Ghosts in the Dining Room

The Beach Bistro Dining Room is empty just now. Except for the ghosts. I am Irish. We believe in ghosts. Sometimes we prefer them.

Names are tough for the Irish. We used to breed like rabbits and we had to pick from a short pile of names. Sean, Michael, Tom, Joseph, Mary, Anne, Catherine. And then the doublesÉ Mary-Catherine, Anne-Catherine, Mary-Anne.

There were dozens of Sean’s in my family going back a hundred years. A unique convergence of the order and abundance of Sean’s, statistics on firstborns and a sprinkle of number sevens triggered a tribal memory in the coven that was my grandmother and her sisters and daughters.

The Irish sisterhood determined that I was the "fey“ one. The one who talked to ghosts.

Maybe because they dubbed me "fey“ I actually saw ghosts in some abundance and talked regularly with relations that had moved on and occasionally I even dreamed something before it happened. I am not allowed to talk about it because my wife and children are embarrassed when I speak of it. They are afraid that the looney keepers will come for me and not keep me.

The Bistro dining room abounds with ghosts. Some of them are the standard run-of-the-mill ghosts that go bump in the night and throw things. Most of the ghosts are the bright shadows of lush and joyous human memories that were played out at each of the tables.

Shadows of dramas that I can still hear and even see if I squint my eyes. I am going to tell of some of the stories that the tables have to tell because the room is empty now and it cries out for human company and I need to keep the room alive, and because I have the time and may as well.

Here are a couple of bright shorts from Table 7 to mark a beginning. Table #7 likes one-liners.

Years ago JP was our ma”tre d’. Some of the room’s greatest stories are his. JP was waiting on a favorite patron who loved our Rack of Lamb – "The World’s Best Lamb“ - thick chops, corn-finished in Colorado, seared and roasted and served on an altar of savory bread pudding and kissed with a port demi-glace sprinkled with roasted faro for a little crunch and guarded by big spears of asparagus for vitamins and because asparagus is the King of Vegetables and has a right to be there. I miss that lamb.

JP reverently placed the beautiful plate in front of the patron, turned it just so on the crisp white linen tabletop and poured him the sip of port that so ably complimented the lamb. The patron leaned back in his chair and held up his hands in supplication and wonder as if consecrating a host and declared, "I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight?“

JP leaned in, "We are waiting on you, sir.“

If Table Seven had an appetite for wit it also found good company in Steve Carini. Steve was a senior waiter who worked with us decades ago. When Steve counted his tips at the end of the night he always maintained that he was sending 15 % of the take to The Waiters Retirement Home in Batavia, New York. Some day I am going to Batavia to look for Steve.

When Steve’s patience was shot he would hide back by the dish station and smoke cigarettes with a trembling hand and mutter, "Balls..!“ over and over again "BallsÉBalls.. BallsÉ!!“ Then he got his strength back and went back out to the dining room.

One evening Steve was waiting on a couple of senior ladies at Table 7. They found him handsome and charming and witty.

Enthralled by the more youthful Steve one of the ladies asked him, "Tell me young man, is it your ambition to open a restaurant of your own one day?“ Steve’s solemn response,

"No ma'am. It’s my ambition to stop working in this one.“

There used to be a TV show called the Naked City. It was a cop show about New York. The show started with a panoply of New York street scenes with the narrator’s voice-over: "There are eight million stories in the Naked city. This is one of them.“

The Bistro Dining Room has 15 tables and every evening for thirty-five years they been celebrating some of life’s most memorable events. That’s about 400,000 stories.

This has been two of them.

We need to keep breathing life into the Bistro’s dining room while it is shuttered. Send us some of your stories. We will play "room whisperer“. We will randomly reward some of the stories with invitations to our grand reopening. There will be wonderful food and wine and whiskey and naked dancing on the beach.

Please stay safe.