we went looking for tom girardi
the real househusband of pasadena's final days at home
Hello Email People. Do you have the Sunday scaries? Are you already scheduling Monday emails? Do you dread “hopping on a call?” Hey don’t worry about it! Read this to not feel depressed. This summer my friend and I became Tom Girardi paparazzi. We spent a lot of time in the sunken garden of Pasadena, searching for Tom as he waits to be evicted from his $14 million dollar McMansion. Here’s part one of our story, and it’s by the venerable Pasadena local Declan Paul Wilson:
By D.P. Wilson
PASADENA – Justin was at the restaurant when I arrived. We’d made reservations two days in advance. We’re nervous planners. This was important: we were going to have dinner with Tom, and at his favorite local hangout: Stoney Point.
Tom wasn’t there when I arrived. I wasn’t too surprised. He has Alzheimer’s, and the newspapers say he’s been stealing from clients for years.
I ordered a martini—gin, stirred, something mid-shelf: Beefeater. I looked around to see if I could notice anything interesting. Justin scanned the menu. He asked for a G&T.
“Where’s Tom?” he deadpanned after the waiter left.
“Running late,” I said. “Ran into a burn victim, gave a free consultation.”
A few seconds passed.
A nice sip of cold gin hit my lips. The waiter had brought us our drinks by then and the hot Southern California sun—setting just on the other side of the Arroyo—lingered under my blazer. It hit my back and I broke a sweat.
Maybe I’ll just have the olive for dinner.
Ugh, this would have been a good day for some Crabtree & Evelyn.
Justin and I were silent. We waited for something to happen, but nothing did.
The octogenarian next to us complained about the homeless in Venice.
The air conditioning kicked on.
Two waiters walked past our table.
The pianist started “Moon River.”
I noticed a print of Castle Green.
“Wait, was that the back of his head?” Justin asked, excited.
His eyes darted around to confirm his suspicion. Justin was just slightly paranoid. So was I, for different reasons. Locals don’t generally like to hunt for local bigwigs so blatantly.
Still, the risk was worth the reward. A few weeks ago, “news” had gotten out that Tom was out eating in public at Stoney Point. The source was just a leaked photo that got picked up by a bunch of reality t.v. sites. People said the lady he was eating with, who was just his type—younger, blonde, lots of makeup—was his travel agent. Code for: pretty young thing Tom was interested in.
So maybe Tom was here and Justin had seen him.
Tom’s physique is singular. A pot-bellied man who never found the right tailor, he floats around in billowing suits. If Justin had seen the back of Tom’s lizard-like skull, complete with rolling folds of excess neck fat (to match the suits, of course), I trusted Justin.
“I have to use the restroom,” I announced abruptly, standing up before removing my napkin. It tumbled to my feet. I darted to the men’s room; I wanted to confirm whether Tom was actually here as well.
Closing the door behind me, I looked around.
Damn.
No Tom.
Justin was wrong.
Justin was wrong … or Tom had slipped back into the private dining room he invariably had at Stoney Point. I mean, that seems like something Tom would do, right? Yeah, cool, so Tom’s eating a steak back there. Lol.
“Hi, Tom,” I whispered to myself, looking into the mirror as I washed my hands with that pink soap that smells like almonds. It felt like it was Borax.
I rinsed and dried. This would be disappointing news to bring back to the table. I straightened my tie and went out.
*** ***
Though Tom lives in Pasadena, he celebrates his wins in Los Angeles. At least, he used to.
When he won big, that is, over $100,000, he dined at Peppone’s in Los Angeles—S. Barrington Pl., off Sunset.
When Tom won small, that is, under $100,000, he dined at the Pacific Dining Car—6th and Witmer. It was a humble reminder to be frugal when times weren’t bountiful. Peppone’s for every meal would have been extravagant. The menu doesn’t have prices! At least at the Pacific Dining Car, Tom could rest easy knowing the cheapest steak was $38.
Tom outlived the Dining Car. The Los Angeles institution—established in 1921—was the only “Old LA” restaurant that fell victim to Covid. Despite a 99-year-history built on 24-hour service and Baseball Steak, the new world of takeout was too much for the Dining Car. In the pandemic’s late summer, the Dining Car’s owners announced they had no financial option but to close.
The news hit Tom hard; he needed the restaurant to stay humble. What was he to do? A year left on his life and no more Dining Car!
Hmm.
There was his regular Los Angeles haunt: Morton’s—Figueroa and 8th. But that was too far from his grandiose Myron Hunt estate, which is still nestled in the hills above Annandale in a bizarre homeowners’ association. (It’s one of just two here, a rather rare occurrence in an already affluent neighborhood that has survived for more than a century on subtler ways to exclude.)
No, Morton’s was too much of an ordeal. Disease was in the air. If things were to open up, he’d have to stay local.
Who knows, if he wandered too far from the city he called home, someone might take his place! Everyone in Pasadena wants a Myron Hunt. He practically built this city, and much of Los Angeles too: The Rose Bowl, The Huntington, I. Magnin’s. Great stuff, really! Did you know we sent him to New Haven just to study the Yale Bowl? That’s how the Rose Bowl was built. Wealthy east coast expatriates missed football, so they brought it West. The Grandaddy-of-them-All, if you think about it, is sort of a California equivalent to Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. Anyway, I digress.
For the foreseeable future, then, Tom would be stuck with that piano bar and kitchen he loved so well: Stoney Point. The restaurant is nestled in what most would call a strip mall—though it really isn’t one—where, for better or worse, it has stood the test of time. Oh and it’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from Tom’s Xanadu.
Decades ago, the restaurant had a dual identity: a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde sort of aura. By day, Stoney Point served as a perfect getaway for Bluebloods who golfed at Annandale. The country club’s dining room could get stuffy and the food was just palatable. Stoney Point, on the other hand, had an exciting, Continental menu. How terrific. Husband and wife, a Gin Rickey downed, were ready for their lemon and caper sand dabs. By night, a more exotic breed of unhappy Pasadenians crawled out from the woodwork to drink there. “Stoney Point is where Pasadena goes to have affairs,” everyone says.
That was then. It’s gone downhill. Someone said they buy the capers at Smart & Final now. And the mozzarella comes from the restaurant wholesaler on Foothill. Yikes. It’s a surprise people still go there. Tom does, though. It’s his local spot. We’ve been looking for him.
* * * * * *
“No Tom,” I announced when I returned to the table. The Waldorf Salad oozed a happy smell: a tad … dusty?
And, woah, had I already finished my first martini?
Watch it, Paul.
A middle-aged Latino waiter appeared. “What would you like for dinner,” he asked, smiling down at us. He had a broken paternal energy. It was weird. But it sort of put us at ease.
“What does Tom get?” Justin asked, staring straight into the waiter’s eyes.
Pffft. I nearly spit out my gin. Justin was diving right into the evening’s antics. I sat nervously, waiting to get kicked out. What would this waiter say?
“Ooh, Mr. Tom! Always, the tortellini,” the waiter boasted.
His smile was wider.
“Great, I’ll have that,” Justin said with nonchalant confidence. He flipped down his menu the way Turner drops his bat when he hits a homerun. The waiter turned to me.
“Uh, err, I’ll have the lobster macaroni,” I said nervously.
What the fuck, Paul, you need to get out of your head.
The fucking lobster macaroni?
Are you kidding me?
“I mean, I’ll have the lobster ravioli,” I said, correcting myself. Fuck it.
Okay cool. So, Justin put it out there and now we’re just leaning in.
We’re putting the Tom energy out into the room and falling into whatever happens.
“Oh, and, also, Mr. Tom! He always gets caprese,” the waiter volunteered. “And red wine!”
Wow, that was quick.
“Bring that too,” Justin said, even though our table was already packed with clams, salad, bruschetta and cocktails.
The waiter disappeared.
Our friend, Lee Rein, had arrived. She sat at the table drinking sauvignon blanc, watching this utter madness unfold.
“Of course, the old white guy gets the tortellini,” she chirped.
We all laughed.
Justin pulled out an edible, placed it on a bread plate, and sliced it in half with a knife.
A 94-year-old World War Two veteran, who, incidentally, had helped draw redlines in Los Angeles decades ago, choked on a salmon (the coroner later said it was actually a caper) and died.
Justin popped a piece of the edible, a macaron, into his mouth.
“Man, this place is a cult, how can we join?” he asked.
He took a sip of his G&T and looked around.
“That was crazy,” he continued, washing down a spot of boiled egg he’d picked up with some endive. It sagged with the weight of Hellmann’s. It was a good Waldorf Salad. The grapes were very red.
Three waiters materialized out of thin air and dropped down a caprese. They used the military precision of police officers executing a no-knock warrant.
Oh my.
It’s plated on top of a bed of arugula.
How … authentic.
The waiter pepper-sprayed the salad with a grinder.
Spicy.
We ate our food in silence for a few minutes. I looked up. Justin sat in a trance, staring at the menu cover. “This font,” he said, tapping the cover. “It’s … Papyrus,” I said, finishing his thought.
“Incredible.”
It really was incredible. The whole place really was incredible. Incredible in its truest sense: incredible. Impossible to believe.
The décor had fallen so below what it once was. The entire scene seemed like if an alien visited earth, disguised itself as a human, and, after successfully infiltrating Dan Quail’s vice-presidential apparatus, was hired to create a restaurant where fancy people in Pasadena ate.
Justin and I knew this guy. Was he playing a prank on us? If so, the Papyrus font was perfect. I wonder if I had noticed it all the last time I was there.
*** ***
The last (also first) time, I was at Stoney Point, Helen, my roommate, and I arrived at eight, just as I’d told our friend Roger to do. He wasn’t there yet.
Helen ordered a Gordons G&T. I ordered a Beefeater martini, stirred with two olives.
“Well, aren’t you two old fashioned?” our bartender asked, smiling as she built our drinks.
“I guess we are,” Helen said. She smiled.
Before long we’d made friends with the bartender. She was a nice midwestern lady. Though she’d never admit it, it was clear she was enjoying the last years of her youthful beauty. We went back and forth, the three of us, sharing stories from our childhood and our memories, new and old, of the city all three of us in that very moment of time called home.
“You two grew up in Pasadena?” the bartender asked, impressed by our humble credentials. “Yes,” we said sheepishly, and in unison.
“Paul and Helen, those are such nice names. Very old fashioned,” she continued, smiling as she stirred another martini for me.
The piano player had started Glenn Miller’s “String of Pearls.”
“Wow, have you ever heard a piano-only version of this,” Helen asked as she took a sip.
“No, of course not,” I laughed back.
Time passed and I turned my head to follow our bartender’s movements. She’d made it to the other side of the bar and was doting on an old man.
He was dressed in a beautiful cashmere sweater. He wore very smart wool trousers. And he had on sturdy black wingtips … they might have even been Italian.
Nice. That’s pretty old school Pasadena.
I mean, the Italian shoes are a tad flashy.
But still, good for him.
I guess it wasn’t that surprising. We were at Stoney Point, after all. It’s one of the last restaurants of old Pasadena’s dining elite, the exact sort of stuffy, wealthy crowd that drove Julia Child away from here in hopes of finding something new and exciting. Turns out what she found revolutionized American cooking. But I digress.
This man the bartender was talking to was old, in his eighties. His wrinkles were deep. But his short wiry hair revealed a slight bit of energy despite his age.
Wait.
Holy shit.
I grabbed Helen’s knee.
“Helen,” I said in a hushed tone. “That’s Tom. You know, Tom, that big, powerful lawyer I’ve told you about. His wife: she’s a Real Housewife. Holy shit.”
“Okay, chill Paul,” she chuckled, turning back to listen to the piano.
I looked back at Tom. I probably stared too long. But it was worth it; something incredible happened. When the bartender turned her back, Tom lifted up the folds of his jowls and poured his glass of red wine over what, until that very moment, had been hidden gills.
Helen jabbed my ribs just in time.
“Stop staring, Paul!” she said in a stern whisper.
I rubbed my eyes. She was right.
Tom was just drinking out of his wineglass, and doing it rather normally.
The bartender came back and started wiping the seats next to us.
“Tom’s a nice old man,” she volunteered.
“Sweet guy. His wife is always out, so he comes here for entertainment..”
Um, what the fuck?
Does she know who he is?
She must.
She’s playing the part.
She’s probably part of his army.
Is she?
“Oh, and he’s a good tipper,” she continued, before picking up a bowl of pub mix.
She walked over to Tom and placed the assortment of nuts and pretzels in front of him. He grabbed her hand, they smiled, and started talking.
Roger showed up. He sat down and ordered his martini: Tanqueray, with a twist, always. Roger hates olives. He also grew up in Pasadena.
We caught up, contemplated ordering dinner, and decided not to.
I guess that was a big lunch.
Plus, if I get too hungry, I have my olives … and apparently pub mix.
“So, what have you been up to?” Roger asked. “How’s Stoney Point treating you guys?”
“Quite well,” Helen said. “We’ve made friends with the bartender.”
“Hell yeah,” Roger responded. He had, and still does have, a thing for older ladies.
“Oh, and don’t look now,” I said, pointing under the bar, “but Tom is here!”
“No way,” Roger said, seriously. Roger’s grandmother had a friend who, decades ago, regularly played tennis at Tom’s Myron Hunt haunt.
“That’s wild,” Roger said, craning his neck over us to catch a glimpse of the man who drank like a fish. “That’s that lawyer, right? His wife is on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking at Tom, this time out of the corner of my eye. He’d fallen asleep face first in a bowl of split pea soup.
“But don’t he and his wife live in San Marino, not Beverly Hills?” Helen chimed in.
“Pasadena, actually,” I responded.
It was true. Tom didn’t grow up in Pasadena, but he lived here. I wasn’t quite sure where—someone had once suggested it was in the Arroyo—but I wasn’t sold on that explanation. It would have been too obvious. Plus, who in the Arroyo would let Tom move in next to them?
The piano player started a Cole Porter number. We ordered more drinks, slowly draining the bar of its Beefeater, Gordons, and Tanqueray reserves.
Man, we really are old people.
I looked over at Tom. He was staring at the wall. He’d noticed a nice print of an old hotel. It was the Castle Green, but Tom didn’t know that.
Suddenly, the seat next to me moved.
I turned around and watched a man sit down. He wore an obsessively-ironed seersucker Ralph Lauren oxford. In true local fashion, his twenty-year-old chinos were beat to shit. And he’d likely purchased the boat shoes he was wearing when H.W. was president.
Awesome. Now that’s Pasadena.
I looked up at his face. It was ruddy. His jowls were heavy, but earnest. He looked tired, defeated, and a tad uneasy. But he still looked happy. Then it hit me.
Oh shit, that’s Dean Murphy. Dean Louie Murphy, from Catholic Prep!
“Dean Murphy!” Roger exclaimed, raising his glass to welcome the old friend.
Dean Murphy was an iconic part of Catholic Prep, where Roger and I had gone to school. We’d had two deans there and Dean Murphy was the “good cop.”
He was a little embarrassed when he saw us. You didn’t go to Stoney Point alone at that age when things were going well. And rumor had it that College Prep had let Dean Murphy go. It was that new principal ….
He hugged us and smiled. The bartender, seeming to forget Tom was even there, came over and grabbed Dean Murphy’s hands. “My love, how are you?” she said, winking. “Your usual?”
“Yes ‘mam,” he said with a defeated smile.
She began prepping an Irish coffee. Then she poured a shot of Jameson and put the two beverages in front of the old man.
“It’s on me,” I interjected, slurring my words far more aggressively than I’d meant to. “This wonderful man was the dean of students where I went to high school,” I declared, throwing my arm around Dean Murphy.
He laughed nervously. “Paul, how are you? It’s been a while.”
Dean Murphy was much more sober than I was, though he wasn’t sober-sober. I didn’t care.
“I love this man, someday I’m going to run off and marry him,” the bartender announced, cutting into our conversation before being whisked off to pretend to care for Tom.
She put a life-preserver on Tom, just in case he fell into the deep end of the soup again.
I sat and contemplated in my juniper-flavored haze. I knew what was going on. At least I thought I did. This had become a watering hole for old has-beens. Pasadena’s greying elite now came here to feel one last flicker of love, one glimmering moment of excitement, in the final years of their relevance.
My stomach turned. I started drinking martinis to get through the night. At one point, I’d sat on the piano bench with the player, singing along to Tin-Pan-Alley standards in a quiet voice.
When I came back, Dean Murphy was gone. The bartender seemed sad.
“He’s a really great man,” she confessed to us. “Life dealt him some crappy hands, but he keeps on going.”
I can’t say for certain, but I suspect Dean Murphy wasn’t an incredible tipper. At least, he didn’t flash the money Tom said he had. And there’s no way he let it gush out with enthusiastic obviousness the way Tom did.
Tom was still there, physically. But he wasn’t there mentally. In fact, he looked like a wax version of himself, stuck at a strange point in time. The pub mix was untouched, and so was his third glass of wine. He had, however, managed to successfully slurp down the rest of his soup with an elongated neon purple straw.
Good job, Tom.
The bartender made us a last round. I went to go to the men’s room. When I returned, Tom was gone. So were his garish Italian wingtips.
I don’t really remember leaving the restaurant that night.
I do remember waking up the next morning on my couch, my head on fire, a Glen Gray record spinning, stuck on the same scratch as it had been, presumably, since the moment I got home and put it on.
I threw up, mixed myself a michelada, and vowed never to go back to Stoney Point again.
*** ***
Now two years later, I was back.
Justin’s, or should I say, Tom’s, tortellini soup arrived. Someone said it looked like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It did.
“Nice,” Justin agreed, before diving for a last bite of caprese-infused arugula. He fastened a Red Lobster bib around his neck and started in on his tortellini. “Gr8 stuff,” he told the waiter.
“I used to be a waiter,” Justin continued.
“Oh,” the waiter said.
“Yeah, I like your outfit.”
“Yes,” the waiter said. He was wearing a white tuxedo shirt with a winged collar and a bow tie. The waiter laughed nervously. What is this white kid going on about?
A few seconds passed.
The waiter walked away to pick up a napkin that had fallen off the lap of the now-deceased red-liner.
An inebriated 73-year-old man began crooning “On the Street Where You Live.” It sounded like Vic Damone belted out the melody while relieving himself of explosive diarrhea.
I went to the bathroom again.
I was nervous. The cotillion in me was burning my skin. I splashed myself with a spritz of water and looked into the mirror.
I might need to bail.
We’re gonna get kicked out.
This won’t end well.
I dried my face with the roughest paper towel the manager could have supplied. I pulled myself together, walked back out, and decided to stay with the act through the end.
Then it came.
The big surprise:
“Tom called!” the waiter told us. “He’s coming down to have dinner with you!”
He said it with the same excited intonation a father has when he tells his children Santa will land on the roof soon: “Go to sleep, and it will happen any minute.”
He stood over us, smiling. He waited, excited to see our reaction.
I dropped my fork.
Justin, Lee, and I looked at each other, silently for a second, then started laughing hysterically.
“Woah, wait, what if he actually comes?” I asked, finally comfortable with our white tablecloth campaign to find Tom.
At that point, the waiter had walked away realizing the bait had been taken.
“What the fuck guys, no, no he’s absolutely not coming,” Lee said, laughing hysterically at us.
Yeah, she was probably right. Lee was the most normal among the three of us. There was no way Tom was coming … but, maybe?
Along with the facetious announcement, the waiter had brought my ravioli. It was legally lobster ravioli, quite bland, though. I ate it and tried to figure out the next song the piano player was playing.
“Moonlight Serenade” maybe?
No, that can’t be it.
That’s such an odd song to play just on piano.
Time passed.
Another martini came.
Most of the crowd was gone now. The sun had set. But the piano bar side of the restaurant was getting raucous. That was where the only other patrons remained. In fact, an elderly gay couple that owned one of the nicest Greene & Greenes in all of Pasadena had come in for some Riesling.
That was a good sign. Things might turn out a tad livelier as the night progressed.
“And how is everything,” the waiter asked, smiling.
Before I’d even had a chance to give my perfunctory “Terrific!” Justin stepped in.
“So have you seen Tom lately?”
Nice. It’s go time.
“No, he doesn’t come here anymore,” the waiter told us remorsefully. “It’s sad. We never see Tom.”
Justin and I really knew at that moment that we wouldn’t be seeing Tom that night.
He was practically dead.
Was it sad? I couldn’t tell yet.
Justin asked about the photo, and the woman in it. Apparently it was his daughter.
“Do you believe what everyone has been saying about him? All the accusations?” Justin continued.
“No, not at all,” the waiter responded, putting up his hand as if to block even the slightest suggestion that Tom was impure. “All lies.”
“Well, I hope he at least took good care of you.”
“Oh yes, of course,” the waiter nodded.
For a while, he and Justin went back and forth. I felt sort of bad. I mean, in some small way, Tom had been a good person to at least some people? Right? He’d ostensibly treated this waiter with some sort of dignity.
Were we just joining the mob? Getting in on the action while it was hot? Were we just capitalizing off the slow, but inevitable, downfall of Tom?
I really hoped not.
“Justin, are you sure this is okay? I mean, what if that waiter really was close with Tom? What if he really admired him? Tom had been generous to that waiter for years.
Justin didn’t answer.
The waiter reappeared, his sadness over Tom seemed washed away. He was happy, ready to put on the show the waitstaff here had forgotten to put on after years of serving the geriatric crowd.
“Desert for the table?” he asked, happy to have a set of friends that could enjoy itself for more than an hour at a time.
“Oh man, I’m full,” Lee said.
I still felt a bit bad. I wondered whether he’d appreciate bringing us some dessert. I wasn’t too hungry, but there’s always something nice about dessert.
“I’ll have the tiramisu, and you know what, I’ll take some coffee as well,” I said.
“Terrific choice,” the waiter responded. “And for you sir?” he said, turning to Justin.
“Screw it, I’ll do the same.”
“Excellent choice,” the waiter proclaimed. He scurried away to collect our order.
Justin took a sip of his G&T.
“Paul,” he said, looking me in the eyes. “Shitty people are great at being nice in public. That’s how they collect power as long as they do. Secretly, inside, they’re using everyone they know. They don’t care about this waiter. Tom doesn’t actually care about this waiter. If he did, he would have kept in touch.
“No, Paul, Tom is not a good person. He’s a bad person. An evil person, really, and he’s used his clients, our paper, this restaurant, everyone in it, heck everyone in Los Angeles to get whatever he wanted. People found out and now his time is up.”
I listened and sat silently when Justin finished. I knew he was right, or at least partially right, but my obsessive need to please everyone still left me feeling the slightest bit worried—and guilty.
The dessert came. It was on fire. No one acknowledged it.
The waiter came with the check. His sleeve touched the tiramisu flame and he became engulfed in fire.
“I hope you had a terrific evening,” he said, smiling as his body disintegrated into ash.
Ooops.
He shouldn’t have made that joke about Tom coming.
We paid and walked out. I stared at the neon sign that filled the night sky: “Stoney Point,” it declared.
What the fuck is this restaurant?
We said our goodbyes and planned to do something equally absurd soon. “Thanks, Tom,” we said in unison, laughing. It really had been a wonderful evening, and, in part, Tom was responsible for that.
I sat in my car for a second and watched my friends leave. Justin pulled out of his spot, made a bee line down Colorado, and ultimately drove off a cliff. Lee’s car began floating in the air and then disappeared into the night sky.
Whew.
What a night.
I survived, lobster ravioli and all.
I drove home, walked in the front door, and climbed the stairs to my room. Pulling off my blazer and tie, I collapsed on my bed.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever go back there again,” I said to myself as I reached over for the drink I’d made myself.
I put on Glenn Miller. First came “String of Pearls.” It reminded me of Dean Murphy and the last time I’d seen him. “String of Pearls” ended and “Moonlight Serenade” began.
You know what? I bet Dean Murphy is doing okay. Maybe he’s married that woman from the bar. Tom certainly hasn’t ….
As I drifted into sleep, I heard a noise from the door in my room that leads to our attic.
I got up, walked over, and opened it. Tom, covered in fetal mucus, stood there. He blinked. He smiled. He opened his mouth.
“Hi, Paul, I hope you enjoyed the tortellini,” he said.
He put his arms out. In his hands were a pair of gills. “These are for you.”
“Nice,” I said. I took a slug of warm gin, turned around, and jumped out the window.
“Bye, Tom!”