hey did not take reservations. Except for the few reservations they did take, which needed to be made weeks in advance and at precisely the right time.
You would need to be on the right email list, which was not the general list, but rather a list that required you to know someone. Reservations would open six weeks in advance exactly from the date. The reservation email would be released at random; never just “noon” or “midnight.” You had to keep your eyes trained on your inbox.
Of course, if you were a member you could get an exclusive clue 48 hours in advance that, if solved, would help you determine when the email would be sent. It was a good way to increase your chances and a lot of people recommended practicing cracking cryptographs and memorizing Irish poems from the turn of the century to prepare.
Should you obtain a reservation, there would still be a line.
Upon arrival, you are to check in with the waitress. She will nod but not speak to you; that’s a good sign. Join the back of the line. If she speaks to you, run.
You are permitted one cup of coffee while you wait. Use it as you see fit. It will be added to your bill once you are seated.
A coworker’s college roommate said that the small air conditioning vent next to the beagle painting is actually a door to a speakeasy that operates from 6am until 9am and exclusively serves hot cocktails and French toast sticks. You can smell the syrup if you stand near the vent. Your coworker heard about it from them at a wedding but shortly after they disappeared. That was an accepted risk of morning speakeasies.
The line can be jovial at times. Hopeful, exciting. A group tittering with nerves, looking forward to an experience so steeped in mystery and intrigue. You are all giddy and nervous and rationing your one allotted cup of strongly brewed coffee that smells like burnt toast. But if the hostess, who’s name is always Blair or Hoxton or Wool or BonTon pops her head out to scan for a specific party, it’s best to look bored or neutral. Turn off your face as much as you can.
The owner is a famous nobody whose father invented real estate but this place was started through crowdfunding. It is cash only and the strictly enforced per person minimum is $200 though they’ve been known to occasionally waive a tab completely if you recite the right Irish poem.
You will only understand 10% of the menu because 90% of the words are not real words, but rather pictures of animals performing ancient rituals in pictographs so small you would need a jeweler’s eyepiece to truly decipher them.
The way the awning is situated and the proximity of the El make it hard to know how much time has passed. Watches are against the dress code. You wouldn’t dare take out your phone. Remember when you used to take out your phone to snap a picture of risotto or a pile of hands and champagne flutes suspended in strange air? You don’t do that anymore. We aren’t doing that anymore. We are now focusing all of our cells on the act of forgetting, of acting like the small humming buzzing computer in our pocket means nothing to us, ignoring the persistent beckon of some other timeline.
Yelp is out too.
You don’t want to be dramatic but this wait does feel like it’s been hours. You will wish you had sipped the coffee more slowly. You will suddenly notice that the woman four people ahead of you has not been nibbling on a croissant as you thought but rather her own nude flat. A man named Jeffers will emerge from a doorway and try to warn you, shout that there are other options, ask what makes a man wait, why we spend our precious hours like this but BonTon will quickly come out and the sight of her short bangs and unsweating body will cause him to scatter back to his unknown hovel of origin.
A famous celebrity who you have never heard of (but their name does sound famous) has been here. You will try to picture them in the line but realize you don’t have a mental image of their face and are actually just picturing your coworker in better clothes.
You will shut your eyes for what you think is a moment but come to shouting the screen name of your middle school best friend and realize it is now dark, the sky is moonless. A guy named Bryce hands you 5 Ritz crackers and a fistful of Kohls cash and explains that the old currency is dead.
You make a mental hashtag.
You lick the handle of the coffee cup in a subtle cool way, not like a desperate woman gnawing on a suede flat and at that precise moment, BlairTon will call you hither. It occurs to you that maybe you were meeting someone here but maybe you weren’t and at this point you can’t remember who you used to know. BlairTon glides past the hostess stand, a menu emerging from the center of her palm as she looks with disdain around the inner room. These people are trespassing on her spiritual lawn. You get the sense that she has never had to be anywhere she didn’t want to be, never walked into a room she didn’t own. You are seated in the center of the room and given the menu which is glass and light as a feather. What you thought Cinderella’s shoe would feel like if you ever had the option to touch it. If it was real, of course. You mean if it was real.
You will try to remember what you came here to do, how to exist in a space. Do we look at lights? Yes but not directly. Do we notice faces? Quickly, in passing, never lingering. Is there music? The low chanting of a Britney Spears song by sad monks. Is it too hot for sleeves? It’s too hot for anything really and the heat just keeps rising. You think, 5 stars. You erase that thought immediately in case they can see it on the screen of your mind, glowing out from under thin forehead skin. You try to remember what capers are. Rocks? Little pre-fish?
As you meditate on capers, Hoxton gently takes the napkin from your lap. Everyone’s napkin is taken from their laps by the assorted Hoxtons, in unison like a dance. They are slowly wrapped around each diners’ neck, up to their chin, over their nose, up around their hair. You notice the smell of French toast as your head gets heavy and your vision slips away and you think maybe you’ll become a member. Your head hits the table first, then the floor, heavy as the Irish poem you practiced and as Hoxton grabs your ankle, dragging you to the painting of the beagle you remind yourself to tell your coworker about this one.
