Dear Diary:
Hotel Edison Delicatessen. A cold night in 1981.
Having grown weary of the university’s cafeteria in the few months since arriving in Manhattan, I was suddenly seized with an intense homesickness. I thought of the college friends I’d left behind in Kentucky and how we’d spent many boisterous hours in the deli’s booths after “Sweeney Todd†and other performances on our visit in January 1980.
That short week was enough to convince me that the city was my home and where I would make a life. Now I wasn’t sure I could stay. But I took the subway up to a nearly deserted Times Square. (Yes, it was often empty in those days.) I was surprised to find “our†waitress still leaning against the grill and she remembered me â€" or, kindly, said she did. She asked if I’d come back for good. I told her I thought so.
She took away my menu when she discovered I’d never eaten a New York bagel and brought me one toasted with butter. At first, she didn’t notice as I folded a napkin in my lap, but she watched with growing incredulity as I picked up my knife and fork. After I cut the first careful bite, she shook her head, removed the utensils from my hands and placed them on the counter.
Without saying a word, she picked up my bagel and took a tear out of it with her teeth, looking at me as she chewed. She dropped it back on the plate and, without missing a beat, said: “You’re gonna live here? Ya need to know how to eat a bagel. That’s how ya eat a bagel.â€
I decided to stay.
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