an avid reader

I have trouble with novels. In the advent of multi-tasking and Microsoft Windows open 20 at a time, I find it hard to concentrate sometimes. I love to read though and I do it often here. I read traffic lights. I read subway maps. I read the covers of books being read by real readers on the train. I read street signs and sale signs and department store floor categories. I read all day.

Yesterday, the weather was grey and I allowed myself the irresponsible luxury of sleeping past noon. The reasoning behind it was simple: I did it because I could. I turned myself out of bed and dawdled about the apartment and left it around 3:00pm to pay a visit to the boys at Focus Features. I had never met them before, the bodies which produce the voices I'd become familiar with over so many months. It was great to meet the tag team of assistants who often stay later than even I would like for them, to accommodate the time difference between us and the Eastern sea board.

Mr. Kansas directed me across the street for my breakfast, served at 5:00pm. Cafe Angelique with its Parisian tiling and non-Parisian low-fat, low-carb baked goods. I'd been advised that the chicken pesto sandwich on fougasse bread was worth investigating so I ordered that and a "Chocolate Bombe" which was a flourless chocolate brownie. Breakfast of sloths! The fougasse was toasted nicely and there was plenty of chicken pesto but the pesto was not strong enough and a bit creamy for me. The tomatoes sliced into it were old and tasted metallic with age. The chocolate bombe however was fluffy and crumbly and like dark cocoa velvet. The bombe was fantastic.

It's OK to eat one fattening meal a day if it's the only meal you eat. And I like to justify the consumption of chocolate with the presence of rain. Big, lackadaisical, slappy rain. The hems of my jeans were dark with the watery filth of this town. I stepped carefully down into and up out of the subway. The slick floors were shining with potential accidents. Gross. Earlier in the week I had tripped walking up the stairs of the subway and caught myself with my bare hands on the steps traversed by thousands. I quarantined my paws until I could find gloves made of hand sanitizer. I walked a few blocks like a criminal at gunpoint held hostage by bacteria and the slides I was shown in Microbiology class. I'm not a fan of bacteria and other assorted invisible foulness.

Fully innoculated, I woke late on Saturday and spent it reading in the apartment. I ate leftovers of grilled veggies and veggie lasagna from Certe and enjoyed a bit of solitude. Another grey sky spread outside my window and I didn't leave the house until 7pm when I took the train to 72nd Street to join my dear friend Dale and his mother for dinner at Tavern on the Green. While not the fanciest food, the history of the building dates back a lot of years and we were seated in the Crystal Room which is inspired by Venice and felt like the inside of an Easter egg dream. The chandeliers were everywhere and I indulged in a cocktail of Chambord and gingerale. Dale and his mother had just returned from a cruise and as I ate my seared ahi tuna with black seaweed salad and lotus root, I clicked through photos on Dale's camera. For my main course, I ordered the prime rib but only ate the cap. My entire life I'd only liked eating the cap but always felt silly about it, not knowing what I was doing until the French Laundry happened and Thomas Keller diagnosed my palate. TK, I love you. I want to have your food baby.

It's a culinary feat for that many people to consume that much food of a certain quality day after day. Everyone enjoyed their choices, iceberg blue, lobster bisque, pork chops, sea bass...and when I say everyone I mean us and the other hundreds of people celebrating that evening. Birthday parties, anniversaries, friends from the ends of the earth coming to dine and spend a moment looking at familiar faces before separating again in a puff of warm air on a chilly night. I wore my long, black wool coat that night and felt very much a sophisticate. Especially on the train back when a couple of Puerto Rican kids were making fun of a homeless woman. One of them made eye contact with me and smiled his acknowledgement that I knew they were being snarky. I wasn't afraid. I was a cool, calm New Yorker.