Summer Accommodations: A Novel by Sidney Hart Page B

can’t remember his ever succeeding but his conviction that it was happening all around him all the time made him testy and wary with the waiters and busboys. And this finicky punctiliousness served, in turn, to make it a contest within the staff to scoff in full view of everyone in your area without being seen by Sandy Stein. Sammy, who expressed no opinion about the practice, actually demonstrated a remarkable facility with it on occasion just to show he was still one of the boys, which left Stuart Stein alone in a position of miserable isolation in his own dining room. To me he was little more than an usher showing people to their seats. As Sammy’s busboy I was under his protection and therefore relatively immune to the maitre d’s nit picking.
    Sammy’s station was full that first Sunday. Most of his guests were returning veterans of Braverman’s and there was an aura of reunion complete with handshakes, hugs, reminiscences, and the recounting of personal news. People were curious about me and when Sammy told them I was the younger brother of Jerry and Steve White he also added that I was planning to be a doctor just like Jerry. I was so busy carting out tray loads of food that I hardly spoke to anyone. As he had explained, Sammy took the diners’ orders, communicated them to the kitchen and then sent me to fetch them. It required two trips to deliver the load of juices, sliced melons, orange and grapefruit sections, and grapefruit halves for our thirty two guests. I had no sooner deposited the second tray on the side stand when Sammy whispered to me that it was time to refill the bread baskets and water goblets, check the glass boats of olives, radishes, celery sticks, and carrot slices, and top up the pickle dish. That accomplished I then began to bring out tray loads of hot soup, cold soup, salads, dishes of salad dressing, and more baskets of bread and rolls while Sammy passed out the food and regaled his clients with anecdotes, jokes, personal vignettes, and bits of gossip.
    â€œSally, did I tell you that Esther Gaussman got married?”
    â€œNO!” expostulated Sally, obviously stunned by this news.
    â€œIn Miami Beach. A widower. Murray Fiedelman. A jeweler,” he said in a peculiar telegraphic staccato.
    â€œMazel tov,”said Sally in a tone that made it sound to me more as though she meant, “that’s life” or “go figure.”
    The pace of the meal accelerated into the main course. It being Sunday night the choice of supper entrees was somewhat limited. The noon meal on Sunday was the big sirloin steak dinner, a dinner that people anticipated all week long as though meat was still being rationed and was hard to come by in 1956. Steak was in fact quite plentiful, if costly, but being served a steak dinner by a waiter in black tie and on tables spread with white linen did seem to make it taste better and engender a more luxurious experience. For the Braverman family it was a way to send off their guests with the feeling that they had been treated lavishly, feasted and indulged, and it was hoped that the memory of this extravagance would serve to lure them back again the following summer. With that goal set in motion, Sunday night, while the new crowd was still recovering from the trip through the Shawangunks and likely to be too exhausted to be focused on that meal, the usual fare included flanken, or boiled beef, a meal destined in large measure for the sous chef’s brown sauce, stuffed chicken breasts, broiled halibut, and garden vegetable dinner. The meals would then work their way towards more elaborate and expensive fare as the week progressed achieving a heightened excitement with prime ribs au jus on Saturday night and climaxing with the sirloin steak for Sunday dinner. It was the convention in the smaller hotels to set up daily menus Sunday to Saturday and to repeat them in rotation without variation. Sunday supper and clean-up ended for me at