12. Ghosts

Here’s a strange tale. Big gay Sam told me that, for a spell, the section known as “West,” tables 21 through 26, was cursed. Saltshakers would inexplicably shatter and spill salt everywhere. Mirrors would crack untouched. The section never made decent money and tips were small, even for the most accomplished waiters. A bedeviled pall hung over the West.

So, Mr. Charles decided to hold the first Zemblanity séance. It was generally accepted that the newly installed Andy Warhol effigy, which hangs above table 21, was somehow responsible. And so it was to Warhol’s soul that Mr. Charles turned.

I have never seen one of these séances but I can imagine. Knowing Mr. Charles, the affair is most likely half deadly serious and half in jest and meticulously choreographed. I am picturing him in a dark, sequined robe, sitting in the darkness of the dining room, lit only by hundreds of candles which cast eerie shadows against the otherworldly hodgepodge of artifacts dangling from the ceiling and hung on the walls. The wait staff holds hands around table 21, chanting and then listening for a communiqué from the other side.

According to Sam, Mr. Charles asked Andy Warhol if he was happy in his new digs. Warhol replied “yes but… where are my shoes?” You see, the little Andy doll had no shoes and so Mr. Charles sent Sam on a mission to the Baby Gap. Sam returned with a suitable pair of canvas loafers, which the doll wears to this day. The curse was broken and West returned to normal (which is not very).

I have not yet determined how haunted Zemblanity is but my instinct is that every inch of it is overwhelmed by ghosts, the specters of old patrons and celebrities returning to their old hangout from beyond the grave. I know that the spirits of the other two owners, Kit Caruso and Billy Mann, now deceased, are woven into the very wood or the chairs and tables. When the eyes of children grow wide upon seeing a place as outrageous as Zemblanity, they are becoming outward ripples of the imaginations of these men.

My theory is that New York is the most haunted city in America. It is certainly one of the oldest of our cities. It is also the most important and storied of our metropolises. The quantity of life and death, the hummus of time upon this small island is immeasurable. However, I think that this city is too populated by the living, too furiously alive, too noisy with moral traffic for those auras who have passed before us (leaving their fingerprints on everything) to be audible.

In my experience, New Orleans has seemed more haunted than New York. It is also very old and by nature, New Orleans is a spook, full of voodoo and black magic. But what really makes it seem more haunted is that it is slower, quieter, darker. The shadows have space and weight. It is quiet enough that the ghosts of the Delta are given audience. This is also true of the little haunted mining towns of the West and Southwest. They are quiet enough to hear the ethereal, see-through voices of those who made the past into the present. In New York, the living have little time for the dead. This is with the exception of the World Trade Center.

In the mornings, when I clean the menus and stare at the enormous World Trade Sandwiches on the front, I think about how Zemblanity stayed open on 9/11. Mr. Charles said that the weather that whole week was unseasonably perfect. There was no wind or a cloud in the sky and vivid clusters of bright butterflies all over Central Park. When those towers, which had their own zip code, came plunging to earth, Mr. Charles said he stood out on 60th street and could see the cumulous plume of dust and smoke rising straight up over the brownstones into the perfect sky.

I have not found out who made the decision to keep the restaurant open but when I asked what the mood was like in Zemblanity that day, the manager Micah told me that it was like it was everywhere else in New York and in the country. The whole city was trying to get off the island and so a vast multitude of New Yorkers walked across the nearby Queensburough Bridge. I wonder who came in on that day and why.

I suppose to feel comforted. To go to a place that has been a happy staple since childhood. A place draped with memory. This will be a good way to distract the kids while we wait for the phone. It would have been quiet inside the restaurant. A man would have sat at table 44, eating an Icy Hot Chocolate and looking out the window at the white plume in the blue. Did any of the waiters cry?

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