The Mexican Restaurant

When I was living in London in the summer of 1996, it started off a little lonely.  I had the city to keep me company, and I loved the city, loved to trot out to museums or parks or the theatre.  I loved riding the 168 bus back home from the National Theatre, past Euston Station, up Haverstock Hill and off right at the end of the road I needed.

A Mexican restaurant sat at that juncture, on the corner, and it was oddly in the basement section of a commercial building, so you'd check in on the ground floor in a hallway, then duck down a flight of narrow stairs to the restaurant.  The hallway doors opened out onto my street, not onto Haverstock Hill, so I passed those doors to walk home, or walking out to the bus or tube, of course.  The man who ran the restaurant sat up there on a stool - it was the same man every single time I passed, dark-haired and swarthy, possibly Mexican himself, but more likely Middle Eastern or Eastern European.

One night I talked a friend into going to eat there, and we discovered it had none of the virtues of a Mexican restaurant in America: it was neither cheap, nor plentiful, nor satisfyingly tasty.  However, as we came up out of the dark basement, I stopped and spoke to the gentleman I had passed nearly every night for a month.

"Hi, I pass here all the time, and I see you every night sitting here.  Now, we're more or less neighbors, so I'd like to be friendly and say hello when I go by.  What's your name?"

He told me it was Tony, I told him my name, and I made him practice with me.  "All right, when I walk by, I'm going to say, 'Hey, Tony!!'  and you will say...'Hey, Elsbeth!'  Try it with me....Hey, Tony!"  He smiled and gamely gave it a try.  I had him say it a few more times.

He never did remember my name after that night, but for weeks afterward, when I passed I would catch his eye and say, Hey, Tony!  And he'd wave and smile and at least yell hey back.  There was recognition there, even if there wasn't a name in his memory.