In point of fact, as we’ve been able to calculate, Jay’s tenure at the Met did indeed carry on well into the next busy season and beyond (busy season at the Met being primarily the fall [when the big shows come to town] stretching into winter, with the biggest of all being that massive tourist influx during the xmas holidays, and right up to the new year.) and for several months more, at which point (as the records indicate) he headed off to grad school as so many waiter-types do when they just can’t stomach waiting tables any more, even if it is a good way to complement (and support) other more ‘artistic’ and ‘soul nourishing’ ventures and adventures. Off they go, and so too went Jay. (Altho not, it should be further noted, some of the more ‘career’ waiters who were already much older than Jay, at the time, and showed no interest or indication of ever leaving: Chet, Francis, Rico, Curt, Eric… many of whom had, at one time, been waiter-actors, or waiter-writers but now, at some indefinable point, over the years, had become simply waiters. Jay often mused about writing some kind of book about these people, as stand-in and representative of similar servers and waiters worldwide, who supported a big dream, until they didn’t any more. He planned to title it: “Waiting.” Like so many other grand visionary ambitions that Jay might have entertained, it didn’t come to pass. Not yet. Jay, if you’re out there, and you somehow come across this note, we encourage you to kick into gear and DO IT, you lazy good-for-nothing dilettante hack!….

–Eds.