strength and depth of his personal opinions, he also resembled the carcass of a failed critic. A fallen Frank Bruni, Calvin Trillin’s miscarried cousin. Many renowned native Carolinians matured in the City, I thought: Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Joseph Mitchell. I wondered what this guy’s story was. When he finally took a breath, I asked if Sylvia was from North Carolina too. His lips puckered, eyes locked in a Frankenstinian gaze. “Hey. I take that insultingly.” The words “It’s South Carolina” shot a single glob of spit from his lip to my chin. He ground his teeth. Time froze like ice crystals in dead Everest climbers’ blood. Spit was all I could think about: wiping it off; the chill of wind hitting it; the sort of vectors it contained. Can herpes invade you osmottically? My inner banshee howled. The fanged, green cartoon germs of my imagination cleared the inch gap from chin to lip and dove like frightened penguins into my mouth. Twitching did nothing to dislodge it, either the spit or the worry.

Finally, he looked away, and I wiped it with my sleeve. I don’t want to insult him again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I sometimes get the two states confused.”

“Ugh,” he groaned. “Come on now. You’re killing me.”

I tried to change the subject by suggesting the only thing I know really well: reading material. “Know what you might enjoy?” I said. “The Oxford American magazine – once called the ‘New Yorker of the South.’ It’s based in Arkansas.”

His eyes dipped slightly behind the lids as he blurted, “Jezebel’s on 630 9th Avenue and 45th is shit!”

I tried to avoid another gustatory tirade with “What’s your name, man?”

“Jesse Lee,” he said, squeezing my hand in a sandpapery grip. So clichéd a name, I thought, so close to the General Lee in Dukes of Hazard, it had to be a lie. “See you around again,” he said, smiling, and stormed off.

I raced to wash up in the Barnes & Noble bathroom. It was closed.

Aaron Gilbreath is an Arizonan who drank lots of coffee while living in New York. His essays and articles have appeared or are slated for Poets & Writers, Men’s Journal, High Country News, Saranac Review and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

These are the sons of the older generation men, who would never let a woman pay for a check. And, who consider it right and honorable to pick up the tab for any person or group of persons with whom they are associated or have just a mild acquaintance.

Each weekend I frequent a local diner (Nick’s, some call it Joe’s.), sometimes alone, sometimes with my clique of friends. There is one guy, his name is actually Guy, who will always pick up my check. This makes me uncomfortable, I don’t want him to do that. There are times when I want to order my full egg breakfast, but when he walks through the door, I immediately change my order to a lonely bagel or dry toast. As many times as I have argued with him, it has all been vain. I recently figured out how to beat him at his own game. When I enter the restaurant, I will sometimes give the owner a twenty dollar bill up front before I sit and order. I tell Asia to charge me later and give me the change when I’m done.

It’s not just him. I have another friend who sells Christmas Trees on the corner of Smith and President Street. Two years ago I bought a tree from him, but he adamantly refused the money. He has the best trees in the neighborhood, but I have been forced to shop elsewhere ever since. How can I go back, it is embarrassing? Now I am stuck with inferior trees at high cost, so what favor has Jay done for me?

If I am making a purchase in D’Amico, and my cousin happens to walk in, bill paid, done. I once had a friend who would spot me getting my nails done in the local salon. He’d walk in, pay for my manicure and leave. Then he would call me a week later to borrow fifty bucks. His heart was in the right place, but he never had money, yet wanted to do the “right thing”.

Last week I was invited to dine with two brothers, one I’ve know for years and one I recently met. We met at Vinny’s on Smith Street, a real Italian neighborhood place. I knew better than to offer to pay. However, sitting at the table across from us was another neighborhood friend with his family. Of course the friend I was dining with immediately and without hesitation picked up that table’s tab, while a third friend walked in and picked up our table tab. It really gets confusing, everyone paying everyone else’s bill. I thought to myself, if anyone else we know walks in, there might be an all-out war over who will pay their check.

And I will admit this phenomenon has rubbed off on myself and my best friend Barbara. When we dine together it is a real battle for the check. We have torn checks into pieces in tug of war, cursed each other out, leaped over the table for that scribbled piece of paper. I have grabbed the check and sat on it til dinner was over, while she has warned the restaurant proprietor not to give me the check at all or else. What is it with us?

Barbara and I, we laugh at the newcomers in the neighborhood who calculate the exact amount of a tip from the check, when we ourselves leave almost as much as the check itself.

When I thought I had seen everything in the way of big tippers, I was yet again amazed. On my way home from work, on a ninety five-degree summer day, I had run into my longtime friend (and neighborhood undertaker), who invited me to join him for a drink. At a local restaurant, just two blocks away, we strolled to the bar for some martinis and wine. As we left the restaurant, the parking valet outside the restaurant bid us goodnight. My friend proceeded to tip the parking attendant. He gave him $20 just for saying goodnight. Remember, we walked the two blocks to the place, no car was involved.

This neighborhood of high rollers is disappearing fast before my eyes. And while I may complain about it, I love the absolute old world chivalry of it all.