The employee locker room at the East River Club featured an overwhelming array of hygiene products including aftershave, two kinds of moisturizer, soaps, hair gels, deodorant, tonics, sprays, and colognes. All of these products, including the mouthwash, were a shade of faded green that reminded me of a wrinkled dollar bill that had been put through the wash. The products were manufactured by a company named “Clubman.” The Clubman label featured the silhouette of a dandy wearing a top hat and tails and leaning on a cane in a leisurely fashion. The implication was clear: If you used Clubman, no…

About a month after “Splash Dance,” as Reynaldo had dubbed my dousing of the Oprah doppleganger, just as I was starting to ease into a routine at the Club, Mr. Galanti hired a new waiter named Dave. Dave was tall with hair the texture and color of wood shavings and a mouth that seemed to be disproportionately small in relation to the rest of his face. He’d famously arrived for his initial interview at the East River Club on a skateboard. When Mr. Galanti introduced Dave as the staff’s newest addition, Dave gave a brief “funny” speech about himself. He…