THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESERVATION
The New Yorker|January 30, 2023
Thank you for booking at The Bai-ley. You are confirmed for four people at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, January 20th. Before we welcome you to our restaurant, a few housekeeping items, to insure that your visit with us is exceptional—and to avoid misunderstandings.
ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESERVATION

Owing to Covid, RSV, the apparent return of polio, inflation, the looming recession, and Donald Trump’s announcement of his 2024 run, your table reservation will be for ninety minutes exactly. We offer a fifteen-minute grace period for arrival, but the ninety minutes starts at the reservation time. To illustrate with an example, let’s say you arrive at 7:43 p.m., because your Uber driver was unfamiliar with the unmarked doors of our speakeasy concept, and you wait in line awhile to hand your coat to our coat-check person (twenty dollars per item; yes, a scarf counts as one item) before settling into your table by 8 p.m. You still need to leave by 9 p.m., because we have another party coming in. The table is recommitted, as we say. In fact, it would be helpful if you vacated the table closer to 8:45 p.m. so that we have plenty of time to sanitize it using our proprietary blend of lemon juice, baking soda, and saliva.

This story is from the January 30, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.

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This story is from the January 30, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.

Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.