Q: A Love Story. Evan Mandery

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      “If you need a jeweler, I recommend my daughter,” Helen says, handing me a business card. It amazes me that a jeweler has a business card, though I don’t know why one shouldn’t. I have more legitimate cause to be further amazed that the card belongs to the same person who sold me Q’s engagement ring just two weeks earlier.

      It is the sort of thing that brings home to one the interconnectedness of life, and I am in these months of semi-fame more sensitive to these linkages than ever. I am contacted by all kinds of people and have all sorts of random meetings, as my universe becomes bigger than it has ever been before.

      I eagerly anticipate the tiny and large surprises that each morning brings. And the days never disappoint, in particular the one on which I receive a note asking me to arrange a table for dinner the following evening at Jean-Georges.

      Of all the remarkable chance encounters, this is the most remarkable and exciting of all, because I can tell from the unmistakable handwriting that this note is from, of all people, myself.

      Chapter TWO

      It is no easy matter to arrange a table at Jean-Georges, even at lunch. It is a popular spot for people on their way to the theater or the New York City Opera or the Philharmonic. I call and ask for a table for the next day. The woman on the phone says that nothing is available. I say who I am. “The novelist,” I explain. “I am meeting myself for an early supper.”

      “We cannot accommodate the two of you,” she says, “though we do have a table available in early March.”

      It is September.

      “I don’t think that will work,” I say.

      “Well,” the reservationist says firmly. “That’s the best we can do.”

      I let the matter drop with her. Instead I telephone my best friend, Ard Koffman, who is a big shot at American Express, which has deals with a lot of these fancy restaurants. Ard has the Amex concierge call the Jean-Georges reservationist and the table is secured. I am grateful for his help, but it is frustrating that the process is not more egalitarian and the reservationists more accommodating.

      I know that the people who make the bookings at Jean-Georges refer to themselves as reservationists, and that they are not to be challenged lightly, because I have eaten there once before, during Restaurant Week. For seven days each year, during the hottest part of August, several of the fancy restaurants in New York City offer a cheap lunch to lure the few people who aren’t in the Hamptons out of their air-conditioned offices and apartments. In 1992, the first year of the promotion, lunch cost $19.92. It has gone up a penny each year since.

      One summer, several years ago, I decided to take my mother to Jean-Georges for lunch. When I called to make the booking, the receptionist switched me to a person whom she identified as a reservationist.

      “Is that really a word?” I asked when the person to whom I was transferred answered the phone.

      “What’s that?”

      “Reservationist.”

      “You just used it, so it must be.”

      “Just because someone uses a word doesn’t make it a word,” I say. “Besides, I only said it because the woman who transferred me to you used it.”

      “What is it, then … a fruit?”

      “It’s not a word unless it’s in the dictionary.”

      “That seems very narrow-minded of you.”

      “All the same.”

      “Well, someone who receives visitors is a receptionist. So I am a reservationist. You should look it up in your dictionary.”

      “It won’t be there.”

      “You might be surprised.”

      What doesn’t surprise me is that when I arrive for lunch, two months later, I am seated with my mother at the table nearest the men’s room. I ask to be moved, but the maitre d’, no doubt in cahoots with the reservationist, perfunctorily says, “That would not be possible.”

      For whatever it is worth, I look up “reservationist” in the dictionary and it is not a word. I do learn, though, that “reserpine” is a yellowish powder, isolated from the roots of the rauwolfia plant, which is used as a tranquilizer. I since have yet to have occasion to use this word in conversation, but I am still hopeful.

      At first glance, twenty dollars for lunch at a five-star restaurant seems like a great deal, and a penny per year is unquestionably a modest rate of inflation, but what they don’t tell you about Restaurant Week is that nothing is included with the lunch other than the entrée. My mother and I made the mistake of ordering drinks (Diet Coke with lemon for me; club soda with lemon for my mother), sharing a dessert (a sliver of chocolate torte), and ordering coffee (decaffeinated). When the check arrived, I learned that a Diet Coke at Jean-Georges costs $5.75. It isn’t even a big Diet Coke. It is mostly ice, and on the day I ate there with my mother, they gave me a lime instead of a lemon, as if they taste at all the same. When I asked the waiter to correct the error, he said, “That would not be possible.”

      Everything at the restaurant is miniaturized. Even the entrée—we each had pan-seared scallops in a cabernet reduction—though concededly delicious, was alarmingly small. I figured I would need to get a sandwich after lunch, which would have been within my budget if I had spent only the forty dollars I had expected to spend on the meal. But after the soft drinks, the dessert, and the coffee were added in—and tax and tip, which somehow slipped my mind—lunch came out to more than one hundred dollars.

      As I leave the apartment, telling Q that I am off to meet a friend, I can’t help but wonder how much dinner is going to run.

      I have a thing about being late so I get to the restaurant a few minutes before six o’clock. I am not surprised to find that I have already arrived. I am seated on a sofa in the vestibule reading a Philip Roth novel that I immediately recognize has not yet been written. I say hello softly and my future self rises to meet me.

      I am disappointed by how I—the older I, that is—look. I do not look terrible, but I do not look spectacular either. I am particularly dismayed that my body proves susceptible to some ravages of age from which I thought I would be immune. I understand that I will grow old, of course, but I exercise quite regularly and eat right, and like to believe that I will be able to keep my weight down until my knees give out and maybe even for some time after that. But here I am, not much more than sixty, I think, and already I have something of a paunch. I am also a bit jowly. This is alarming.

      I am, furthermore, not as well groomed as I am now. We are each dressed in a blue oxford and khaki pants, but the older me’s collar is worn past a point that I would now allow. I note that collars have grown wider again, presuming of course that I am continuing to keep up with fashion trends. This strikes me as a change for the worse, but of course styles will come and go.

      In other subtle ways, I have allowed myself to deteriorate further. I have a few coarse ear hairs that require frequent attention; these have been allowed to have their way. My nails could use a clipping. I have psoriasis in some spots. It is manageable, but I note that this is not being tended to either: my hands are dry and flaky.

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