Lunch at the Hideaway

“Steve Kaye. Can I help you?”

“You free for lunch?”

“Oh, gee. Let me check my calendar. I think I can move some things.”

“Okay. I’ll see you there at noon.” Click.

I hung up the phone and exhaled. “Okay, I can walk out of here now, see three accounts, grab the number 2 or 3 uptown to 34^th Street and hoof it over to 37^th Street.”

I grabbed a few papers off my desk, carefully placed them in the briefcase next to my desk, and reached for my overcoat on the empty desk behind me. “Lunch with Dad. A few cocktails and my problems will be solved. Okay. It’ll be a good day.”

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.

For me, it was Warren Kaye. My dad.

The phone would ring in my downtown office around eight o’clock and I would hear the magic words, “Do you have time for lunch?”

I would meet him at his favorite New York City haunt, The 37^th Street Hideaway, sit at the bar for a couple of cocktails and then move to a table in the back where he would deep dive into the issues driving his youngest child living and working in New York City during the 1980s.

The practice of meeting for lunch at The Hideaway began two decades earlier. Apex Mills had moved their office from Franklin Street to 37^th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue, directly across the street from a relatively new Italian restaurant run by two Greek brothers.

My father would meet two of his friends for lunch every Tuesday, alternating who would claim the check. In the two hours of grilled salmon, pasta, and several rounds of cocktails, they solved the world's problems prior to walking out the door and heading back to work.

The three-martini lunch or noontime three-martini is a term used in the United States to describe a leisurely, indulgent lunch enjoyed by business people or lawyers. It refers to a common belief that many people in the above professions have enough leisure time and wherewithal to consume more than one martini during the workday. The three-martini lunch became particularly identified in popular culture with Madison Avenue advertising executives in the 1960s and 1970s, who supposedly became more creative after such lunchtime libations.

As business matters may be discussed at them, three-martini lunches are considered a business expense (which includes travel, meals, etc.) and thus can qualify for a tax deduction if such lunches occur infrequently.

I am hard-pressed to think of a day in the 1980s I did not drink during lunch hour. It was common to meet friends, colleagues, or customers for heavy lunches and alcohol. If for some dreadful reason I was working and did not drink at the noontime hour, there was always somebody ready to indulge with me after work at happy hour in some part of the city.

My dad, the man for whom this column I dedicate, used to say, “You learn more between the hours of five and nine than you do between nine to five.”

I asked him about that during one of our lunches. Between sips of Johnny Walker Black, he looked at me. “People will be freer to speak. Their guards will be down once they have a cocktail. Always remember to listen to them. You will try to gain some knowledge you were unaware of or offer advice to a situation. The point is, you become more relevant.”

I was born in 1961, the youngest of three children. I saw my dad as a hero. Everything I did was to impress him. Now and again I would coerce him into reading me a bedtime story. (Let’s be clear on that, my mother nudged him to pay attention to me and give me ten minutes before they ate dinner).

I found a box of pictures and movies of my brother and sister. I asked my mother why there were no pictures of me and she explained that my father was too tired to take more pictures. “It’s not personal. The first child is exciting. The second one is fun. Steven, by the time the third one comes along, been there done that.”

But that didn’t stop me.

There were missed Little League games and school plays, but he had to work. Dads who attended, I was told by my mother, worked near their houses and could attend.

I would beg him on school holidays to take me with him on the Long Island Rail Road to his office. My mother allowed me to ask because her father, my grandfather, ran the company and he would leave early and take me home.

Last night, my brother told me he met my father at the Hideaway and then went to Madison Square Garden to see the Knicks.

I scratched my head. "How’d you get there?”

“I took the train to Penn Station and then walked three blocks to the Hideaway.”

“Wow,” I replied at my almost fifteen-year-old brother. “Was it great?”

“The Knicks won, and I had Fettuccine Alfredo. Dad asked Van to make me a drink too. Pretty great.”

“What’s fedo-icki?”

“Fettuccine. It’s pasta. You know. Spaghetti. It hada creamy sauce, and we had fish.”

“Sounds kinda gross.”

“Oh, you don’t get it. When you go into the city for dinner, it's not the kind of food Mom makes. It’s really good. This wasn’t Mom’s fish or spaghetti. It was really, really great.”

“Do you think one day I can go?”

“Yeah. One day and let me tell you, let Dad order for you. He knows what to order and you will really like it. I don’t like fish but at the Hideaway it was unbelievable.”

“Still sounds kinda disgusting.”

“Well, it wasn’t. It’s grownup food. See, Dad’s just waiting for you to get older and then he’ll spend time with you. He’s not really a hands-on kinda dad when you’re young. But none of my friends have a dad that go to all their games or coach them. Every now and then we get to do cool things with him. Like going to the Jet games and cooking in the parking lot. One day you’ll go with us. No moms allowed. So those guys let us do what we want and eat stuff that the moms totally wouldn’t let us do. Just wait, you’ll see.”

He was right. My time finally came. I was nine and told I could attend the football games.

I was having a catch with some of the bigger guys when my dad came by. “Why don’t you take your coat off. It will be easier to throw.”

“Well, Mom said not to.”

“Your mother’s not here and the only way she will know is if you tell her.”

I raised my eyebrows while unzipping my parka.

“Just remember to take it with you when we go in for the game.”

And that was my childhood. My brother helped me understand I did not want Dad around when I was a kid. It would be great, but he’ll be there when we get older. “Ya know he wanted us to be born and turn eighteen the next day. He had little patience for grade school or birthday parties or little league or Ellen’s Sweet Sixteen.”

He retired at fifty-two years of age, which is to say after twenty-eight years of working with his brother-in-law it was time. He received a generous buyout, rewarding me as my business career began.

I was single and had moved into an apartment the size of a postage stamp on East 45th Street. My brother had a wife, three children, and a mortgage on a house in Valley Stream.

I usually received the call. “Call your brother. Let’s see if we can solve some of his problems as well.”

Our dad would drive from the south shore of Long Island via the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and battle with the cab and truck drivers up 37^th Street until arriving in front of the Hideaway.

He would slide the Parking Lot attendant, who had been working there since Apex opened its doors across the street, twenty dollars to park the car in the full lot for two hours and make his way up the stairs greeting all the waiters by name before smiling at Michael the bartender.

(Norm from Cheers had nothing on my dad at the Hideaway).

My brother moved to the west coast a few years later, and the wisdom was now for me alone.

“Can’t make my rent this month,” or “I do not understand what’s going on with my career,” was met with, “Okay, let's figure out what you’re doing wrong,” or “I’ll cover your mortgage this month, just don’t tell your mother.”

Regardless of the situation, it mattered little. I spent two hours with my father, ate great food, had a few cocktails which allowed me to let my guard down and received advice.

No, it wasn’t always excellent advice. Like the time he asked me why I would move to an apartment three times the size of the one I was living in for the same rent. “You must get a moving truck. Why bother?”

“Because for the same money, I don’t have to go outside to change my mind and I can now sleep in a bed, not a pullout couch.

Unless I had a meeting or some appointment, lunch was on Tuesday. It gave him time to recoup from the weekend where all children and grandchildren usually ended up.

One particular day he explained as I was walking up the steps and approaching the bar where he was in the middle of his first cocktail, that his job in life now was to guide his children.

“There is nothing that you can experience that I haven’t already been through. Your job, your life in the city, dating.”

“Okay, you are very helpful about the job and your knowledge of watering hole-etiquette is tremendous. In fact, I have shared some of your knowledge with friends at work. But you were in Korea at eighteen and married at what, twenty-two, three? Dad, I’m twenty-seven and have been with more women than I care to admit.”

“Correct. It’s time to get married. You’re old enough. You mean to tell me that after all these women and all this time none of them meet your standards?”

I took a sip of my Bloody Mary. “Well, I never thought of it that way. Maybe I’m not the marrying kind, ya know? It’s just not for me. My friend Pam and I have a pact in place. If neither of us is married by forty, we will marry each other. She’s not too keen on the idea either.”

“First, you are great with children. I see you with your nieces and nephews and they love being with you. Yes, you are very particular, but there must be someone out there for you.”

“Dad, I’m telling you, I’m not looking. I have very little money. This job isn’t exactly paying me a king's ransom.”

“I will stop you right there. Maybe it’s not, but you are learning a great deal, am I correct?”

“Now you sound like my boss, Keith. He tells me I am on scholarship so I should ingest everything I learn. Besides, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Everything will work out in the end.”

“Smart boy. Listen to him.”

“But that is why I’m not looking to get married, I mean unless it was, say Princess Diana. Now, her I can afford. She probably collected a lot in that divorce, ya know?”

“I swear as the days get longer you get stupider.”

“Thanks.”

He did not know whether to laugh or cry but smiled when Michael placed his second Johnny Walker Black in front of him while effortlessly removing the empty glass and high fiving me.

Our lunches continued for the next few years. It’s a funny thing. I loved those conversations and the food and the drinking and him solving my problems and every now and again surprising him by bringing one of my friends and asking him to solve their problems.

My folks moved to Boca Raton in 1989. They bought a condo in The Polo Club the year prior. After a second winter of playing golf and making friends (most Jewish and most from Long Island) they sold the condo and built a house.

I was happy for them. After all, I would get to visit in the winter for a week, play golf, sit by the pool, and go to dinner with them at their club.

But I would miss our time together. I would miss seeing him at The Hideaway. Great food. The comfort of a restaurant in New York City where I could take a date and impress her well enough to know I’d be late for work the next day.

I continued talking to my father, pretty much every day. But it was not the same.

“Maybe it’s time,” I thought. “Maybe it's time to grow up. Maybe it’s a sign that I can make my own decisions. Maybe I heard the advice long enough to calm down and take a moment and do a WWDD (What would Dad do).

My life was moving ahead. I wasn’t married but thought I was happy until my father called me.

“Why don’t you move down here? Maybe not being married in this one instance is a blessing. You aren’t beholden to anybody. You can leave the job and find something down here. And I won't have to come up with your mother to visit you.”

“I’m moving for you or for me?”

“Me. I’m tired of schlepping up there. It's enough already.”

“You serious?”

“About you moving down? Yes. About the reason, well, does it matter? Your single. What’s the difference where you live?”

“Because if I move there, Mom will fix me up with every Jewish girl she can get a hold of.”

“She will make a shidduch if it kills her.”

I thought about it for a few months. They had diagnosed him with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma. How much more time would we really have together?

After another two months, I called and told my father I would move down assuming I could find a job.

I moved to Boca three months later.

To this day I cannot tell you whether I had more dinners with my parents or more dates from my mother.

But, I discovered a restaurant a few miles from The Polo Club where we could meet for lunch.

Nobody would confuse Pete’s Restaurant with the Hideaway, but the bartender and the hostess were terrific and took a genuine interest in us.

Suzie poured the drinks as we walked in the door and always asked about my father’s health.

The chemo and radiation took a toll on him, but he never stopped drinking his Johnny Walker Black or solving my problems.

We had a few more years together. He convinced me to marry my wife, a blind date from my mother and was ecstatic when he walked my mother down the aisle at my wedding.

Unfortunately, he never met my children as he died six days after Alex was born.

I had a second chance. I rediscovered my dad in the last years of his life. Knowing he was dying made my decision to move from New York City to Boca easy. He was older and had little time for formalities and, come hell or high water, he would see me married and teach my children how to play golf. He went into remission the year after I was married. He told me he was proud of me and I should be more hands-on when my kids are growing up.

“There is nothing more for me to tell you. It’s time for you to teach your boys.”

“So, is it selfish of me to want you to stay?”

“Yes, and no. Hey, everybody has to grow up. And everybody has to die. It’s just how life works.”

He died two days after Alex’s bris. The doctors intubated him three months before my wife gave birth. No goodbyes. No farewell.

I exhaled with tears running down my cheek. My mother stood motionless. It was time. I reached for her hand, gently squeezing it, wanting one more lunch at The Hideaway.

Sadly, from The Hideaway to Pete’s, he said everything that needed to be said.