Something’s Gotta Give, by Barbara Krasner

Table for Ladies, by Edward Hopper (USA) 1930

Something’s Gotta Give 
 
I entered Le Grand Colbert beaming with expectation. Here was the Parisian restaurant Diane Keaton’s character in Something’s Gotta Give insisted had the best roast chicken ever. The host guided me along the buffed gold and brown mosaic tile floor to Keaton’s very seat in the movie, in front of a beveled art nouveau glass divider. I could have ordered an appetizer and entrée that reflected far more French cuisine: foie gras, onions gratin, escargot, sole meuniere, chateaubriand, duck confit. But there on the menu: half a Normandy roast chicken. 

I ordered it. 

Just the smell of a roasted chicken made me salivate. The crispy-skinned chicken came dressed with a white paper frilled chef’s cap on the leg, along with grilled onions, a micro greens salad, and a smothering, glistening thyme gravy that I wanted to slurp up. The chandelier lighting made the carrots and mushrooms on the plate shine and the gravy shimmer with delectability.

I sat in Keaton’s seat, ordered Keaton’s meal. But neither Keanu Reeves nor Jack Nicholson was there to give me birthday gifts or ply me with wine to loosen me up.

And today, Diane Keaton died at age seventy-nine. I sat in her seat. I ordered her meal. Maybe I even drank out of her glass, held her knife and fork. Though she’s gone, as she said to Jack Nicholson, “We’ll always have Paris.”
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Keaton’s star has dimmed, but her light remains at Le Grand Colbert, in the laminated scrapbook the owners kept of the filming, in the delicious meal they continue to serve in her honour.

Barbara Krasner

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, including the recent ekphrastic poetry chapbook, Poems of the Winter Palace (Bottlecap Press), and the ekphrastic collection, The Night Watch (Kelsay Books). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in more than seventy literary journals, including Tupelo Quarterly, Cimarron Review, Nimrod, and The Ekphrastic Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey. Visit her website at www.barbarakrasner.com.