Champagne Cart, Maria, and Maybe the 3rd bottle IS a Mistake... (or NY Winter Adventure pt. 5)

We knew our Tuesday lunch was going to be a doozy but I don't think we knew knew...

We had wanted to do a splurge meal, and since Colleen said that when she was in town last spring the best meal she had was at Eleven Madison Park, we decided a lunch there would be a good treat.  The lunch menu is actually pretty reasonable priced (especially considering the real estate, as Megan pointed out in a whisper about a half dozen times) so with Christmas money in hand we were ready to be dazzled.

Within three minutes of entering the restaurant four people had already attended to us, and that was a pretty good indicator of what we were in for.  I fell a little bit in love with the place as soon as our waiter asked if he should bring over the champagne cart.  (Champagne cart?!  A cart that exists for the sole purpose of getting a selection of cold champagne closer to me?!  Ummm Yes.)  He should.  He did.  We toasted.  Then we ate, and drank, and repeated.  There was an amuse-bouche followed by three courses each of intricate, beautiful, technically perfect and most importantly delicious food.  The highlights:a veloute (that means velvet I learned!) of butternut squash being poured around a plate already in front of me; Megan's face when the waiter showed her what to do with the bowl of bone marrow covered in some sort of light creamy stuff served with her beef tenderloin; our waiter bringing us a dish of macaroons with our coffee and promised it wouldn't be at all filling but wanted us to have something sweet to finish even though we hadn't ordered dessert (way too full).

So what is so special about it?  It is not just the food, or the wine, or the dessert, or the environment.  I think in this situation the whole was much greater than the sum of its parts.  We easily could have been attended on less than we were, but they went above and beyond with everything they did.  I guess this is standard for four-star dining, but it was new to us.  What I was probably most impressed with (aside from the food and the wine list. which was so beautiful and extensive that I wanted to take it with me and read it like a novel) was how good-humored everyone was as they went about their jobs.  From the sommelier to the man refilling our water to the chef to the woman who took our coats - everyone not only seemed happy to do what they were doing, but to do it for us.  Seamlessly.

Ideally after this lunch we would have had a bed or a couch in a quiet dark place to lie down on for a few hours, but we had planned on staying out through West Side Story that was a gift from our parents for that night so we bundled up and off we went.

We tried to do some shopping but other than finally finding the boots I had been searching for, we probably had the most fun when we finally decided we could quit and stood in front of the store windows with a view of Union Square taking pictures of each others reflection for twenty minutes.

We headed uptown to Times Square to take some jump shots and then get cozy with the tourists at Junior's waiting to go to the 7:00 shows.  Still being full from lunch we ordered drinks to tide us over and I enjoyed the best martini I've had in months.  This was also the location of that days reality check from Megan:  When I commented on how many good looking men I'd seen at every establishment we'd been to that week and that I felt like I was in a candy store she reminded me that there was such a disproportionate number of them because most of them were probably trying to be in the entertainment business.  Entertainers that make a damn good martini anyway.

West Side Story was wonderful because we grew up watching nothing but musicals on TV and have probably seen the movie two dozen times.  (I was shocked and disturbed when I found out Natalie Wood wasn't Latina.  Not so much that they would have a white actress play that role but more because it ruined the fantasy for me.)  It was also a good contrast to Fela from a couple nights before, WSS being very much the standard song and dance number you expect from Broadway.  This version does have a lot of Spanish mixed in which I think made the story, which I realize now is pretty over-the-top, that much easier to get carried away by.

After the show we skipped outta there to head north to meet my Binty, who met us at our subway stop to come have lots of wine and a sleepover.  She's been one of my besties since I met her in health class freshman year in high school, and the three of us definitely solved some of the worlds problems by the end of our second bottle of wine that night.

Coming up the next day was treats in Soho and fun in Brooklyn - a pretty darn good way to spend my last day in New York.

Made For Walkin'

In October of 200something I sprained my ankle bad enough that I could barely walk on it for a few weeks, let alone wear high heels.  I love wearing high heels so this cramped my style.  That New Year's I was finally ready, and I bought an adorable low-ish heeled, uncharacteristically girly pink with black adornment pair of heels and built an outfit around those.  They remain some of my favorite pair of shoes I have ever owned.

Fast forward a couple of years and a couple of long distance moves.  I was dating and had fell hard for somebody that was about to relocate, we'll call him T.  We had a brief but intense courtship that was great in some ways for both of us; in the years that followed, up til almost present day, neither of us were really able to let go when we should have.  (For me, the first second and third time he lied to me about having/getting back together with a girlfriend were the big should-have-let-the-hell-go moments, but I guess I've always liked a lesson to be really pounded into me.)

In the months that we were together we rarely spent a night, or moment for that matter, apart if we could avoid it.  Naturally, there were some objects that got mixed up, which isn't normally a problem because as you clean or sort or whatever you say "Hey dollface, you left your blabla here, I'll bring it over later," then you do and life moves on.  However, as this individual was about to be relocated as a member of the armed forces, there was a super swat packing crew that boxed and moved every last item not clearly labeled and separated.

T and I were trying to be realists and didn't have plans on being a couple, or even necessarily seeing each other after we both left town, other than a brief stopover on my way westward across the country.  So it was with much annoyance and a little sadness that I  realized later in the afternoon after all the boxes had been moved out of T's house that my girly pink sprain-recovery-celebratory heels had been packed and relocated to T's next government chosen location.

In the years since we met and swept each other off our respective and proverbial feet, we have stopped talking only to start again, for one reason, excuse, overdue apology or another every few months.  He has been the "What If?" for me, and I always held out just a little hope that we'd find a way to work something out.  He is a nice guy and I think for the most part has meant well, but the failure to disclose when he was with his girlfriend became a regular theme that, admittedly, I should have learned a lesson from earlier.

T was moving again a few months ago, from the house he had lived in (and deployed from a few times) since we parted ways.  (AKA the house that held my shoes.)  Since we were in the midst of another talking streak, and this overdue apology had really been a doozy, it occured to me that this would be the time to get my shoes back.  I knew he'd send them to me when they were uncovered because he was in the process of trying to prove that he was the one for me, to show me he had made a mistake in letting me go, and to prove I could trust him so we could really build something.  (I've paraphrased a little here, but most of those are not my words.)

One of the last times I talked to him, as I was deep in realizing that I needed to cut him off again, he made the sad report to me that nowhere in the house had my shoes been found.  Shoes gone.  Forever.

I talked to him maybe once or twice after that, and I don't exactly know why or how to describe it, but I realized distinctly that this was the last time.  I held him up on a pedestal for more than two years and over and over I was disappointed, yet at least a small part of me had held on, had clung to the awesomeness of the time we had spent together as an example of what should be.

I don't want to over simplify things, but I realized something striking after the last time I hung up the phone with him...
After I found out the shoes were not to be found, it was shockingly easy to let him go.