Concert for Two

I have attended many concerts, some in large arena venues, some in the park, some in a theater or club. I’ve even sat inside the orchestra next to the bass players. When I’d close my eyes, the music would envelop me and play through me. On this one magical evening at dinner, it felt as if the trio in front of my friend and me were playing just for us.

Richard and I came to the dinner exhausted. We each had driven up in weekend traffic to Great Barrington in the Berkshires. We had shopped for the 8 people on our weekend, hauled at least a dozen bags into the summer house, and put away the items that needed to stay cool. Too tired to conjure up dinner from all the food we had bought, and with the other members already out on their Friday night excursions, Richard thought we deserved a reward.  No Four Brothers Pizza or Uncle Louie’s Gyros for us. There was a fancy four-star restaurant all the way back in Hillsdale about 22 miles away. I vetoed the idea. No, too far, too expensive, and too fancy. How about the little white restaurant and inn on the dip from Route 23? We didn’t know much about it. Just looked cute with its white picket fence. Maybe we were a bit underdressed for dinner, but it t was, after all, the laid-back Berkshires.

”Any room at the inn for dinner?” we asked.

“No, no, we don’t have reservations.”

“Would we be willing to sit at a table up front, not actually in the dining room?" I thought that meant the bar area.  Wrong. While we waited, they whisked out a table and two chairs, placed formal settings on the white table cloth, and then sat us down . . . right in the middle of the dance floor. The maître d’ explained that there was going to be some live music that evening, but no one would be dancing. No problem. We didn’t need fancy dining room carpeting underneath our feet.  After all that food shopping, we just needed to be off our feet.

Everyone else was seated well off to the sides and behind us. If I craned my neck I could see them. It was as if we had a restaurant to ourselves. We ordered from what turned out to be a much more sophisticated menu than we expected. He had pasta primavera and I ordered chicken piccata. As we sipped our soothing wine and made merry with the offerings of bread basket, a violinist, a cellist and a flutist entered the room and set up at the end of the dance floor, perhaps 10 feet in front of us. As the sweet strains of Vivaldi played, it was if musicians were playing just for us. No one else was in our line of sight. Richard dressed in khaki’s and a striped polo and I in a top and jeans, felt as if we were regal, so deferentially served and played to that it felt as if I could have been wearing a silk moiré gown with small diamond tiara and he  a formal tux with satin lapels.  This is what it must have felt like to be in the rooms of the kings and queens of Europe.

We clapped graciously between sets as in any royal salon, nodded at the musicians in appreciation.  After dinner, when we strolled out into the rarified air of the Berkshire Hills, we stepped to what could have been a carriage and four (but was actually a road-dusty Honda). We had conquered our supermarket duties, had been served by our lady and gentleman of the wait staff, and entertained by our court musicians. The waxing moon blessed our return back to the palace on the Lake, where we could rest our regal heads while the sounds of the lake lulled us to sleep. That night we were royal.

The next day and evening, we two would transform into the sweaty cook staff and waiters in the Lake Buel house kitchen, cutting, chopping, steaming, mixing, and whipping up a dinner from our grocery list the night before. We had to compete with the standards of all the other Saturday night dinner presentations that preceded ours that summer. Wine, cheese and crackers. Salad. A feast of poached salmon, served cold with cucumber sauce, asparagus and cherry tomatoes Italianate, and pasta pesto.  Rhubarb-strawberry pie with three choices of ice cream. Another Berkshire banquet for the dukes and duchesses of our rustic share house at our “royal” country retreat. Still it was not as grand as the unanticipated “private” dinner served so elegantly, with our “personal” musicians in attendance to entertain us. Another magnificent weekend of meals and music in the Berkshires.

 

Marsha H.

9/1/20