A chilled curl of frozen cucumber floats in a lemon and mint vodka. It’s a chilly November in New York, but this bar is beginning to feel like a spring garden in Napoli.
Chaltin puts her drink down and asks, “What duck?” I swirl a single leaf of sage on a foamy cloud of gin and show her my phone. “Twitter is going nuts about some duck in Central Park,” I say. “Should we go see it?”
The mandarin duck is not indigenous to these parts and no one knows how he got here, but people have noticed and he’s quickly becoming an autumn celebrity crowded by paparazzi and amateur photographers. What makes him special are bold complimentary colors, strong geometry, and fine edging. He’s gorgeous! A living and breathing course in Aesthetics 101.
The next morning we find him at the imaginatively named pond in Central Park ‘the pond,’ and nothing against our equally beautiful native wood duck, but this mandarin duck, OMG. His back is a kabuki mask.
We have a devil of a good time feeling the excitement of the crowds and seeing this special visitor in person. We reward ourselves with a Billy’s cheesecake on a romantic park bench framed with autumn leaves. My opera blog has become a rom-com with ducks (I request Stanley Tucci to play me in the movie).
The opera Mefistofole last night was devilishly good, but this duck deserves his own post as he encapsulates the beauty and novelty the arts try to emulate and a good reminder to now and then visit the source of beauty, nature.
*Bette Midler just wrote a book about this duck titled The Tale of the Mandarin Duck: A Modern Fable
The opera tonight is Mefistofole, but I declare, “In the morning we’re going duck hunting!” Which we do, after a short stack of Rosa Park’s pancakes.