There’s a scene in Sex and the City where someone says that New York’s really a small city but when I saw it I thought no, it’s a big city, the small part of New York which is not a city but a vision of it, one which makes a fragile world, is the world of restaurants you have to fight to get into, of expensive, efficient, routine cocktail dates, with brunch the next day to talk about those dates, a brunch reserved two weeks prior, of leaving for Hampton’s beach parties, and returning from them.
In the spring a friend of ours was going away and we thought we’d get dinner with him at an expensive restaurant close to us, one then full of tables reserved but we weren’t without hope, it was late and people were leaving. With some effort we had a table and stalled because our friend, it was a dinner for him, he was leaving the city only to come back, was late and he texted us his order which the waiting waiters got in just as the kitchen closed, and then he arrived. We had snagged the table out from people already ready to place an order, we caused delay. When our friend came things changed, we learned that he was a regular and so instead of a nuisance we became those who had done much, without all that much help, for a favorite of theirs. We laughed. It was tasty. There were many beautiful people there, and also people who could not but look beautiful. We were there when very few people remained, but left politely not so late. While leaving the lovely hostess told us, this city's small, I’m sure I’ll see you all around, she was friendly and young and had been doing this for a while. Among other things, of course.
And this time I thought, which New York? I know maybe I’ll see this hostess at some other restaurant, soon or in a few years, the timing matters, maybe I’ll recognize her, maybe I won’t, but I know also I might see her on the subway, maybe at a park in the summer, and I wouldn’t recognize her, but she would have been proven right, that New York’s a small city, and not just this world which is a vision of it.
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Written October 23rd, 2023.
New York, New York.