Who knew Maplewood, New Jersey, was such an artistic town, all centered around a deli called Crane’s (‘Crane's deli and cheese shop’). I met a fellow patron who is a writer and graphic novelist named Jenny. She reconstitutes the Algonquin Group monthly in her basement. (She later came to my reading!)
The guy Ted who works there (pictured above) is a top 1% handler of orders gone awry. I witnessed his grace under pressure. On the art theme, he also teaches literature at nearby Seeton Hall. On other themes, while I was there Ted learned that the assembled staff pool lost at Powerball. They made $3 on $30 in pooled lottery tickets.
The deli is two doors down from a bookstore where I was scheduled to read, and I camped out there at noon on a Sunday before a 2pm reading at Words, a really interesting independent bookstore, the owner of which I met at the North American Independent Booksellers Association fair in Baltimore last October.
I checked in at the bookstore so they would know I was coming. I picked up a book called Skinny Bitch from a front table. Kelsey, my contact, cheerfully volunteered that I should check out Bethany Frankel’s new diet book. I asked if that was one of the Real Housewives. Yes. I casually moved my enormous Michelin Man coat to the side and put a hand on my waist to see if she would reconsider her immediate assumption that I was in the diet book market instead of reading Skinny Bitch as the excellent voiced writing it is – and a book I have owned since before it was a bestseller. Then I went to hang out in the deli.
This was a reading where my sister’s boss was supposed to come – the sort of person to whom I feel vaguely responsible, and therefore want to do a good job. He is, by appearances, all kindness and enthusiasm of a coachly variety. He ended up not being able to come for family reasons.
Two people from New York had already gone to the trouble to tell me they really considered coming but decided against it – on various grounds of holidays, intervening brunch plans, and need to rest. Instead of taking it at face value or as example of the constant emotional law of the universe in directionality between New York and New Jersey, it made me feel bad – two second priorities do not equal a first.
The reading itself was really wonderful, with the whole family that owns the bookstore in attendance, and some really interesting people including a curator and historian from the Newark Museum of Art -- a lively conversation and just a lot of great people. (And I say that even after the owner admitted to being an Amherst alum, so as to rib me for Williams status in introducing the talk.)
I was still readjusting to New York after a long weekend in the South. As if a disastrously losing basketball team, I had just gotten crushed at the fish counter at the local gourmet grocery store in Brooklyn. A couple was standing next to me. The fish guy asked us who was next. I said I actually didn’t know. Without missing a beat, the guy of the couple jumped in to fill the vacuum with a blase but authoritative “We are.” As he ordered I said, “are you sure you are next?” He replied, “no, you just said you didn’t know so I thought I would go first.” I told him I thought he would die of lack of etiquette if he ever set foot below the Mason Dixon line. His girlfriend looked at me and said, “You’re going to have to get over it.” Fair enough, and much easier than getting over the fact your boyfriend is a bit of an asshole.
I turned to the fish guy to apologize and he looked at me with a half smile and what I think I didn’t mistake as shared distaste for a sense of entitlement – especially of the peculiar variety you see in Brooklyn sometimes, rationalizing the cognitive dissonance of not being in Manhattan by being imperiously, trendily sure of your place at the center of the universe that is the fanciest grocery store in Cobble Hill. I have since decided to be less bothered by other people’s manners, or lack of them as the case may be. So look for an absence of similar postings in future. I am going to valiantly ignore the constant reinforcement of situations like that, that it doesn’t pay to be nice.
On the plus side, New York is of course a majestic city, all the time, but visible to you when you least expect it.
I went with my friend Bader to cheer on her husband Adrian who was running the New York City Half Marathon – a beautiful course around the park and all the way down through Times Square to Tribeca. The race was early—a 7.30am start—and I arrived at Times Square pushing 8 or 9 in the morning. The front runners were coming through, and I could hardly cheer for the lump in my throat watching them. The men came through, pounding pavement at a constant, wide-strided rate, legs turning over and over. Then the first women started to trickle in with the men, something that always makes me feel so proud of them. Then the throngs of people. Some with a beautiful form, elegant, seemingly effortless distance runners. Others right next to them looking impossible, violators of rules of physics that with each step they moved forward instead of falling over, another step always coming up from behind. And those people go at exactly the same pace as the seemingly effortless distance runners.
Adrian came through on top form (here he is tossing his hat to Christine). I was in the Whitaker family traditional race cheering outfit of sombrero (with "Go, Adrian!" sign on the bill of the hat) and Scotland Run poncho with a giant version of a Scottish flag. (In fact, a large plastic bag is a very warm thing to wear on a crisp early spring morning.) Bader and I ran for the subway and were able to see Adrian twice more, a bit to his surprise and then just after, if not at, the finish.
I was inspired to sign up for the Brooklyn Half which is May 22 and goes from Prospect Park to Coney Island. And I've since run two weekend races in Central Park.
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