Brunching in Brooklyn

1. Lola’s—454 Graham Ave.

“The salt and pepper shakers are all collectors’ items with Mexican flare, an excellent spot for weekend brunch!”

Love isn’t the same now. The passion and fervor of late adolescence, a stout, treacle sweet sort-of obsession coating my insides like syrup, have gone molten.

Once, I played a brittle copy of The White Album each night before bed, reciting “I Will” with the piety of a prayer.
At fifteen, I was consumed by the alchemy of love and there was nothing else. I wrote his name with mine, a marriage of vowels and consonants, trying the sounds in a whisper when I knew no one was listening. I scratched out simple poems, haiku and ballads and sealed them into hand-made sachets.

Now I’ve forgotten him almost entirely.

He phones me and says he’ll be in New York.
I have left my love-hungry shell on a Midwestern tree branch; cast aside, a summer casing of a cicada. In New York I am a grown up.

His call forces me to revisit this version of myself. There is barely room for the adult me among the incriminating poems, tails of “y”s and the crossings of “t”s curling with pent up love, fermented with unrequited affections.

I do not love him anymore. I am as mortified by him as my fetid attempts at poetry.

“Can I see you?”

I suggest brunch because it is safe. Brunch is daylight, encompassing a time far removed from potentially agonizing dinners or tongue loosening drinks.

“Where?”

“Lola’s.”

It is closer to the train stop than my front door, it is loud, and the monstrous fish aquarium, slightly dirty, holds baby sharks, which are as far from creatures of love and suggestion and one can possible get. It will divert his attention.
I can feel the hulking, bruit weight of my eighteen years-old self again, the curving of my spine, rolling upon itself like a frightened bug.

I order coffee, he tells me about his life. He has never been to New York before and is as wide eyed as a cow, carrying a very small aloe plant in a ceramic pot: a gift for me.

I omit specifics, smile and eat my breakfast.

As we feign an argument over who’ll pay the check he pauses, grabs my hand and tells me he made a mistake, all those years ago, as though we’re in a film or an Edith Warton novel. As though the roots of my life never grew over and filled vacant spot he left.

None of us have grown out of self-indulgence. Not yet.

“I was stupid,” he blurts. This is what he’s supposed to say. Lawrence Seldon would, Mr. Rochester too. Even poor Mr. Willougby told Marianne he was a fool.

“Young, you were young.”

“I think about you.”

“You don’t even know me,” I am Estella now, or wish I were, ruthless. That’s a lie: I’ll never be Estella, but it’s what I ought to say, in this script of classic novel courtship, and I’m ready to leave.

“It was nice to see you.”

Once I hit the overpass of The BQE I slow down to cross the street, and realize I’ve forgotten his plant, his olive branch. The little orphan aloe plant sits alone with our dirty dishes on the empty table of the restaurant.

2. DuMont, 432 Union Ave

“You want intimate? Squeeze into this cozy, casual parlor where young couples canoodle in leather upholstered booths, well-composed plates of updated American fare.”

We are drinking at Du Mont on a Saturday at noon. It is nearly Halloween and we are seated outside, beneath an ancient oak, molting it’s arid-orange leaves.

I can’t afford to eat here, but we’ve placed an order for eggs rancheros and a trout and goat cheese omelet.

I’m drunk. I hate trout. I’ve just ordered a twelve dollar entrée I will not be able to choke down.

We began with mimosas, now spiked cider. We’re eyeing the specials board for our next choice: the DuMont bloody Mary: parmesan cheese, celery, carrots and olives. I cannot resist a good olive.

At ten I woke incased in the fresh, whites of his bed linens, my head throbbing from at least six vodka tonics consumed back to back from the front rows of North Sixth while listening to an ironic, years-behind-British punk band wail about wanting to “bend her and fold her,” a love song.

I downed drinks stupidly, loosing count.

The cacophony cast me into a bizarre solitude, despite the masses of people stirring around me and his arm on my waist—I kept forgetting he was there. Only the drink in my hand felt as though it had any real weight.

Easily distracted, in the darkened auditorium I spoted the editor for some magazine I like, her outfit dark and tight. She is impossibly thin. At first glance she is twenty-ish and then realize her pores are large and her powder clings to wrinkles. She is a middle-aged woman being young again, pretending twenty-five never happened.

It feels, very suddenly, like I might cry or die or vomit. Instead I calmly clamor to the dirty bathroom and run cold water on my wrists and drink slow, thick sips of my drink.

And now, I am running a race to counteract the effects of last night’s vodka. Can I drink myself out of a hangover?

When the food arrives we ask the waiter for the two bloody Mary’s. He cuts into his eggs and rips the tortillas with his fingers, strong and thick, although he is tall and thin, broad shouldered and almost lithe. His hands are athletic, yet to my knowledge he plays no sport.

He eats in silence, though he frequently looks up and smiles, a large, sloppy grin, the sort I imagine a Labrador might give.
When our bloody Mary’s arrive he points to my trout. I try to eat, cut into the egg and cheese, hoping to avoid the thread of fish. This proves impossible. Each forkful is laced with the freshwater, dirt-taste of trout.

I excuse myself to the ladies room. Once inside I latch the door, bend over the toilet and throw up.

I move to the sink, washing away the terrible burn from my lips.

With a Buchanan sort-of blankness I meet my own eyes in the mirror. At last the eyes begin to focus, the empty gaze subsides.
“Oh there you are,” I say, suddening at the sound of my own voice.

When I return to the table he’s finished, the desert menu open in his strange, lumbering hands. I sit and push my plate forward, move my glass to the side. He raises his eyebrows.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” I take a deep breath. “I hate trout.” It’s a confession.

He nods toward my untouched bloody Mary. “Do you not like those either?” The Labrador grin.

I pull one green olive from the buoy of a toothpick floating near the rim, then move the glass so it’s directly in front of him.

“Go ahead. I’ve had enough.”

3. St. Helen’s, 150 Wythe Ave.

“Behind a stately glass-and-black-wood façade and slightly sinister emblem, St. Helen’s Café serves espresso, beer and wine to a parade of hip young people. The baked eggs, in particular, pack a brunch-punch.”

Sometimes it feels a little spoony, as though I’m playing a part. We are exceedingly polite, clean and careful.

I take bites from his grilled cheese and nod encouragingly, in turn, offering a forkful of baked eggs.

This is what you do, isn’t it? Nice, complacent couples, Midwestern refugees fleeing to Brooklyn? You discuss liberal ideals, Coen brothers’ movies and share your eggs.

We are quiet; experiencing the mid-morning hangover I’m beginning to realize will be the theme of my twenties, the gentle, relentless throb of a water-depleted brain. I pound tumblers of water, watching girls and boys sit down at tables, untwirling scarves from around their necks, and removing lumpy, and hand knitted hats.

I want to hear him talk about himself, but he shakes his head.

“I don’t want to talk about this now.”

Certain areas seem to be exhausting, roped off, set aside like particularly finicky dough between pieces of wax paper. Leave it alone, let it rest.

I wait for a soy latte to arrive. He’s ordered hot chocolate.

I am afraid I will use him up, saturate him with useless words until he’s nothing but a pile of letters and stray bits of punctuation on the chair across from me.

“What are you thinking about?” He asks me. I’ve been silent too long. This is how people spontaneously combust.
What am I thinking about?

My mother’s address book, carefully inked names of husbands, wives and children, many amendments and crossed out mailing addresses, husbands names caked over with White-Out or, worse—one or two entries carry the blackened-out name of a child: four-wheelers, those who played on train tracks.

A café in Paris, watching a many-manned dragon twist around the Bastille on the Chinese New Year, eating the butter fried brioche of a croquet madame.

And smudged snap shots of my older brother as an infant, long legs and sinewy arms, elbows and knees, the keen, all-seeing dark eyes of a new born Siddhartha wrapped in summer blanket and sun bonnet.

That is what I’m thinking about, until my latte arrives.

He repeats his question, hanging on the ending consonants of his words, always precise.

I shrug, lean in, kissing him on the fine-boned bridge of his nose, an action slightly foreign to me.

“I am thinking where will we eat next weekend?”

No one ever really wants to know the answer to such a question.