The restaurant is called Libertador.
I had just finished a great dinner with a friend and saw him to a cab. My options were simple: (1) venture down the street to one of the many faux-Irish pubs that litter New York’s Upper East Side or (2) return to the restaurant’s bar, order a few bottles of the great Argentinian beer Quilmes and soak in the carnivorous aroma.
I chose the latter.
The man beside me was drinking a glass of red wine. Later I would learn it was an Argentinian Malbec. He was clearly in his seventies and had a tsunami of silver hair atop his head.
He was dressed like a man of importance.
His suit was tailored to perfection. His shoes had been polished in the last twenty-four hours. He was not wearing a tie but the tie’s placement in the breast pocket of his coat was designed to let others know it existed. That this was a man who wore ties!
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I was an attorney. I’m retired now.”
“By choice?” I asked.
“When I was sixty-five years old I was essentially told it was over. I would still have my office, still have my name on the door, still have a secretary, but my career as an attorney was over. Then over the next five years my desk had less stuff on it. At sixty-six there were 15 stuffed file folders. At sixty-seven there were 10. By seventy there were none. It just ended. I went into the office for a few more months out of, I don’t know, ceremony? Instinct? If I didn’t go in where the hell would I go? I don’t play golf. I live in Manhattan! Then I stopped going.”
“What do you do every day now?” I asked.
“I wake up. That’s the big thing.”
The man joined Areena that night. And he does a lot more than wake up every day.
Art Gurwitz
Author
