Today is my birthday.
October 9th. It falls during the preliminary days of autumn when you don’t know whether to wear shorts or pack a sweater. The day before Columbus Day. And, in grammar school, marked the beginning of Fire Prevention Week, during which local firemen would come to Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament in their full gear and scare us Catholic schoolkids half to death with warnings of home fire drills and rope ladders.
Today, Oct 9th in Manhattan was unseasonably warm–over 80 degrees, and rather than lie in bed and fall back asleep, I decided to get UP and go OUT, because there was certainly nothing to do or eat in here. Eggs benedict at Luxembourg on W70th. That’s what I wanted. And I wasn’t at the bar waiting for coffee for more than five minutes when a famous actress with a trademark throaty voice wedged her way in to a barstool not ten feet away.
Kathleen Turner. Romancing the Stone, Peggy Sue Got Married, War of the Roses…Jessica Rabbit. That Kathleen Turner. She had decided, too, that it was too gorgeous a day to stay inside. She passed on coffee and was sipping Ketel One on the rocks (“Not too many ice cubes this time, darling. They hit me in the nose.”), and reading her Kindle. I couldn’t help but look a few times–how could I not–and marveled that, despite all the stereotypes of being in NYC surrounded by stars, which I’ve found is hardly true, you really can go out to get some eggs and find yourself perched next to a Hollywood starlet.
She sat and read, as did I, and quietly cleaned our plates. When we were done, we were the only ones at the bar. I paid my bill, gathered my things, and leaned over to her. “Kathleen?” She looked up. “You look beautiful,” I said. I meant it. She smiled, wide and full, a real smile, and I smiled back, and walked out into the hot, bright day.