The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [35]
“I always see you coming in and out with groceries,” Harvey said to me one night, as we ran into each other at the stoop. I’d smiled and said yes, not knowing what else to say.
Other times we’d linger and talk longer. Harvey once told me, with alternating fury and pride, the story of how he and the five other tenants who’d lived in the building for several decades had triumphed over their landlord’s attempt to raise their rent. The building had been rent-controlled ever since our current landlord’s parents lived in it. This couple had raised their children in the building, and according to Harvey, had “just wanted to have nice neighbors.” That was it. They weren’t greedy But after they passed away, their son, now our landlord, wanted to adjust all the tenants’ rents drastically to bring it up to modern real estate standards. They went to court, and after many months, the tenants won, leaving the two parties bitter. They would be forever bickering about management issues large and small, I’d learn through my months of living there, either from passive-aggressive announcements issued from our landlord or further rants from Harvey. “I’ve been living here for my entire adult life,” Harvey had said once. He’d gone to Pratt, the art school a few blocks away, to study painting. “We were the people who made this neighborhood interesting,” Harvey said.
“Well, I’ve got to get going,” I told Harvey one night, holding up my tote bag filled with groceries to indicate that they needed to get cooked. He smiled and nodded.
“You have a good night, Cathy,” he said, allowing me to pass through the doorway. “Tell Ben I said hello, too.”
Ben and I joked that Harvey was like the king of the block. His presence on stoops and sidewalks, in hallways and at coffee-shop tables, was nearly constant, and confirmed his popularity in the neighborhood. I worried about who would help Harvey cook and buy groceries once he became too old to do it on his own. Once, he’d asked Ben to help him take down some huge ceiling plants in an apartment belonging to Harvey’s friend down the street, which he was house sitting. I hoped that many friends would be ready to spring to his aid when that time came. For now, though, he was defiant and independent, doing his laundry, cooking his meals, living his life very much his own way within his five-block radius.
Ben and I were invited over for brunch at Sam and Richard’s one Sunday. To repay us for the dinner at my old apartment, they planned to make us one of our favorite foods that morning, chilaquiles. Ben had been going through a lot of restaurant withdrawal lately, and one of his favorite places for brunch was a Mexican restaurant that specialized in chilaquiles con huevos. We’d eaten it there probably more than a dozen times. The brunch entree came in a steaming individual casserole. Underneath two soft poached eggs were crisp corn tortilla strips steeped in a bubbling green tomatillo sauce and connected by stringy, melted cheese.
Despite how exotic and enticing this dish seemed to Ben and me, chilaquiles were, according to Sam, one of the simplest of leftover dishes in her native Mexico—a peasant food, really. It was just another way of using up any scraps left over from previous dishes (bits of shredded meat were often thrown in, if one should be so lucky as to have any), and day-old tortillas really were the best for soaking in all these juices and flavors while retaining some measure of density. Whatever it was, we were eager to try Sam’s homemade version.
Also due for a dining-in date with us were our friends Sean and Meredith. They had recently moved just a few blocks away, and coincidentally invited us over for dinner the evening of our Sunday brunch at Sam and