Misguidance Counselors: The Waverly Inn
By Sam Beasley
We are thankful! We have eaten! And this is a story about both of those things!
First off, we would be extra thankful if you gave this post a like! We need your help winning the algorithm!
Nextly, Sam’s latest story is about a dinner shared with his best friend at the NYC institution, The Waverly Inn. It is a story about the many histories of New York City and the many histories of a long friendship.
Speaking of long, this is a longer post for MC, so make sure you click through so you can read the full story.
Finally… we miss ya, campers! So glad to be together again.
Like, share, subscribe!
LYLAS,
Marilyn and Sam
Ur Misguidance Counselors
(@misguidance4u)
9:12 p.m. ET, West Village, NYC
We sped down into the West Village from the 14th Street station. I had to glance back every few steps as we careened through the thicket of brownstones.
I was annoyed that my best friend, visiting from Kansas City, wouldn’t keep up with the aggressive clip of my practiced New York commuter’s tread. She was annoyed, I guessed, because I, seemingly sprinting urbanite, demanded such an inconsiderate pace. But we only had 30 minutes to get to our reservation at the “very New York” restaurant. That was less than half the time we needed coming from way up at the tip of Manhattan in Inwood.
Nora Ephron-style twinkle lights adorning the COVID street-dining yurts streaked in our prereferral as we bobbed and weaved through people strolling down the block.
Unlike us, these people, being West Villagers, could afford to stroll. More to the point, they could afford to live in their apartments of 50-plus rent-controlled years or in the nepotistically acquired co-ops their trust funds could afford. I intended for us to indulge, arm and arm, in a similar promenade on our way to dinner, pretending to be them.
With one eye on my trailing bestie, I tried to keep up our pace.
I’m diligent in minimizing my gauche predispositions, but there was no time to be embarrassed by our freneticism. Not that anyone would notice our sidewalk athletics. I could barely get us to push the standard NYC clip, a psychopathic stride per minute for anyone from highway cities.
Highway driving is how I relate walking in the city to visitors. It’s the easiest way to bridge the cognitive gap between living in NYC and life west of the Hudson. Having acquired the collective consciousness and sporty criticisms requisite of the city, I feel comfortable bitching about this etiquette for New Yorkers at large. When walking in NYC:
Match the speed of those around you, pull over if you need to stop, and leave the left side of escalators free for active passing. Always let passengers off the train before trying to board. Never leave your backpack on when the train is busy. And if you think you’re polite for waiting for an elderly New Yorker to exit the train ahead of you, you deserve their choice words about getting in everyone’s way. Because, like in your Corolla, we only stop traffic to let the person behind us know they’re an asshole.
My phone started ringing.
We were a precarious 13 minutes late and about to lose our table.
Bridget requested a table at a “very New York” restaurant. “Bridget” is how I refer to my visiting best friend in matters such as these.
...you can never be sure what visitors aim for when they use “very New York” in a request.
Which is the preferred “very New York” jaywalking mishap to comport with their interpretation of the city’s “je ne sais quoi”? Being splashed by a bus while wearing a tutu or slamming a fist into a taxi hood while yelling, “I’m walking here!”
If Whitman, Liebowitz, and the writers of Friends - the most successful analysts of New York City - could only approximate that which is the city’s spell to cast, then I don’t know what can be expected of me. How am I to charm the entire New York into performing for Midwesterns when I’m barely allowed the privilege of arriving places on time? If you want a performance, you can catch “showtime” between 59th Street and 125th for $2.90 per ride on the A. That’s all day, every day, and allegedly every 6 minutes.
It is hard to convey, not just because of the inundation of fictitious precedents, how to conjure a “very New York” moment.
New York moments most often like a few weeks ago when, five blocks away from the audition for which I took off work and wearing a shirt made soggy by my 45-minute train ride, I received a one-sentence email from the casting director canceling without explanation, apology, or punctuation.
Preoccupied with the masterful dress-down I was giving the casting director in my head regarding the stupendous brevity of their shitty little email, I veered carelessly into a coffee shop.
I told myself that maybe I would write a bit while enjoying the central air conditioning - I wanted to type up this serendipitous thing that happened at a baby shower that could make a charming story.
This was a ruse. A lie to tell myself and quickly forget before repeatedly reading the casting director’s sentence fragment full-sized on my Macbook screen. But I soon recognized the faux chalkboard menu behind the register with its own sinister sentence fragments.
“No wifi! Connect with each other instead! :)”
I remembered a younger me forcing a smile as I paid $7.99 for a six-ounce cup of chidingly acidic, drip coffee before vowing never to return to this coffee shop again.
I was already next in line, close enough that the barista would notice if I walked out. Knowing I’d never be brave enough to commit an inconsequential act of barely slighting a stranger, I had to accept that the city had chosen to fuck me over today. As I tried to remember if I’d ever known how to use my phone as a hotspot, I recognized the back of a head in front of me.
It belonged to one of my “big sisters.” The two surrogate big sisters I never had, who fed me on Thursday nights in my 20s, housed me for periods and kept me from ending up face down in a ditch on 8th Ave.
I hugged Big Sis 1 and… Oh my god, it was her birthday!
I sat with her and her husband, catching up on work and gossip, and their baby was now one and a half years old! Oh my, life changes so fast.
We stood an hour later, an hour I wasn’t supposed to have, in a coffee shop I would have otherwise loved to avoid, ending the surprise birthday party.
“How perfect was this?”
“Kismet!”
“So New York.”
“New York magic!” We said with a commiserative, pleased shrug.
“Wait, when was the last time we saw each other?”
“Not since the baby shower.” Yes, Big Sis 1’s baby shower that I’d come into the coffee shop to write about… the meeting was implausible yet domestic. A wish coming true just as it was imagined.
Now tell me, how should I recreate this at the Times Square Olive Garden whenever someone comes to visit?
I pressed Bridget for some parameters in the daunting carte blanche that is making a “very New York” reservation. A very New York hole-in-the-wall ramen or a very New York Michelin-starred restaurant, friend?
“Anywhere is fine” was all I could get.
She likely wanted to be undemanding, and I appreciate that. But I’m often helpless to the thought that sometimes nothing is more impolite than being polite.
With a 9:00 p.m. table and a chance to satisfy the vagaries of her request, I found a reservation at an enchanting venue with a celebrity clientele and a reputable menu. A reservation we’d lose in two minutes.
I answered my phone and blabbered to the Maitre D’, “Oh my god, walking in now," with forced charm.
Before the Maitre D’ could say anything else, I hung up my phone. We ducked into the garden-level entrance. A door framed with Dutch-green panels, covered in some ivy, tucked under a stoop. The rusty, red sign hanging above read “Ye Waverly Inn.”
9:14 p.m. ET, The Waverly Inn, NYC
We entered like a shot.
Like a witch, the Maitre D’ was somehow midcall with a different guest in the millisecond it took to cross the threshold.
We tried to suppress our panting. The low-plank ceilings trapping the vestigial mania of our commute.
I was mortified to think we might have the unrefined peal of interlopers. Ringing through the intimate room like a self-incriminating alarm. Possibly clearer in the dubiously chill air. Waiting to be acknowledged.
The Maitre D’ was epicene and wiry, styled in what looked to be high-end Hot Topic. Like Rick Owens or McQueen. I told myself it was Zara.
I tugged at the bottom of my blouse, hoping to make my Zara look expensive, too.
When heading out the door earlier that evening, I considered which of my five sensible fall jackets - all purchased to be worn during one, maybe two weeks a year – would go best with my new Zara top.
Just a hopeful precaution in case the surface tension of summer might spill over, changing all the leaves in a single outing. The night that foretells the imminent arrival of Fall in New York City.
Made famous by novels, movies, and – my generation’s contribution – influencers in wide-brimmed hats, New York Fall is the most dependable and ephemeral of the city’s magics.
Fall comes unannounced in the middle of the night. By morning, every available crook and gutter becomes stuffed with clumps of sodden leaves. Unknowable science keeps every sidewalk perma-damp even though the air is so crisp it requires the chronic steeping of my skin in Cetaphil. Like clockwork, it allows stone-cold New Yorkers a respite of twee, but only long enough so they may forgive themselves come winter.
We were still waiting. Stalled in the doorway. My eyes darted from guest to guest trying to spot reproach before landing on the uneven floor.
You enter directly into the barroom of The Waverly Inn. Its floors matched the dark stain of the millwork. It was beautiful craftsmanship that should outlive me. What a shame that no one today would spend the money to build a bar that nice anymore. Definitely not in a neighborhood brothel, which I assumed it was at one point. The actual bar wasn’t ornate but was formidable for the tight room. It could seat a modest six… seven if you wanted to wedge yourself next to the heavy Carrara mantle of the first of the many fireplaces to prove that you’re skinny.
I only knew The Waverly Inn’s superficial reputation. Exclusive and expensive. More of a concept than a location. Now inside, I could make out the years of patrons haunting the arcane room congested on top of each other. The continual seance of drinks and chatter superimposing them onto a single timeline. The same timeline as Bridget and me.
Over by the bar, the madame sets a john straight. A prohibition-era Bolshevik argues with the bohemian or beatnik. Beer-soaked background actors from Central Casting looking as if they might really “know your name.” Two flamboyantly professional, middle-aged women sit while finance bros, complete with uniform tech vests over light blue button-downs, obliviously crowd above them. On Tuesdays, Ginsberg or Dylan uneventfully wanders in for a ham sandwich.
You walk into these places every day in New York, of course. Like showing up to my new dentist’s office and the flat screen in the lobby teaching me it used to be Eleanor Rosevelt’s home. I don’t believe you can get root canals in Mamie Eisenhower’s living room in Abilene, Kansas.
It gets hard not to feel nostalgic living here. Nostalgic for times you weren’t around for. These spaces connect you to something bigger than yourself. Like, whoa! History is real, and I’m in it. And maybe part of me will live forever because of that.
I looked over to find Bridget clenching her jaw. I guess I’d been smiling because I felt it drop.
Where I saw a chimeric bar, Bridget found the middle distance. She was an ascetic black hole, vacuuming up my childish reverie into her surly countenance until I was also sober and adult.
My soles were damp enough to squeak with each weight shift. I remembered to regret my ambitiously sized Zara shirt and prayed for the not-small mercy of being seated.
By design, patrons weren’t intended to be in the bar for long. In 2006, this iteration of The Waverly Inn opened, tacitly, as a personal social club for the new owner, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter.
Carter dropped the less-than-chic “Ye”, installed a moat of paparazzi, and unplugged the landline disabling open reservations. You were either seated or hoped no one snapped a shot of you, tail between your legs, as you snuck out.
So, despite the anchoring bar and the few two-top tables under the front windows, the barroom existed as a transitory space.
Though the moat had pretty much dried up, The Waverly Inn is still considered a consummate celebrity hot spot. My parents even sent texts when Travis Kelce was recently reported as making his pilgrimage dinner as a freshly canonized celebutante. While I made our reservation online and enjoyed the residual air of exclusivity, the mid-aughts reputation made me anxious for the security of sitting at a table.
With an airy, wrist-high karate chop, the Maître D’ dispatched a hostess.
They led us toward the surreal glow spilling from the dining room, pulling me out of the consuming abyss of Bridget’s mood. My eyes stayed trained on the doorway all six steps from the host stand to the doorway, sure that Gwyneth Paltrow or Robert Frost would slip out the instant I looked away.
Then we crossed over.
As with wardrobes or looking glasses, we launched into a busy dusk. The dining room was a maze of tables of whirling waiters and disembodied chortles. It criss-crossed my still adjusting eyes so I could barely orient myself through the pomp, clangs, and red leather booths.
The restaurant was comprised of two adjoined garden levels belonging to the townhouses above. All I could make out, however, were illogical, tacked-on crannies filled with indeterminable patrons adorned with real jewelry and fake noses.
With an extended arm, our table was indicated with perfect indifference. I loved it.
The table was meant for larger parties than our own, and like fans down rows of a sporting arena, we had to shuffle around to our seats.
Then unto us guardian angels appeared.
Jack Kerouac, Emma Goldman, Thelonious Monk, Norman Mailer, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Bob Dylan stared down from the mural with droopy caricatured eyes. West Village patron saints stationed the length of the dining room, ostensibly drafted to chaperone the chaos of Graydon’s beatified guests.
Say what you will about Mr. Carter gilding The Waverly Inn in glitterati - and many butthurt critics unable to score a table did - but he anticipated the chance to capitalize on NYC’s thin veil of time. It made my hurt ego feel better about my musings back at the bar.
I shifted back into the ruby-red leather cushion of my chair, reading the top of the menu:
“Waverly Inn - Worst food in the city” - Donald J. Trump
Well, there you go! At the very least, the food would be good.
9:22 p.m. ET, The Waverly Inn, NYC
All this to say, I have a lot of anxiety when people visit me in NYC.
Care not the visitors for the New York transplants; they care only about the newly available couch they invariably sleep on free of charge.
One April, my three roommates and I hosted a run of siblings, estranged high school friends, parents, parents’ friends, parents’ friends’ kids, and a very distant cousin from Germany who showed up unannounced and stayed on our sectional for two full weeks. All taking advantage of our tiny NYC apartment, PTO, and overdrafted bank accounts.
Nonethewiser guests rolled suitcases out the door on Monday and shortly after, we hauled dirty sheets and $20.00 in quarters to the laundromat in perpetual preparation for the next guest. A walk-of-shame of a different, if still dirty, kind… the shame of inhospitable salary.
Indeed, all my overwrought complaining thus far has to do with the stress-filled years of bad-faith houseguests, heedless of city life, threatening to make me late on rent.
When I finally let Bridget - someone I genuinely wanted to visit - come up to NYC, no matter how hard I tried, I’m sorry to admit, my heart wasn’t in it.
The first time Bridget came to town was six years prior, almost to the day, to us sitting at a restaurant in dead silence. Those six short years hurried us from our mid-20s to our 30s.
Those years are the difference between us saying, “I made $50!” and “It’s only $50?” The difference between pizza at 4:00 a.m. and making a reservation. Living with roommates, or in a one-bedroom. I, in turn, spent considerable effort trying to discern when our lives became our past lives.
During 18 years as friends, Bridget and I performed in musicals, sang at open mics, and worked a summer at the Gap in Topeka’s mall. She was my first kiss and got me drunk for the first time (the same night). More often than not, we could be found binging bottomless chips and salsa at one, though many, of the Mexican restaurants around town. A practice that permanently conditioned self-control out of our systems.
Like mercenaries, we adopted aliases while we ate. The anonymity of assumed identities allowed us to disassociate from our gastronomical sins. So, at the restaurants (and in this story) I became Krissy and she was Bridget.
During Bridget’s first NYC trip, my roommates and I threw a Halloween party. I dressed up as Ash Ketchem to Bridget’s Pikachu.
I ended the night making out with someone in the hallway while Bridget got into a screaming match with another guest. I think she might have been defending my honor. Like Bridget often says, we were the “Belles of the Ball.”
“Girl, leave! No one even knows you here,” said the drunk party guest smugly towering over Bridget. He really thought he had her.
Bridget did not hesitate.
“Bitch… I LIVE HERE!’”
The story was repeated over and over for the rest of the trip.
Quoting each other was a hallmark of our friendship. But I’m not too proud to admit it was mostly Bridget’s inventions that had a life. When trudging out of gay clubs, after a night of synchronized dances and grinding on top of a go-go platform, she’d declare, “Top night! Top night!”
When we’d see something horrible happen to someone else, she’d ask, “Wouldn’t you just die?” and my response was always, “I’d DIE!”
And when she’d roll over in my full-sized mattress on the floor of my college apartment, she’d confess, dreamy and croaky, “We were the belles of the ball.” Then we giggled while sorting out our stories from the night before.
Our remaining anime makeup was smudged as we giggled under the covers of my Harlem bed the morning after Halloween.
“Bitch, I live here!” I repeated in delight.
“Heehee. Well… I’m supposed to get my period today.”
With the help of dollar slices, the booze that preceded, and the giggly mornings that followed, I relaxed into her visit.
Inside our friendship, it feels like we ride on the edge of something great. Like, when we are together, every moment and quote is from a coming-of-age movie. And there will always be a happy ending because of that.
Bridget was packing to catch her early-morning flight home.
“I’m so late,” she whispered to be mindful of my sleeping roommates.
“What!” I shot up. I felt like the living dead after the week we had.
“My period never came. Guess I’m taking a pregnancy test when I get home.”
We giggled softly until our eyes met.
9:24 p.m. ET, The Waverly Inn, NYC
Bridget stood to announce that she was calling her husband.
Maybe she could still tell her daughter “goodnight.”
And left me alone at the outsized table.
I felt like a piece of shit. The husbandless and childless urbanite who forgot about bedtime, on display in the middle of the dining room.
I meekly grimaced at a group of exiting women as they passed. The ridiculously large table seemed to be getting even bigger. They puzzled over me like a mysterious stain on a designer garment. I had to avert my eyes down toward their luxury bags.
Of course, she was upset about not getting to call her daughter. My goddaughter - lest we forget that, too! I wished I could travel back in time. But to when? When did I forget to stay vigilant? 10 minutes ago? Would 30 minutes be enough? Hours? Who is to say when children go to sleep? Then factor in the time difference. An impossible calculus!
I know I made a point to talk through the night’s timeline. That’s right! Several times in fact. She knows I’d easily could’ve, and would’ve, worked in a call before our long train ride downtown.
So, why didn’t Bridget mention anything? Because I made a stink about running late? Then the mad dash from the train… And how would she know there isn’t cell service in the subway, Sam? Damn.
Perhaps anticipating a friend’s needs is an ability lost between time zones. I’d much prefer blaming long-distance clairvoyance over lacking social intuition.
Or perhaps it would’ve crossed my mind if we existed on an alternate trajectory.
If I also lived in Kansas City. If I got married after college, had kids, was straight. My head shot around, dislodging the thought, and I stared at the dining room entrance for Bridget’s happy return.
Presently, with the restaurant emptying, it was hard to miss Bridget. She had the look of someone at the DMV, only less thrilled.
“No one’s been by with water? ” she asked, holding up her empty glass as she scooted in her chair.
“No one.”
“It’s not like they’re busy.”
“Right?” Taking even her perfunctory joke as a positive sign, I tentatively asked about the call.
“She was already asleep.”
I tried to retreat to our pleasantries about the shitty service.
“I thought they’d be packed since this was their only reservation.”
We searched the restaurant to find a server. I searched the last five years of our friendship to figure out when everything went wrong.
Five years ago, I was uncomfortable and sweating between two fields in bumper-to-bumper traffic for hours. I turned off my rental car to preserve gas and peed into water bottles. It was mid-June, and I was driving back to Kansas for our friend from high school’s wedding. I got a text from Bridget.
She wouldn’t be at the wedding.
“Baby Girl came early to meet her Uncle Sam!”
The wedding was so beautiful and so hot that we couldn’t tell if we were crying or sweating. Friends wanted to know about living in NYC, my family, and where Bridget was, I poured us shots of whiskey into teacups, and we all danced to Nelly. I had to gainsay them when they’d included me in their lamentations about “pushing 30.” Like we had begun the inescapable death march. Shut up, friends! I was only 26! A damn youth!
The next day, I went to meet Baby Girl.
The baby was given to me without ceremony or instruction. I mean, not that I had much experience with precious newborns, but it felt like I’d been tossed a sack of potatoes. Then Bridget, with free arms and no apprehensions, went to take care of things around the house.
So, this was how meeting your friend’s baby worked. I guess my parents forgot to tell me what to expect when your friend is expecting.
I never know how others seem to know these things. Like making small talk. I get asked, “How’s the family?” and I chide myself: How shitty am I to never think to ask that brilliant question first? Once again, I prattle out an update on my little sister’s new job, which they thoughtfully remembered to ask about, reinforcing all assumptions of my egotism.
After an entire life of unsuccessful attempts to get on the offensive side of small talk with friends’ parents and my parents’ friends, I’ve decided I was supposed to have gleaned this social routine in an earlier passage of life. I couldn’t say when which is probably why I missed it.
Bridget doesn’t seem to be troubled by these social impediments. She’s the friend that doesn’t get bothered if you forget to call her back. Her door is always open. An invitation always implied. It was a great comfort to follow her to parties and part-time jobs. Then I’d watch Bridget meet new friends and coworkers, effortlessly asking them erudite questions like, “How are things?” I’d safely ride the wakes of her charm, sailing right past my self-derision.
Yet, that same deference put me on Bridget’s couch alone, holding her five-day-old spawn, hoping the rules of horseshoes and hand grenades also applied to supporting baby heads.
I thought there’d be tears. Mine, but I guess Baby Girl’s, too.
I thought I’d cry holding the first of my friends’ babies. But I also thought we’d live our twenties coming into our own, socialites of city nightlife and ordering business-woman specials at lunch. It had to be bad manners and worse karma to grieve for our twenties-never-to-be while holding Bridget’s firstborn child.
We still joked that Bridget was a child bride. Creating a life felt like taking the joke too far. I hadn’t learned when to ask about “the family,” and when to have one. I missed it yet again. I was sure that even Baby Girl, with her primal baby instinct, knew that everyone had all grown up without me.
I fixated on the rise and fall of our touching chests, my breaths failing to sync with Baby Girl’s again and again. I felt the sudden rush of life passing by, and I couldn’t keep up. I needed to grab onto something. Stabilize, anchor myself. Cling to Baby Girl more tightly. But I was scared I couldn’t do it without hurting her.
When the stink inevitably came, panicked about what was expected of me, I may have offered to change her.
“Come here, Sweets,” Bridget said, tenderly scooping up Baby Girl.
Sweets. I’d never heard her use that pet name before. I’d never seen Bridget be a mom before. I liked it. Classic, as always.
“You were so good for Uncle Sam, Sweets.”
There hadn’t been tears. My goddaughter hadn’t cried when I held her.
At least I could do that right.
9:41 p.m. ET, The Waverly Inn, NYC
Oh my god. Where is our fucking server?
We sat for 15-odd minutes with no one greeting us.
The few servers that walked by seemed to do so with such disregard that I started through a rundown of existential concerns: Can anyone see me? Have I become part of the mural? Are they afraid to be seen waiting on me because of my Zara top?
I was finally able to smile down a loitering member of the waitstaff from the far server station. Her inhale before she walked over told me that the message received was “Gotcha!” and not the intended, “Please, save us from each other, goddamn it!”
“Has no one been by to greet you?” she asked.
As maddening as this inquiry was, I had no additional bandwidth to take up a fight with the server, too. Instead, I asked, if it wasn’t any trouble, that someone might come by with water, with that “only if they were already heading in that direction” sort of desperation.
This sounded some type of alarm.
We were hurriedly asked, “Sparkling or still?” by three more put-upon servers in about the same number of minutes. None came back with water.
The fourth began, “Sparkling or st-”
“Chardonnay!”
Bred to be Midwestern housewives, we are natural and proud Chardonnay drinkers. But in premeditated defense, I want to say that until about April 13, 2001, Chardonnay was considered “very sexy.” Not only popular but revered.
Wine experts and a world consumer panel draw a specific line from Chardonnay’s precipitous downfall to the infamous “Don’t Cry Out Loud” lip sync in the second scene in Bridget Jones’s Diary.
Jones comes home alone from a bar and writes, “Dear diary, I’ve failed again. I’ve poured an enormous glass of Chardonnay, and I’m going to put my head in the oven.” Suddenly, Sauvignon Blanc was the new “it girl” in town. This type of phenomenon was deemed the “Bridget Jones Effect.”
Someone returned to introduce our bottle. I tried to decide if it was the first server again or maybe the Sommelier had been forced over. Whomever it was, Bridget wasn’t concerned.
“We want the cheese board,” she told them as they filled tastefully oversized wine glasses.
A basket of biscuits was delivered with a notable proclamation and a knowing smirk. Making a to-do about free food invites comparison to chain restaurants. As such, “Complimentary Biscuits” should, at minimum, match Red Lobster’s Cheddar Bay Biscuits.
Not dissimilar to Cra-Z-Art Squand coming out of a fish tank of water in the 90’s infomercial, the biscuits turned wet and dusty in our mouths. For the first time in my life, I fearfully considered the veracity of something said by Donald Trump.
The cheese arrived in “the more the restaurant charges, the less you get” proportions. Accompanying it were three useless “homemade” crackers. With a quick snap, they buckled from the weight of the cheese. I sent a quick prayer up to Norman, Eleanor, et al.
Oh, please don’t let the weight of our expectations for this trip break us like these poorly Stacy’s Pita Chip recreations. Amen.
I pushed together sandcastles out of the biscuit debris on my bread plate, and Bridget tried to smear the soft cheese selection on one of the larger crumbs. In happier times, Bridget and I would sing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” a la Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey. Beaches was a “happier time.”
Apologizing seemed paltry.
If I said, “I’m sorry that I didn’t think about calling Baby Girl before bed.”
She’d reply with “No worries, boo.” Even if she meant it, I’d assume she’d only said it to be polite.
Servers kept replenishing our patience, along with our wine, with baseless assurances that someone else would be by to take our order soon. They barely interrupted their trajectory, so we never could ask which of them, exactly, that someone might be.
Bridget broke our silence with a belabored discussion of entrees. She was firmly decided on the Pot Pie, and I on the Hand-cut Steak Tartare.
“I think they’re kinda known for their pot pie,” I told her.
“Yeah, no. Steak tartare is always slimy.”
Well, yeah, I thought, it’s raw meat. But I knew I couldn’t order it now.
A server - new or old, who could care - asked for our order. Due to shame or spite, Bridget ordered the chicken, and I, the salmon.
We had come to The Waverly Inn just to get chicken and salmon.
10:00 something p.m. ET, The Waverly Inn, NYC
And another lifetime passed.
A server, not one of ours but friendly enough, topped off the half-empty wine glasses. We drank it back down. Dueling animus on entirely empty stomachs encouraged almost imperceivable slights out of our mouths like bile.
Would tomorrow start with two hours of sitting - as painfully as at this meal - in Big Sis 2’s car?
We were going upstate. It was the entire premise of Bridget’s visit. She had chosen this weekend specifically to see the leaves change. That is why we were in Inwood before dinner, to borrow keys from the second of my surrogate big sisters, Big Sis 2.
Big Sis 1 and 2 had met Bridget at my Halloween Party six years ago. I met Big Sis 1 when I was in college. She met Big Sis 2 while living in Seattle. Many moons later, they reconnected in NYC and became best friends. Soon after, Big Sis 2 met me, becoming Big Sis 2.
As I anticipated, we got to Big Sis 2’s apartment, and Bridget immediately had her chit-chatting. As luck would have it, Big Sis 2 was hosting Big Sis 1’s baby shower later that weekend and Bridget was invited to attend. After we saw the leaves, of course. Everyone was tickled. I love it when my lives converge… when time allows.
“Ok! Thank you so much for the keys! We will see you in a couple of days!” I said, rushing us out the door to go sit at an enormous table for a bleak dinner.
We’d waited so long and drank so much that time no longer existed. Neither did hope that food would ever come. Then, right before the cheese skids could finish drying out…
A change of pace.
Food kept arriving in a deft hustle, though it was unlikely for our benefit. Ours had to be the last plates of the night, and I could feel the waitstaff willing a manager to make cuts.
Runners announced the Brussels sprouts, French fries, mushrooms, and so on, as they landed in front of us. It was clear, as it filled with plates, that a table any smaller would have been, dare I say, unreasonable.
My anxiety was sublimated while staring at the pale shock of pink fish steaming in a bath of creamy lentils.
“Oh my god, try this,” A rapturous Bridget, saved by half a chicken, stabbed towards her entree as she eyed mine. Did my Chardonnay goggles deceive me? I mirrored her reflexively when she reached her fork over to help herself to my plate.
A server, filling our wine again, caught me mouthing, “Wow.” The “Amish Chicken” was the consistency of butter but was cooked bird. If Ina Garten’s chicken is half that delicious, I understand why liking it is the entirety of Jeffrey’s on-camera persona.
“The Chardonnay is one click more interesting than an already solid Chardonnay.” True and meaningless, I heard myself waxing sommelier aloud to who I was now sure was the real sommelier. He had topped us off, too.
“We are eating well!” Bridget used the cadence I knew and loved. The Amish Chicken rose out of the ashes of our night like a mighty Phoenix and Bridget had christened the mantra of the weekend.
The hills flamed around us the day after dinner at The Waverly Inn. Leaves burst into electric oranges and neon reds. The news’s foliage tracker confirmed that we couldn’t have timed it better; the overnight cold front had sparked the prime weekend for leaf peepers. Giving credence to this nickname reminiscent of perverts, Bridget confessed the changing leaves made her tingle “down there.”
“We ate well,” she repeated as we pulled back onto the highway, after grabbing lunch at a cabin on the side of the road that sold pizza slices the size of our faces.
In the town where we were staying, we ate at an old mill turned organic farm-to-table restaurant called Sylvia. We asked our server about the delicious dip for the pita that we all but tongued clean.
“That’s butter.”
“We ate well,” Bridget whispered as the server turned away.
The next morning, Bridget joked about moving upstate.
“If we count 25 other black people living here, then I’ll move.”
Through storefront windows on the main street, we counted while eating tater-tot-filled breakfast burritos and lavender ice cream. We only counted up to 22, but we ate so well that Bridget already started dreaming of our next trip upstate.
Back in the city, Bridget shed tears of gratitude for the vegan Schezuan from Spicy Moon I forced on her.
“We ate well!” Bridget whimpered over a take-out container of ramen.
“We ate well,” she said in a monotone of exhaustion when we shared the tiella pugliese at Mercato on West 39th.
At the end of our week together, we waddled back uptown for the baby shower.
Not knowing most of the other attendees, Bridget stood in a corner of Big Sis 2’s apartment. She balanced a napkin of mini quiches in one hand and a late-morning glass of “brunch” Chardonnay in the other.
“I knew I liked Big Sis 2. She puts out the good wine.”
I clinked my “brunch Chard” against hers, confirming with a shared look, and it seemed foolish to me that I ever thought one bad dinner could contend with something as expansive as our friendship.
Guests were herded into Big Sis 2’s living room for the get-to-know-you-game portion of the shower and after Bridget’s turn introducing herself and sharing the name of her favorite childhood toy - a Barbie she named Oprah - Big Sis 1 excitedly tacked on an anecdote.
“It’s a special gift to have Bridget here. We met at Sam’s Halloween Party last time she was in NYC and really connected. And when she got back to Kansas City, she found out that she had been pregnant.” The room reacted with coos of delight as her delivery prompted. “So it’s a full circle moment that, by coincidence, she’d end up being in New York, almost 6 years ago to the day, to celebrate now that I’m the one who’s pregnant. How perfect is that?”
“Kismet.”
“That’s so New York.”
Have you ever been woken up by the smell of coffee brewing? Or stand up to find you’re tipsier than you realized? Or, what is that thing they say about using room-temperature water to boil frogs? Perhaps it is transcendence.
Bridget and I shared a look. Then looked at the “brunch Chard” in our hands.
New York City magic.
12:34 p.m. ET, About 9 months later, Upstate New York
I was carsick from riding in the back seat. I couldn’t say which annoyed me more: feeling pathetic or being at a Farmers Market.
The lengths of the asphalt lot were lined with tents, and I stationed myself in the middle, a reasonably safe place to recover out of the shoppers’ way. I was like Alanis Morrisette in her “Thank U” music video. Blurred and exposed in an uncaring crowd.
Somewhere in my peripheral, my friends debated over greens that would never be cooked. I was happy to have a reason not to peruse the many items you’d wish you hadn’t spent money on the minute you’d get back in your car. In this way and others, Farmers Markets and Renaissance Festivals share DNA. Except, I enjoy the Ren Fest. I love how everyone decides to buy in. Each fool, friar, and wench makes it a little less embarrassing for the next.
My body was still swaying between where the natural lanes of traffic should be. But, these sordid activewear drones, not three hours outside the city, didn’t give a flying fuck about the collective good brought by simple road rules.
I dribbled seltzer into my mouth and forced grown-ass adults to use common courtesy to avoid me. Sometimes, nothing is more soothingly petty than being polite.
“Sweets!”
My vision spun disproportionately to the small turn of my head as I searched for the source of the pet name.
The voice called after the uneven clops of unpracticed steps on the pavement.
Through parental legs, I saw a chubby-legged sprinter barreling down the thoroughfare like the out-of-control bus driven by young Sandra Bullock.
I smiled at the child as he instinctively moved around me with a courteous berth.
“Sweets!”
My already clammy body shivered. I dreaded the idea of some social media mom popularizing Bridget’s pet name and then peddled around in Farmers Markets across America.
“Sweets, look how fast you are. Do you want to run back to Mommy now?” The shrillness of soft parenting carried across the lot and everyone stared at the baby on the lam. The mom sauntered out of the swarm of breeders. She added some huffs and puffs to acknowledge that she knew she had an inconsiderate toddler.
When the mom got to me, she stopped. She wanted me to know about the inconvenience of having to notice me. That I was supposed to get the fuck out of her way. I squinted downward. Sensitive to the high-noon sun and millennial child-rearing. She didn’t seem to feel like putting effort into this either and took her time performing a sidestep around me.
“Arlo! Wait for mommy, Sweets.” My stomach flipped.
Oh my god - Bridget had the baby!
The toddler's name was the same one Bridget had picked out for her baby. Arlo and Sweets. It was too unlikely of a pairing. So, I knew she absolutely had the baby.
…ok, but not now that I’ve thought it.
My friends collected me on the way to a tapas bar in a shed next to the Farmers Market. Tapas and wine naturally rolled into a whiskey tasting with cheeseburger hushpuppies at a distillery. Then high on a hill, we went to a convent that is now a cidery.
We sunk deep into the oversized leather couches overlooking the summery green Catskills. They were framed in the pristine, two-story tall glass window. A group of high school girls who ran the front of house greeted us immediately. I imagined these poor angel babies regularly waited on gaggles of drunk homos from the city.
We ordered the duck-fat fried chicken skins and flights of cider. We chatted about our lives. I smiled as my friends answered my questions about work, family, and gossip. The food came and we ate well.
Maybe it was the upstate air, the booze, or the little boy from the Farmers Market, but I sent Bridget a text with a picture of the view.
“I’m upstate. You HAVE to come here next time.”
“So beautiful! Yes, of course, I wanna come! I’ll be a little busy next year…” She also sent a picture.
Tears streamed down my face as I stared at the picture of her beautiful baby boy.
“Two pushes and there he came!”
The high school girls asked if we wanted another round of cider. Unselfcounsiously, I wiped the back of my hand across my nose. Their cautious faces patiently smiled at me. Had I ever been as young as these sweet cherubs? Is my face covered in snot tears? When had I become a person who cries over my friend’s baby?
I guess, I missed it - when I had grown up.
Well past closing, 16 Bank Street, New York, NY
According to NYFD, on Christmas 1997, there was a fire at Ye Waverly Inn with no signs of a source. That is only one of the alleged reports of a man in a top hat who haunts the fireplaces and has a penchant for making the logs spontaneously combust. Lancelot is the name of the neighbor’s Ocelot who once snuck into the restaurant for an evening. For a bit, Ye Waverly Inn primarily hosted high-rolling Connect Four Tournaments.
It was a lunch counter, a bordello, and a 1930’s socialist meet-up. It’s where “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was first performed, and it didn’t have a bar until 1966.
Previous owners included a nihilistic painter, 16 Bank Street purchased for him by his grandpa, Pennsylvania’s governor. When the he passed, his roommate’s brother, Pulitzer winner Stephen Vincent Benét, broke the news to the painter’s family. Benét’s wife, Elinor Hichbron-Wylie, was an editor at Vanity Fair.
The original Ye Waverly Inn was opened a few years later, in 1920, by siblings Edith and Clarence Dettmers. Paul Peil, who invented the transposing piano for Irving Berlin, designed the red sign that still hangs above the door. Edith would eventually marry Peil, and her brother, Clarence, would marry a woman called Phyllis Abel. Abel’s first visit to Ye Waverly Inn was made while working as a secretary to Vanity Fair’s managing editor, Clare Boothe Luce.
It has been reported that Trump was never able to get a table at Waverly Inn, which allegedly led to his 2013 quote, which was originally, of course, a tweet.
Vanity Fair inexplicably got around to reviewing Trump Grill in 2016, conceding that it might just be the “Worst Restaurant in America.” The article successfully described Trump’s dumplings as flaccid twice in one sentence. The next day, Trump sent his son Eric to case The Waverly Inn.
In an interview with Peter Foges for Grand Life, Graydon says “It was a good, bustling night, and I sat them at one of the prime booths… [T]hey were treated like friends of the house. I wanted Eric’s father to get the news that the restaurant wasn’t going away anytime soon.”
While she speared the last bite of the Brussels sprouts, Bridget - impishly vacant behind the eyes - started examining the remaining guests scattered in the alcoves. Like she just arrived and was seeing the restaurant for the first time.
“Hey! Maybe you’ll find a millionaire husband here,” she mused.
“Oh ok,” I laughed into my napkin to cover my full mouth.
“Mama needs an Equinox membership!”
“I’m paying for your Equinox membership?”
“Not you. Your millionaire husband. You’re paying for Baby Girl’s college.”
Our giggling finally arrived, too.
A server tried to interject with an apology, something about the service. I tried to figure out where I knew her from. Was she the first server of the night? Or maybe she was a comedian I recognized from crowd-work videos on IG.
My focus went in and out as she poured, and apologized, and poured, and apologized-
“…so, this glass is on me," she finished as she dropped the ticket.
I was unsure I could manage the mechanics with the glass that full. Then I remembered we’d eventually have to stand up from this table. More physics to calculate. I managed to flip the slip of paper. Only one bottle of wine was billed. Blessings from the staff who couldn’t be bothered with keeping track of us.
“We ate well!” Bridget said. She was packing up her purse like she was anticipating the school bell ringing. “Ready?”
“We have to pay! And um…” My glance told her to look at her wine.
“Who’s drinking that!”
We slipped our jackets on and left empty glasses on the table. The edges of the dining room blurred like a memory. The Maitre D’ gave us a puckish wink as we giggled our way out of The Waverly Inn.
Holding fast, we walked arm and arm through the cooling ether. We didn’t notice that summer had ended, and we’d wake up tomorrow to a new season.
“You know they have Equinox memberships,” Bridget said, pointing into a brownstone’s window.
“I love how rich people can’t be bothered to close their curtains,” I told Bridget, “It’s like they’re leaving them open so we have something to which we can aspire.”
…perchance to dream.
Bridget pointed to another across the street.
I never trust that walking around New York is magic enough for my visitors. That it is enough for me, too.
The perennial sidewalks of the West Village and innumerable bottles of Chardonnay carried us, in rudderless bliss, to another of its institutions, The Cubby Hole.
On cue, Donna Summer’s toot toot, beep beep started as we entered.
Bridget yelled, “This is my SONG!”
I swiveled around and struck a pose. I couldn’t remember us ever listening to “Bad Girls” together, but if it was her song, then it was mine, too.
Fellow patrons joined in with fingers pointed like children pretending to disco. A skinny butch in a white tee with rolled-up sleeves yelled, “Look who brought the party!” as we strutted across the narrow bar.
We kept one eye on the other as we had done in high school, college, and our twenties. Never missing a beat, always knowing the other’s next move. Our multicolored shadows cast across the floor so that iterations of Bridgets and Krissys dance with us.
Surrounded by these ghosts of our friendship, and the congregation of Travolta-ing lesbians, Bridget declared, “Top night!”
I yelled back, “Belles of the ball!”
A dream realized just as it was conceived.
The Waverly Inn by Sam Beasley (@sbeas)
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This is my favorite Misguidance piece yet. so good!