A Few New Yorkers, Part One

Excerpt from the classic “A Few New Yorkers Have Sushi”

(soon to be adapted for PBS as “Upton Shabby”)

“It was the oddest thing,” she murmured, half to herself, in a voice barely audible to her guests. Mindlessly pushing back a wisp of meticulously ironed bang from a wan forehead, Vidalia Tartine adjusted a pair of rimless eyeglasses on the bridge of her nose and sighed; the lenses gave off the slightest tint of lavender, having long faded from the more robust violet hue that everyone had so fervently sought the summer before; replacing them now of course was out of the question.

Vida, as her friends preferred to call her- ever the life of the party they cajoled in deference to an innate, dolefully contemplative nature- suddenly grew pensive, as if recalling something of deep significance as she gazed distractedly at her guests and absentmindedly began clearing the faux “Melmac” plates. Was it possible she mused that once upon a time in New York there truly had existed a bevy of servants for those even of simple means, small battalions of proud house workers at the ready to assist the recently anointed middle classes with their every burgeoning albeit nouveau domestic whim? And had it indeed been a noble, if not sought after employment she further mused, this uniquely crafted metier as it were of preserving someone else’s priceless set of china? The entire notion now seemed an incredible fantasy and untoward extravagance in an age where even a humble trip to the dry cleaners was prohibitive for the newly unemployed. Vida liked to muse and have notions.

One of her dangly silver earrings, Vida’s only adornment, a simple and inexpensive affair inset with miniscule blue plastic triangles intended to evoke lapis lazuli or something of the like, moved ever so slightly as it caught the glaring halogen beam of a hugely discounted, pointlessly oversized floor lamp; this fixture she mused once more had been purchased on final reduction at Home Depot and offered the only real illumination in the tiny apartment. The earrings, like the lamp, were a rare indulgence. Vida had treated herself at a crafts fair near Edith Wharton’s restored Berkshire “cottage” one summer during a rare weekend away from the sullen, desultory air of the August metropolis- Vida liked the word "desultory" a lot but was not sure how to pronounce it. Alas it had clouded over for the duration of the seventy-two or so hours she had spent musing in those beloved forests of Arden. But oh, how long ago that now seemed, and how life had changed so irrefutably since that brief, pastoral sojourn. She momentarily flashed on her present position as evening shift caller for a particularly and stringently soulless telemarketing firm and realized ruefully how precious nonetheless these few dreary weekly hours had become to her financial and spiritual well being.

Vidalia’s thoughts were jarred back to the present as dinner concluded, amid the clack of plastic forks as the last of the Fairway spicy shrimp sushi was consumed after having been meticulously doused with green mustard and scallion teriyaki. The Britta water jug stood empty and somewhat forlornly nearby, a reminder that it was time to relocate her guests to the seating area a scant foot or so away from where they huddled in those awful and hard little chairs. She imagined what it would be like to have a formal library of one’s own, with leather bound volumes filling polished oak or satin mahogany cases, overstuffed chairs and the smell of musk, a tiffany lamp or two, tea cozies and intricately embossed game tables where perhaps one could engage in a spirited hand or two of whist. She noticed that several “After Eights” lay scattered along the cheap hemp mats and that the diners were rosy with organic wine. Of course there would be no cigars or brandy, and the coffee was of an inferior pre-packaged brand, but still, was it not essential for certain traditions to prevail if civilization were to continue? Behind where she stood, on a wall shelf of white pressed board edged with gold leaf contact paper that she had applied herself -albeit somewhat unevenly- several nineteenth century novels in the Penguin edition, their shiny belle époque covers gleaming though somewhat dog-eared, leaned lazily to one side. In a vain attempt to secure this unruly, obstreperous cadre of turn-of-the-century narratives, “House of Mirth,” “Portrait of Lady” and “Washington Square” were all lying flat and piled on top of each other to form a decidedly pell-mell bookend; a copy of “The Bostonians” had fallen to the floor unnoticed. The small space’s decor emitted a parsimonious insouciance, a kind of mock drawing room ambience more suited to the gilded, earlier years of a previous century than to a millennium recession worthy of a stockbroker’s ransom. It was undeniably the perfect moment in which to settle in and partake of a good, old-fashioned ghost story. . . .