Ham sandwich and a caesar salad

There are, what, like eleventymillion of us here in Chicago? So when J. and S. sat down next to L. and I at the sandwich place on the corner, I was like, Oh, hello! Like me, J. had to ask two people sprawling over a table for four to slide over and share. What’s wrong with some people (who aren’t librarians)? My sandwich was called ‘the Bavarian,’ and came on ‘pretzel bread.’ Coulda been in Berlin!

 

Portobello and goat cheese sandwich

I’m not sure it’s strictly legal to play the sliiiiiiide trombone like that, not in the middle of the day with children present. Could–did!–lead to dancing. And who’s that little guy in the middle? Shit. I am barely old enough for that. The sandwich was utterly secondary, from the Au Bon Pain in the plaza, a restaurant I now associate strictly with my long-ago gig at TV Guide and hospitals, not with a loose-jointed hour like that one. Men in cheap suits playing air drums, a whole summer camp’s worth of eight year olds, B., L. But mostly I just wished K. was there. Woulda turned up the heat, I bet.

 

Black bean and quinoa salad

So, what would you suggest at this point? Just patience? I asked the tech support person over the telephone, the glowing 2:00 in the corner of my phone shutting the door on my visions of drinking an iced latte with a little light summer reading on a bench by the park. Patience, she said, breaking for a quick hey! hi! to somebody who must have walked past her station, and old friend maybe, a co-worker long-gone just stopping by to say hi, a work crush, even. Patience, and vigilance. I could hear her leaning back in her seat, mouthing just one minute!, getting ready to hang up the phone. I wonder if she said anything about me, how I’d made her laugh a couple times over our hour together, me leaning up against the counter in the store, using their phone, her in a cubicle in Texas or Buffalo, who knows. I rushed back to my cloffice, heated up my quinoa, and wished just a little I was someplace else.

 

Avocado melt plus salad and fries

Everything new was old again as S. expressed such a strong desire to eat at the place where B. and I ate yesterday that I simply could not say no. Wanting to mix things up a bit, I sat at the same table, in the same exact chair, and ordered the avocado sandwich, but as a melt. Instead of mozzarella, it comes hot and with provolone. Provolone, I recently learned, is just old mozzarella! A classification professor of mine once told me that if you can’t diagram it, you can’t think it, and that’s sort of how I felt about my time warp of a lunch date. Apart from all that, that was about as spot-on a building bridges, making linkages lunch as I have had in my professional life so far. I left the table having nodded and said yes yes I know exactly what you mean! so many times I lost count. S. has me looking awfully forward to the fall.

 

Avocado sandwich plus salad and homefries

B. had seen this new place up the block, just past Rice, outdoor seating. I said, What’s it called? She said, I don’t know. I said, What kind of food? She said, I don’t know. There’s virtue, I guess, in just being new. We grabbed a table outside in the back and I ordered the avocado sandwich and B. had a breakfast burrito. We talked about work and the implausibility of vacations. Where are all these vacation bargains everybody’s talking about? Your fourth night free at a $300 a night hotel just isn’t that much of a bargain, you know?  Our plates came with tiny side salads (very salty, very oily, B. skipped hers, I downed mine) and homefries (also salty and oily), I guess because they were still serving breakfast. Joint was jumping by the time we left, and I heard the waitress dishing out apologies for tardiness. The kitchen is slammed, she said, over and over again.

 

Chicken tenders, fries, and a Miller Lite

I considered the (relatively) healthful deli sandwiches. Really, I did. But I was won over by the blaring Fan Favorites! sign over the burgers ‘n’ fries ‘n’ cokes ‘n’ shakes counter and opted for the chicken tenders and fries meal deal instead. Why not go with a favorite? People had been hawking nine dollar bottles of Bud Light up and down our section all afternoon, so the six buck Miller Lite felt like a downright bargain. (I didn’t need the souvenir cup; I flippin’ hate the Yankees. It’s like pulling for Philip Morris, or capitalism. But when you live here and want to spend an afternoon at the ‘local ballpark,’ it’s sometimes Yankee stadium, what can you do.) I ate and watched the players scurry about the bases, I think a side was retired, I turned to S. at one point and said, I always forget how much more I like this game after I’ve had a beer.

 

Mozzarella, basil, and tomato with bread and a beer

I snipped the basil from L.’s backyard garden and it was already wilting by the time L. snatched the bouquet from my hands and plunged it into a glass of water. Thing about actual fresh non-wax-sealed vegetables is that you have to eat them fast or they go bad. Who knew! After a fruitful trip to the Fairway, L. set up a plate of caprese, poured beers into a pair of frosty mugs, and we ate in front of a movie on the television. It was a little Italian for such a go-go-America day, I’ll admit. But L. made a flag cake for later, so that compensates a bit for this salute to our Italian immigrant heritage.

 

Lobster roll

L. walked those lobster rolls all the way from Red Hook and then I spazzed on the sign at the entrance that prohibited food. Cf. my fear of the law. L. proposed a compromise: we’d eat inside the tree at the edge of the grounds. But the inside of trees is scary to me. Cue totally boring wuss-out. We ended up eating very amazing lobster rolls at the bus stop. And then we spent a couple hours exploring all around Green-Wood cemetary, saw maybe five living people total. It would have been a fine place for lunch.

 

Turkey sandwich and a soft serv swirl cone

I finished the end of my turkey sandwich just as the train pulled into the aquarium stop and applauded my good, full timing. I hustled out and after some dithering at the admissions counter over the 4D Planet Earth show combo value ticket (Do you want the total experience? asked the woman at the counter. The answer was yes.) I hurried in and grabbed a soft serv cone at the snack bar to eat while watching the walrus feeding. Unlike me, these second-largest pinnapeds eat 70 pounds of fish a day.

 

Chicken kebob sandwich

Okay, okay, I’ll admit it. I was a little grouchy and sore, pouty and can-kicky. I mean, L. is only like my oldest friend in New York, the repository of some of my most ridiculous stories (do not ask about her mother’s underwear), go-to Thanksgiving holiday pal (home of the infamous seven-layer salad), the sort who will, it appears, stick with me til the end, even after that time I called like eleventy-billion times from Googie’s across the street and then proceeded to frighten her out of her wits with my early-twenties shenanigans. Of course I’m a little mad that her thoughts are turning toward leaving the city. With a boy. Still, when I can see past the nose on my face, I’m glad L.’s in love, a love she glowed about while I made quick work of my sandwich upstairs at the city hall Whole Foods. Can’t think of anybody who deserves it more.