Diner on Broadway
Dear Diary:
My husband and I went to a diner on Broadway for breakfast. Work was being done in our apartment, and the place was mostly uninhabitable. We were grumpy and hungry.
The diner was quiet. We settled into a booth, ordered coffee and began to relax.
A man sitting a few booths away was on the phone. It seemed like some kind of business call. He got louder and louder, and I made a gesture suggesting he lower the volume.
He responded by loudly telling the person he was talking to what he was looking at and then yelling at me that I should move if I wasn’t happy.
I yelled back that he should move.
After he finished his call, I glanced over at him. He looked like a nice man. I began to feel some regret.
He walked by our table on his way out. I apologized, and he apologized, too. He said he had been born and bred in the Bronx and could not help getting loud and excited when he talked on the phone.
We chuckled, shook hands and left it at that.
When my husband and I finished our meal, we asked for the check.
The man with the loud voice had already paid, the waiter said.
— Nancy Greene
Like-Minded
Dear Diary:
I was on the subway, standing near the doors as I waited to get off the train.
I noticed a man sitting nearby reading a newspaper.
I held up my magazine.
“No screen needed,” I said.
“And no Wi-Fi either,” he replied.
— Jay L. Sachs
Coq Au Vin
Dear Diary:
When I was a graduate student at The New School in the mid-1970s, I temped as a typist from 9 to 5 to support myself. Dinner was usually something fast and cheap in between work and class.
One morning before work, I decided to try out a recipe for coq au vin that came with a slow cooker my parents had given me hoping that I would occasionally cook a decent dinner for myself.
As I loaded the chicken and vegetables into the pot, I realized I didn’t have any vin. Uh oh.
There was a liquor store around the corner, but I didn’t know how early it opened.
I rushed downstairs and rounded the corner onto Second Avenue.
“Back in five minutes,” a note on the door said.
I paced anxiously in front of the store as I waited for it to open. I was staring at the pavement when a cute little dog approached me and started to sniff my leg.
Letting my eyes travel up the leash, I was surprised to see the grinning face of the actress Peggy Cass.
“They’re never there when ya need ’em!” she said.
— Mari Marks
Pan Am Building
Dear Diary:
A cab picked me up near Bryant Park on one of my last days in the city. As we turned onto Park Avenue, I had a sense of déjà vu.
“Is there a building near here that you can drive through?” I asked the cabby.
“Yeah!” he said. “Right behind us.”
“Maybe called the Pan Am Building?”
“It’s MetLife now,” he said.
I told him that when I was girl, my father would ask taxi drivers to drive through the building whenever we were nearby. After my parents’ divorce, I explained, I would visit my father in Manhattan on weekends and he was always looking for ways to amuse me.
“You want to go through it?” the cabby asked.
“How long will it take?”
“Two minutes!”
He pulled a U-turn and cruised into the building with the golden clock on the facade. The ride thrilled me no less than it had when I was an 8-year-old, 56 years before.
“You made my day,” I said as he dropped me off on the Upper West Side. “By the way, how long will it take to get to J.F.K. on Sunday?”
“I’m working Sunday!” he said. “You need a ride, here’s my number.”
— Gigi Rosenberg
A Little Help
Dear Diary:
I was on the Upper East Side walking on crutches and wearing a moon boot when someone stormed out of a grocery store and knocked me off balance.
I collected the crutches and was leaning against a wall catching my breath when a woman approached me.
“Let me help,” she said.
She stuck her hand behind my neck.
“Your tag was sticking out,” she explained before walking off.
— Brian Ganson
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