How I Knew Le Figaro’s

I still have the postcard, buried somewhere in a keepsake box beneath wedding photos, the abstract finger paintings of my children, photographs, ephemera.

On it, a friend’s scribbled writing dashed off hurriedly; I was grateful to receive anything at all from him on this journey across country with his family.

He told me of New York, the Village, the little places and colorful people, and the corner cafe that had the best open-faced grilled cheese sandwich he’d ever had, not least, I now imagine, because he knew Kerouac or Dylan might have tried it.

The first time I visited New York, I insisted we go there, my unsure companions agreeing warily.  I had the thing, and it was ordinary.

But I never let it stay that way, instead giving it the proportions of art,  of gravity, of the Sistine Chapel, a Bohr model.  It came with sprouts and chick peas, and it was the best thing I’ve ever had.

Because by then, he was gone.

And now it’s been twenty years and it seems impossible that someone I knew so well could be absent so long, could stay forever a boy on the precipice of manhood, the cliff so very high, so far down we insignificant humans.

I still went there at least every few visits to the city.  I still drank espresso and thought about him, and had other adventures there in that tiny, dark bathroom.  But now I won’t, and the postcard fades, his voice gone from memory, and he is in the ground.  I am heading that way myself, these days.

I learned, upon beginning this post, that Le Figaro Cafe closed in the summer of 2008.  My heart breaks, and we move through space. It’s all the same.

Tags: Le Figaro Cafe, mourning, Phillip