Breakfast at Sal’s
Yesterday was a long, late-summer Saturday in New York City, and I went to bed so exhausted last night that I never saw even the smallest part of Sunday morning. Whatever vitality the day’s physical activities had not drained from me, the steamy streets had, and it was not until about twelve forty-five this afternoon that I returned to the land of the living in the merciful darkness of my sparsely furnished bedroom. As I did so, in a most gradual progression of sentience to be sure, my first conscious awareness was of the constant hum emanating from the aged window air conditioner that had stood guard all night as I slept, keeping the hot, humid breath of the city off of the back of my radiating, sunburned neck. Nothing else comes into existence for me for what seems like an hour or more, but, in reality, is only a couple of minutes passing by in the extreme slow motion that is known only to one who straddles the boundary between complete wakefulness and the foggy land of Morpheus.
At last, I begin to open my eyes, and, after some moments of negotiating with myself, I leap from my bed, just barely achieving the necessary velocity to escape the orbit of my dreams. Then, with no small measure of effort and steps that are somewhat less than precise, I manage to free myself from the considerable gravitational pull that can be exerted by a mattress and pillow on a lazy Sunday in August, navigating a tenuous path around the end of my bed and then into my bathroom, a small white box filled with cool, hexagonal tiles and shiny, vitreous porcelain fixtures. The bathroom is a bit brighter than the room where I have slept, but, even so, within its cool, ceramic precincts, the searing heat of the urban skillet sizzling just beyond my walls still seems worlds away.
I cannot function until I’ve brushed my teeth and shaved, in that order, and, until I do, there is a very real danger that I could yet slip back under the influence of the shamelessly seductive linens of my bed chamber, succumbing to their siren song of blissful repose; so, much like Ulysses, I lash myself to the mast and, with great strength of purpose, reach for my usual implements of good grooming and personal hygiene. Each stroke of my toothbrush and razor is a small step toward beginning my new day in earnest, and, as I complete my daily toilet and rinse the shaving cream off of my razor, I break through the diurnal divide and leave yesterday in the wake of my past.
With the new day, my body dispenses with formalities and moves on to new business. My stomach growls. Food; I must have food! But food in the house is a luxury enjoyed only by those who occasionally go shopping, and that is a species other than my own; so I’m compelled to call upon all of my reserves of energy and courage and venture out into the scorching streets to visit my newfound friends, Angelo and Vito, around the corner at the local pizzeria.
Sal’s (I have no idea who Sal is) is on First Avenue, just above 80th Street. Angelo is always there. Whenever I go, day or night, Angelo can be found behind the counter kneading, twirling and tossing dough and sprinkling his marble slab with flour like a magician’s magic dust. He seems to manage the place, but with a gentle hand, not like an owner. Angelo speaks passable English, although not too fancy and seasoned with a heavy flavor of Napoli. He has gentle, kind eyes and a charming smile. Everyone likes Angelo.
Vito is usually there as well, although not quite as often as Angelo. Vito does not have Angelo’s good looks, and he has very little English; but he bridges the gaps well with a toothy smile, a bob of the head, an occasional shrug of the shoulders, an expressive, rubbery face, a library of hand gestures and an unmistakable spirit of friendship and goodwill. This is a man who can say things with body language that many of us find difficult to express with a college degree in one hand and a thesaurus in the other. Everyone loves Vito, too.
Sometimes Tony also works at Sal’s, when Vito is off and as a third man on busier nights. No one knows much about Tony. He’s younger than Angelo and much younger than Vito, but it would be very hard to guess his age with any degree of precision. He is taller and darker than the other two, and you almost never hear him speak. When Angelo and Vito speak to him it’s always in Italian, and Tony diligently avoids waiting on customers, so my guess is that he is new to America and speaks virtually no English. He seems very shy, but much of that may stem from the insecurity of being in a new country without the benefit of the language of the land. I, of course, can empathize, having occasionally traveled to parts of Brooklyn, where I have felt similarly on my own.
Sal’s is not a fancy place. It isn’t one of those brick oven, wood-fired, we-must-have-lunch-some-time pizza emporiums that you find on the East Side in the Sixties and Seventies and also sprinkled here and there among the other enclaves of the well-to-do in Manhattan. Sal’s is a workaday neighborhood pizza joint, not that 80th and First Ave is a blue-collar intersection, but it’s certainly not the Ritz. In this neighborhood you don’t find a lot of people who own or run companies; you don’t find people who sit on the boards of fashionable charities; you don’t find the cream of the professions; and you don’t find the privileged scions of old money. They live closer to the river, closer to Central Park, closer to the U.N. or closer to God, but they don’t live here—I do.
Don’t misunderstand me; there are some buildings in this neighborhood that are fairly tall and reasonably modern. They have elevators that work, and many even have doormen. These are the residences of middle managers, two income households, upwardly mobile professionals and the like. But the rest of us live more humbly in the interstices, and many of us could not afford to live here at all if we were not clever or lucky or both. I, for one, live in a furnished, rent- controlled one bedroom apartment that I am able to afford only because I found three guys from Brooklyn willing to chip in toward the rent in return for the convenience of having a pied-a-terre in the City for the occasional weekend out or a night on the town that turns lucky. I cling very precariously to the lowest rung of the housing market, and Sal’s is my kind of place.
I reach the doorway of the little restaurant about one minute before I reach my temperature of sublimation, and, after a brief exchange of Bongiornos with Angelo, I order a large pie with sausage and extra cheese, knowing that whatever I cannot consume for brunch will make a perfect Sunday dinner. I clown around with my Neapolitan friend as he makes my pie, and, when he slides it into the oven and turns to answer the phone, I scoot into the back room to scout out a booth and escape any influence of the scorching hot oven.
It’s my lucky day. Only two of the booths are occupied—one by a seemingly married couple of thirtysomethings and one by a seemingly married couple of fortysomethings—leaving me my choice of the other four tables, and I find one on which someone had been kind enough to leave me the Sunday Times, a virtual bonanza for a young man of humble means. First I glance through the sexy ads in the magazine section, all of which are touting fashions and other goods that are clearly out of my bracket, and then I peruse the movie listings to see if anything is playing nearby that is capable of inducing me to part with the budget-busting price of admission. But before I am able to check them all out, Angelo appears bearing my steaming, pomidoran breakfast on a round aluminum serving pan and the usual expression of pride on his handsome face.
“Grazie, Angelo,” I say with unbridled gusto. “This will be the best breakfast I’ve had in a month!”
The four other diners, having heard my animated and fortissimo declaration to my pizza making friend, all turn and look in my direction as I begin to devour my late-in-the-day bachelor’s breakfast with enthusiastic delight. The women, interrupting their constant flow of chatter and complaints, clearly are wondering why anyone would be eating pizza for breakfast and why I would be having my breakfast so late in the day, and, accordingly, their expressions clearly convey to me a touch of disapproval as well as no small measure of self-righteous pity. But the men are an entirely different story and gaze upon me with a very different look in their eyes—an unmistakable mix of one part nostalgia, one part admiration and two parts pure, unmitigated envy.
As with most things in life, the truth lies not at either extreme, but somewhere in the middle. I am, at the same time and by the same actions, both enviable for my freedom and solitude and pitiable for my loneliness and lack of structure. Regardless, at the present moment I am ready to begin eating my pizza—my hot, gooey, aromatic breakfast pizza—and I cannot be bothered with life’s great debates. So, with skillful use of my left thumb, index finger and middle finger, I curve my first slice just enough to give it some structural rigidity, thereby keeping its pointed end from drooping and shedding its mantle of molten cheese; and, thus positioned, I am poised to take my first delicious bite, while my right hand remains free to continue my search through the entertainment section of my massive Sunday paper. Accuse me of being shallow, if you will, but, right now, from where I sit in a booth at Sal’s, life is very good!
