Weekend Note: Impromptu Lunch
Shortly before noon, while I was finishing up the weekend papers, the phone rang. It was Fossil Darling, calling from Midtown on his cell phone. Reluctantly shopping — the Fossil hates shopping — he would be having lunch at the Brasserie for lunch afterward. He’d talk to me again when he got home.
He called back two minutes later. Syms wasn’t open yet, so he and his party were heading straight for lunch. Fossil said that he was famished.
— Why don’t you jump in a taxi and join us.
— I thought you were never going to ask.
— Well, I didn’t know what time we’d get there.
— Here I was, asking myself what kind of friend, knowing that I’d been alone for the entire weekend, wouldn’t ask me to join him for lunch, but then I know the answer to that: the kind of friend I’ve been putting up with for over forty years!
Fossil Darling has two nieces. The younger one, a senior in high school, has taken to wearing men’s clothing — right down to the boxers, I’m told. (We will draw a veil &c.) The Fossil and LXIV were taking M— to buy a suit, preferably at Syms, where they might get a good deal; wshich they did: a sharp charcoal—grey number for $59.
The only shocking thing about a young woman’s dressing exclusively in the attire of the opposite sex is that it has become, within a few decades of my lifetime, absolutely devoid of shockingness. As adolescent affections go, this one is not inherently unpleasant.
On the walk home, I stopped in a Shakespeare & Co, where the copy of Philip Bobbitt’s Terror and Consent in the window turned out to be the bookshop’s last. The clerk who fetched for me had done a very imperfect job of removing a coat of dirty oxblood nail polish. Perhaps I ought to clarify: she had done a very imperfect job &c. It looked awful, but it didn’t look negligent.