‘We Were Sitting on a Bench Resting Our Tired Legs Late in the Day’

The Muse

Dear Diary:

Visiting New York City for the first time, I spent a day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my sister.

We were sitting on a bench resting our tired legs late in the day when a guard approached us. I thought he was going to reprimand us for some reason, but instead he asked whether we had stopped at the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition.

No, we replied. Why?

“Because,” he said, “I don’t mean to be derogatory, but you both bear a striking resemblance to Yvette Guilbert.”

Guilbert, he explained, was a French cabaret performer and one of Toulouse-Lautrec’s muses.

Intrigued, we hurried to the exhibition just in time to hear a guide describe Guilbert as having been painted by Toulouse-Lautrec to look twice her age and “with exaggerated, almost grotesque features.”

From that day on, the Met was my favorite museum in the world.

— Helen Stewart

Good Spot

Dear Diary:

Early on a Friday evening in July, my husband drove us to the Upper East Side from Queens so I could get a slice of vegan pizza at Two Boots.

My contribution to the pilgrimage was spotting an open parking spot just a few blocks from our destination as we drove up Third Avenue.

My husband parallel parked and fed the meter. Then we fed ourselves, returned to the car and prepared to head home.

Just then an older woman who was wearing heavy makeup and driving a huge black S.U.V. pulled up next to us and gestured to inquire about whether we were leaving.

Rolling down my window, I told her we were and that the spot was all hers.

“Is it a good spot?” she asked.

I said she would have to pay the meter, but that it was legal to park there. My husband clarified that the meter was no longer in effect, and I called out that she wouldn’t even have to pay.

The woman looked thrilled.

“But is it a good spot?” she asked again.

My husband and I were stumped.

“We’ve liked it!” I said.

— Miriam Jayaratna

Midtown

Dear Diary:

“Ya wanna see midtown?”
Dad said to me,
A teenager visiting for lunch
At a new advertising agency on Mad Ave.,
The poster of Andy Warhol
Nailed right onto a wall
In a reception area,
Lifelike, and
I thought he was telling it like it is,
While we walked
To Scoops,
Blocks away in the 1960s,
Just for that “essential standard”
Vodka martini lunch,
My father called it
And I got one sip while he rambled
About the Apple,
And how he would always be
A downtown boy,
Doing jackknife dives
At some indoor pool,
And how his immigrant parents
Put him through N.Y.U.
Just so he could become
One of the admen
Who ended up in Jersey,
Forever missing Manhattan

— Kathryn Anne Sweeney-James

Split the Bill

Dear Diary:

About twice a month, my friend and I go to the Mansion Diner on York Avenue at East 86th Street for a late breakfast.

I always order tuna on toasted pita; he usually gets two eggs sunny side up with bacon. I give him my pickle, and he shares a piece of not-too-well-done bacon. We both get coffee.

After about 90 minutes of kibitzing and complaining about our relatively happy lives, we always split the bill down the middle.

One recent day, I had my usual tuna on pita, but he ordered a blueberry muffin. When the bill came, he gave me $10.

“That should cover it,” he said.

“What?” I said. “What happened to splitting the bill?”

He said the disparity in the cost of the items we had ordered rendered our tradition null on this occasion.

“What disparity qualifies to eliminate bill-splitting?” I asked. If we were to go out to dinner and he ordered salmon and I ordered an appetizer salad, would we split the bill? What if he ordered three glasses of wine to my seltzer with lime?

I accepted his uneven payment this time, but I told him that from then on, we had to take turns ordering first. That way I would have the opportunity to return the favor.

— Larry Goldfarb

Extra-Large Letters

Dear Diary:

As I approach the 20th anniversary of receiving my senior MetroCard, the getting of it is absolutely vivid in my memory.

I was at a mobile unit on 14th Street at Union Square, and it took about three minutes. A woman there processed my information, printed my card and slid it to me under the window.

I looked at it and then held it up to her.

“Why does it say ‘senior citizen’ in such extra-large letters?” I asked.

The woman leaned toward the window.

“That’s so you can read it,” she said in a very loud voice.

God, I love New York

— F. Murray Abraham

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Illustrations by Agnes Lee