hard boiled egg

the first time i had a real bagel was in new orleans. i was 23 or so and my housemate at the time ordered them from h&h bagels in nyc because, well, bagels in new orleans in 1992 were sort of questionable and she was a bagel snob. i learned, over time, to be snobby about a few things myself. beer. chocolate. wool. bagels. there's no point in eating bagels that taste like paste or look like english muffins. so i am fortunate that right now here in brooklyn, in bensonhurst, under the rumbling elevated d train, there is a tiny bagel place barely large enough for a line of four people where the folks there not only make spectacular bagels, but also remember my sporadic visits well enough to know what i order. cinnamon raisin bagel with honey walnut cream cheese. and these folks do not have a light hand with the cream cheese. it is the sort of place where if you ask them to scoop out the inside of the bagel (people i work with do things like this. grow up!) you would be greeted with a snort and would take home a mangled bagel. what? i eat them once a month at most, so don't you worry about it. a good bagel is insulted if you don't put a fat slab of cream cheese on it. who am i to insult a good bagel?

it's one of those places where in the winter the windows are all steamed up because they actually make the bagels right there and when i go in my glasses fog up to match. it is lit with reds and has plenty of hand written signs promising things like "home made soup for lunch" and "yes, we have flagels" (they're flat bagels, if you'e wondering). but today, a friday in the middle of december, when i arrived at 7am to give myself this little gift i find for the first time in five years that i'm the only person in the store. the guy remembered my order and while he made my tea i looked at the counter in front of me. it's a small space, just barely wider than my own shoulders. when i face it, to my left is the cash register and to the right, the bakery case full of muffins and little tiny baby bagels. but today there was something new on the counter. a stainless steel bowl, just like the largest of a nested set i have at home, sat snuggled up next to the cash register. in it were eggs. hard boiled eggs, according to the sign. more than a dozen hard boiled eggs for sale. at 7am.

now generally that many hard boiled eggs go right to deviled eggs or egg salad. i've never seen a bowl of them, shells on and intact, sitting around. they seemed somehow magical. i wanted to buy one or two but the guy had already totaled my order and put the bagel on top of the tea in the little brown bag. i took the bag in my mittened hand and looked one more time at the eggs. there has to be a reason. some holiday secret like black eyed peas that someone neglected to tell me. i know there are hard boiled eggs all over hanukkah celebrations but they've always seemed to be part of something else, an ingredient. they're not candy bars sitting on a coutner for a last minute impulse buy. a bowl of plain, naked hard boiled eggs in a bagel shop doesn't seem like part of that. not like gelt. not like latkes. but they are beautiful sitting there and although i don't really care much for them, i find myself thinking about how one would taste right now.