I meant to blather last week about a scene three of us encountered on our walk back to the C train after dinner and a movie: a familiar guy in a chef’s coat on a cigarette break outside a restaurant on a deserted lane. It should have been peak ordering time, on the busiest night of the week, and he was outside, and the fig trees were looking a little beaten, too. But I thought it would be mean to speculate that he was now describing himself in the NYTimes as “head chef” because he had no cooks left. Luckily, my suspicions were confirmed only two days later. As they say in Dante’s hometown, the good life is finito.