After returning from my sister’s wedding in India, selling most of my meager possessions, getting married myself in late July, and moving away from my hometown of Portland, Oregon to Manhattan, I was desperate to find a job. I dropped off my application at over seventy bars, coffee shops and restaurants all over the length and breadth of this colossal city of cities. It was my lot to be hired at the very strangest of any of these establishments, a restaurant and general store by the name of Zemblanity 3.
Zemblanity was opened in 1954 by three friends. Of the three, Mr. Charles is the only left living and he is (I think) seventy-seven. It started out in the basement of a tenement on East 58th before moving to a much larger space on 60th between 2nd and 3rd avenues. They cooked a strange mishmash of foods and served a signature desert called the Icy Hot Chocolate, which is sort of like a Frappaccino. They had an espresso machine before the drink was known outside of fancy Italian restaurants. In no time they were a wildly popular hotspot. Pretty much every celebrity ever born has been in. Andy Warhol used to stop in almost every day and would pay for his meals with drawings (Mr. Charles owns a collection and was recently interviewed the BBC for a Warhol documentary). Marilyn Monroe frequented the place and Jackie O. tried to buy the recipe for Icy Hot Chocolate. Mr. Charles turned her down but showed up at one of her parties with the mix and made them up for the guests. Buzz begets buzz and the whole thing snowballed. Now Zemblanity is a landmark.
I did not know this. I had never heard of the place but my wife had and saw on Craigslist that they were hiring. With my best shoes on (my wedding shoes in fact), I waded in the jam packed lobby, elbowed my way to the front and asked for a manager.
This was my first introduction to Miss Annette. Her age is a mystery but she seems older than Mr. Charles and has worked almost as long as the place has been open. She has, in her day, been a runway model, a drug addict, the wife of a concert pianist, the daughter of an opera violinist, a disco queen, a Bloomingdale’s makeup girl, a matre ‘d and is now Miss Annette is very old. She walks hunched and slowly, is hard of hearing and has poor vision. She speaks with the voice of a lifetime smoker, with a deep, raspy monotone. She was obviously very elegant in her day and that aura still lingers around her sly smiles like the smell of her heavily applied perfume. Think worn and beleaguered movie starlet.
When I handed her my resume, she took an enormous magnifying glass and stared at my measly accomplishments (some entirely made up) with an enormous, magnified eye. Then she led me to a small table in the middle of the restaurant and sat me down with an application and hunched off. I filled out the form and waited.
This was my first opportunity to take the place in. My first reaction was to the staggering crush of customers, tangled waiters, full tables smooshed together, an unsettling number of Tiffany lamps, knickknacks, doodads, what-have-yous, whatsits, and antiques. The place was like the inside of a Dadaistic subway car or perhaps the interior of the Yellow Submarine. The whole freaky nouveau landscape of it screamed epileptic seizure, an absolutely bombastic flim-flam globbed together over the course of fifty-five weird, weird years.
What in the hell is this place?
When Miss Annette returned she hunkered down and asked me the questions I have now heard her ask hundreds upon hundreds of applicants (she must have asked these questions tens of thousands of times in her life). “Are you available days and nights?” Yes. “Are you in school?” No. “Do you have any prior commitments?” No.
“Okay. I’m going to try you out. Be here tomorrow at ten in the morning, cleanly shaved, no sneakers, no ripped up pants, combed hair, you get the picture. The job pays ten dollars an hour, you okay with that?”
Sure, yes. Absolutely. I had dropped off over seventy resumes and was desperate.
Miss Annette raised her eyebrow and smirked her little movie star smirk. Thinking back, I can’t tell if she thought it was funny how dumb I was to take such shitty pay or if she was thinking “kid, you have no idea what you’re in for.”
Who cares? I have an apartment in Manhattan and a job to pay for it. I’m going to make it! Anything is possible!
No comments:
Post a Comment