Morning Ritual, Interrupted
Dear Diary:
January is always the coldest month, and this one was no different.
As I rushed to school, kicking up that familiar New York City sludge-sleet-snow combo behind me, I passed a line of people braving the cold and camped out on the sidewalk for tickets to “Spring Awakening.” Must be a good show.
I checked my phone. “Yup. Definitely going to miss first period.” My second time this month. Fourth this year. One more, and there went the dean’s list. At least it was Friday.
And then I had the thought: “If I’m already late, I might as well get breakfast, right?”
I stopped at the bodega for my morning ritual: orange juice, a bag of chips and a bacon, egg and cheese on a blueberry bagel. Sweet. Savory. Perfect. In this city, breakfast orders are not taken lightly.
“Ayo, Papi — bacon, egg, n’ cheese on a blueberry bagel, please,” I said.
“Lo siento, Papi,” the counterman said. “No blueberry bagels hoy.”
I paused. Confusion first, then disbelief. In my three years of coming to this corner spot, they had never run out of blueberry bagels.
What now? Not a roll. A hero felt excessive. And an everything bagel — too much personality for 8:30 a.m.
“For real? What you got?”
He listed every type of bread imaginable, then ended with: croissant.
A croissant? I had never seriously considered it. Some of my friends swore by them, but because they cost 50 cents more, my allegiance lay with the blueberry bagel.
“OK,” I said. “I’ll try it. Toasted, por favor.”
He wrapped it up. I paid and hurried out. School was just steps away now.
Outside my second-period class, I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite.
I never ordered a blueberry bagel again.
— Monét X Change
Ms. X Change is a drag queen, singer and podcast host.
Janine and Bobby
Dear Diary:
“Bobby!”
It was late when the woman on the downtown platform at West Fourth Street shouted the name.
When Bobby didn’t appear, she walked the length of the platform, searching in all caps — “BOBBY!” — insistent enough that the rest of us looked up. Locked eyes. Understood.
A meeting had been arranged, and Bobby, wherever he was, had missed his connection.
The frustration in the woman’s voice was clear, and when she met my gaze, her thoughts were as loud as the B train beside her: He isn’t here. Now what?
Without an answer, she boarded the train and disappeared into the night.
Her B was soon replaced by our F, and when we slid into Broadway-Lafayette, a man joined us — a late-night gardener, if the enormous weed whacker he carried was any indication.
Broadway-Lafayette became Second Avenue. He tipped out over the platform. “JANINE,” he shouted.
I have never been more delighted. Here was Bobby! With a weed whacker!
“Sarah,” my husband said quietly. “Please do not …”
Too late. Did he not see that Bobby and Janine were star-crossed and required my help? That I had been preparing my whole New York life to leap to their aid?
“Are you Bobby?” I asked.
He was!
“I’m looking for her!” he insisted, Brooklyn thick in his words.
She is on a B train, I told him.
“What’s she doing on a B?” he said. “Now I gotta follow this woman to Sheepshead Bay!”
I like to imagine he did just that: Bobby and his weed whacker backtracking to find his way to the B and to Janine, shouting his name across myriad platforms, as the subway carried them both into the New York night — all the way to Sheepshead Bay, and to each other.
— Sarah MacLean
Ms. MacLean is a writer. Her most recent book is “These Summer Storms.”
The Missing Man
Dear Diary:
When I learned the Stephen Sondheim song “What More Do I Need?,” I marveled at the lines “My windowpane has a lovely view/ an inch of sky and a fly or two/ why I can see half a tree/ And what more do I need?”
There’s nothing like a New York apartment to make you wish you could sit down with Sondheim and add a verse.
When I was in my early 20s, a suburban girl new to New York, in love with musicals and the city itself, I was full of hope and possibility.
So I thought nothing of wandering into West Village apartment buildings and asking about vacancies. The bureaucratic barriers designed to make this impossible meant nothing. I just asked.
One day the doorman at a building I loved said there was a studio open.
“The man who rented it,” he explained, and then paused, “is missing.”
The apartment was tiny but charming. It was also full of the missing tenant’s belongings: a tattered sofa bed, clothes in the closet, a little coffee maker, turquoise towels and an ottoman emblazoned with the Baltimore Orioles logo.
It was as if he had simply stepped out one day in the middle of his life.
I took it immediately, but somehow it still felt like his. I kept everything as it was in case he ever came back. He was my invisible roommate.
Time passed. I fell in love and needed a bigger place. One day in the elevator, a neighbor turned to me.
“My husband has left me,” she said. “I can’t afford my apartment.”
“Why don’t we swap?” I said.
We shook hands, and the next day she inherited my studio, and my invisible roommate. I don’t know if he ever returned, but in a sense, he never left.
— Melissa Errico
Ms. Errico, an actress and singer, will perform in Sag Harbor, N.Y., and Provincetown, Mass., in August.
Quite a Collection
Dear Diary:
For more than a decade, I was a luxury wedding planner in New York City. This was less a job you had than a fraternal order you joined — one that, week after week, puts you in the trenches with florists, caterers, musicians, sommeliers and all of the other talented people it takes to create perfect celebrations for some of the most demanding clients in the world.
But that was then. Now, I’m a writer.
One evening, I was at a party at the home of the art collector and philanthropist Agnes Gund. It was a small benefit in her art filled-foyer and living room.
At one point I heard my name called from the kitchen, where an old friend was opening bottles of wine.
He had been one of New York’s most in-demand catering captains and was now working for Ms. Gund. I commented on how magnificent the art was.
“Wait till you see what’s in the rest of the house,” he whispered as he grabbed my arm and led me on a private tour of one of the most renowned collections in Manhattan. I missed most of the party, but what I saw took my breath away.
It really does help to have friends in the right places.
— Xochitl Gonzalez
Ms. Gonzalez’s most recent book is “Last Night in Brooklyn.”
Night at the Opera
Dear Diary:
When I was 13, my father, the deputy metropolitan editor of The New York Times, was invited by Rudolf Bing, the Metropolitan Opera’s formidable general manager, to sit in his box for a performance of “Carmen” in the Met’s glittering new home at Lincoln Center.
My father brought my mother and me along. As the legendary mezzo soprano Grace Bumbry was singing the Habanera, two know-it-all Europeans in the next box began to boo.
Bing was livid. He leaped to his feet, ran from his box to theirs and threw them out. As a young sophisticate who thought he had already seen a lot, I was much more excited to see this than the action on the stage.
Little did I know that four decades later, I would become the Met’s 16th general manager — and that it would be me inviting my father to sit in the general manager’s box.
Retired as an editor, he would enjoy attending morning final dress rehearsals of new productions, mingling with the knowledgeable older patrons during intermissions and eavesdropping on their comments.
Not surprisingly, the comments from these patrons were largely negative since many of them resented change from the old-style productions they had grown to love.
Nonetheless, my father wouldn’t hesitate to fully brief me on what he had heard. Once a journalist, always a journalist.
— Peter Gelb
Mr. Gelb is the director of the Metropolitan Opera. His father, Arthur Gelb, created Metropolitan Diary.
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Illustrations by Agnes Lee
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