“From the night into his high-walled room there came, persistently, that evanescent and dissolving sound – something the city was tossing up and calling back again, like a child playing with a ball. In Harlem, the Bronx, Gramercy Park, and along the water-fronts, in little parlors or on pebble-strewn, moon-flooded roofs, a thousand lovers were making this sound, crying little fragments of it into the air. All the city was playing with this sound out there in the blue summer dark, throwing it up and calling it back, promising that, in a little while, life would be beautiful as a story, promising happiness – and by that promise giving it. It gave love hope in its own survival. It could do no more.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘The Beautiful and Damned’
The last time I was scheduled to be in New York, our plans were derailed spectacularly as the COVID pandemic dawned upon the world the exact weekend we were due at the Plaza. Some PTSD remained as Suzie and I boarded the train for the city to see some old friends and a new play. I’d warned her and Chris that I was looking for a calm and quiet weekend – something that a brief foray into Times Square to get to the theater might prove difficult, but both were game for any potential social anxiety moments. Basically, I needed two of the people who make me feel the most safe to cushion this return to NY, even if a cushion wasn’t really needed in the end.
We arrived at the old Penn Station, disappointed that it hadn’t changed in the slightest, despite what we’d seen advertised about a new version, but in our ignorance we didn’t realize we just had to cross the street to find the bright and airy Moynihan Train Hall – and as Chris was just checking into the hotel, Suzie and I made an early lunch of fried chicken and fried pickles in one of the train station restaurants. There’s also a Magnolia Bakery and Ladurée cart for your dessert and macaron needs. (Andy would benefit from the latter on my way home.)
It helped that thanks to Chris we were staying near the Upper West Side, close to Central Park and away from the super-crowded masses. Suzie and I arrived to see our friend whom we had not seen since these Christmas festivities, and after a brief re-introduction we were back outside for a stroll through Central Park’s Shakespeare Garden.
Someone remarked that it’s strange how people come to the city just to find places that don’t feel like the city, and as we walked through the sunny highpoint of the day, past lilies and daisies and hollyhocks in full, resplendent bloom, it did feel like we had been taken completely out of the concrete jungle.
With rickety fences of gnarled wood and old-fashioned glades of flowers straight from an English countryside, the space was not only an antithesis of the city, but a throwback to another time. It was the respite that provided a way to enjoy New York on a summer day. Coupled with lifelong friends, it was a brush with the sublime, and more friends were on the way to add to the joy…
