Deli queen died as she lived, with tray held high

There was more to Kaye Coleman than a quick wit. Granted, she was a master at whip-fast one-liners, but there was a nobility to her too, a caring that helped mold the content of her character. And there was the courage to look eternity in the eye and snap her fingers in its face.

It saddened but didn’t surprise me when I heard last week that Kaye had died of the cancer that had been eating away at her life. She told me more than a year ago, in the abrupt manner that often characterized her style, that death was an imminent possibility.

We were sitting in a corner booth of Nate ‘n Al’s Delicatessen in Beverly Hills, where she had been a waitress for 38 years, when she threw it in with the nonchalance of asking, “You want hash browns with that?” She said she had cancer and it was spreading.

She was eating a bowl of boiled potatoes. The restaurant was full and busy, and as old-time customers passed she greeted them with a wave and a smile, pointing out the man whose breakfast orders always seemed to go on endlessly. On one occasion, she had simply stopped writing, planted a fist on her hip and said, “I’m just bringing you breakfast, not fitting you for a suit.”

“I have metastasized malignant melanoma,” she said that morning at Nate ‘n Al’s. There was no drama in her voice. It was simply a statement of fact offered between bites. “It’s in my lungs and my buttocks.” She looked at me, studying my face, reading the shock. I flashed back to a story she told me once about a customer she greeted, asking, “How you doing, Buddy?” He replied, “How can I be doing? I’m dying.” Then he said, “Don’t feel sorry for me, Kaye. I had a good life.”

I realized that she was saying the same thing to me. She’d had a good life, with a supportive family, a thousand friends, and legions of customers who adored her. She was an institution, celebrated with awards and media attention, the undisputed queen of deli waitresses.

Accepting the nature of her illness, Kaye said that she was going to try an experimental treatment, but if it made her feel lousy, she’d drop it. “If I live, fine,” she said, enjoying her potatoes. “But I’m not going to spend the next five or 10 years taking chemicals. When it’s over, it’s over. Either way, I’m going to live until I die.”

That she did. A close friend, Barbara Palmer, said they had thought she was facing her final hours more than a month ago, but she rallied to take a 14-day Mediterranean cruise paid for by a customer. She returned invigorated, laughing at life.

Three weeks later, family and friends gathered at her bedside when they were told that the end was truly near. In and out of consciousness, she awoke occasionally to tell everyone to go home, they weren’t needed. The next morning, she opened her eyes, looked around and, in mock surprise, asked wryly, “Am I still alive?” They were her last coherent words. She died that evening at age 69.

I met Kaye almost 20 years ago. A new deli was opening not far away and regulars at Nate ‘n Al’s were discussing the competition, when publicist Bob Abrams said, “We’ll be all right as long as Kaye doesn’t leave.” On cue, a red-headed waitress with the trace of a Philadelphia accent slid in next to me, brandished her order book and said, “You wanna talk or you wanna eat?”

“Meet the last true character,” Abrams said as she strode away, then told the story of a deli regular, a studio head under investigation for forgery, who asked Kaye if he could pay for breakfast with a check. She snapped back in classic Coleman, “Sure, but I want the tip in cash.”

“She was just a waitress, the way Sigmund Freud was just a doctor,” CNN commentator Larry King said of her. True. She was a high-energy, wit-powered, all-consuming presence, and the deli was her stage. “I didn’t wake up one historic morning and say, ‘Hey, I want to be a waitress,’ ” she once said, “but it’s nice.”

Customers doted on her. The Mediterranean cruise was paid for by a wealthy regular who also sent her to Ireland. A hotel owner once left her a $200 tip. A bookie gave her $1,000 to help with her husband’s back surgery. Others presented her with yacht cruises and trips to New York.

Kaye gave back. For more than 20 years, she volunteered at the Cedars-Sinai Hospital emergency room. She was there so often, a deli customer assumed she had medical knowledge and complained to her about chest pains, asking what he should do. Kaye replied, “Either see a doctor or stop eating lima bean soup.”

She also worked at Cedars’ hospice, and said to me the day she told me about her cancer, “I know what the bottom line is. I just want to keep on keeping on.”

And she did so with grace and wit, and a clear understanding of what it was all about.

*

Kaye Coleman memorial service

A memorial service for Catherine (Kaye) Coleman will be held at 1 p.m. Monday at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Park Mortuary, 1218 Glendon Ave., Westwood. She is survived by a son, Michael Novack; a daughter, Sheri Tobey; four grandchildren; and thousands of deli customers.

*

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He’s at [email protected].