Thank you Bemelman's

“Thank you,” she said. Thank you thank you thank you.

It seemed to be an automatic refrain to every conversational tidbit. I’d said, wonderful music at this bar. I haven’t been here for almost 35 years, and thought I should check it out. Thank you, she said.

We sipped our drinks at Bemelmen’s bar in silence for a while, and when the social space seemed to grow beyond polite proportions, I turned to this large woman with the many shopping bags, perched so incongruously at the very end of this tony bar in the upper east side on a midnight on a Friday in December and extended my hand and said, “My name is Barbara.” Thank you, she said, my name is Vera.

I proferred the little tri-partite snacks dish that the bartender had put near us and Vera said, sadly, oh the chips are all gone.

The bar was packed. I’d waited for my barside seat for almost thirty minutes, taking a rickety bar stool along the side until one became available. Some late-life lovers had separated long enough to hand me the drinks menu when the bartender five feet away had boomed his how can I help you in my direction. The wine by the glass list was reasonable, and a Laetitia Pinot Noir was handed through the crowd some five minutes later.

When the couple left, I had moved to take over their position. It still was not a great position for seeing the trio that was playing, but better acoustically and far better for checking out the denizens at the rest of the bar. In California, we’d be suspicious that the men were professors, with their carefully/carelessly combed back silvering hair hanging down over their shirt collars. Here in the dim light of Bemelman’s, they looked somehow suave and vaguely romantic, like characters from La Boheme. The women, however, all looked distinctly California, with blonde streaks in sleek shoulder length hair. Except for the furs. No no no no furs in California, at least not in San Francisco. Maybe down in la la land, but I haven’t been there in a while to verify that.

The crowd thinned, and I asked the bartender for another tripartite dish, and when it came, moved it closer to Vera, chips at the fore. Thank you she said.

Do you live in New York, I asked. Thank you sometimes. I lived here for nine years a long time ago, I said. Thank you I came from Virginia. Are you working in New York, I asked. Thank you, I am between jobs. Oh that is difficult, I said and nodded my head sympathetically, this economy is so difficult.

Not many days before, a well known bartender who’d been serving drinks at Bemelman’s for decades was the subject of a newspaper article. He’d said, in the article’s closing paragraph, that there was no recession on the Upper East Side.

But regardless of that optimistic economic news and the old foxes eyeing the wanna-be California girl women-of-a-certain ages at the crowded bar, the cheerfulness at Bemelman’s seemed tenuous. And my conversation with Vera was proving difficult, since the thank yous did not always seem to be of the kind that would grammatically be followed by a you’re-welcome.

The bar atmosphere was already close and stuffy; there was simply too much carbon monoxide and not enough air came in through the glass-and-brass entry door as newcomers whisked in to the low-ceilinged-heavily-upholstered room. Soon I noticed that my square foot of air was joined in its aroma spectrum by the whiff of someone near me who had soiled themselves. The trio was on its break anyway, and the bar crowd was thinning. Well I said, I’m going to call it a night, this little walk down memory lane. Thank you she said, and slid with some difficulty off her bar stool and nicely held a corner of my coat as I struggled into the heavy wrap that December's freezing weather had mandated.

On Fifth Avenue in a few minutes, hailing a cab since it didn’t seem to be a good idea to stand at the side of Central Park by myself in the midnight dark waiting for a nevercoming bus, two taxis screeched to a halt at an angle and the drivers started screaming at one another over whose fare I was to be. I considered my options quickly, and decided that the taxi in back was a better bet since my entry into his carriage would effectively prevent him from ramming the taxi in front. I opened the door, climbed in and said…. thank you.