BELOW ROCK BOTTOM

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “AN UNSUSTAINABLE LIFE – The Book of Issac“

Chapter 8: Below Rock Bottom

Early indications are it’s going to be a wicked Windy City winter; telltale signs confirm locals know it by their worried looks and the already hunching shoulders. It’s no different down at Murphy’s Northshore Bar where the faithful continue their transition from exciting Chicago Cubs baseball to the Monsters of the Midway football; already wagers abound for Sunday’s home field game between the Bears and evil Green Bay Packers. It’s getting so crazy someone’s actually taking bets the Bears will score two touchdowns off interceptions; given the statistical unlikelihood of that, Issac had to get in on the action. It’s hard to tell if Lenny’s learning anything from Issac when it comes to betting or if Bear’s wagers don’t pack the emotional punch, but so far, based on his Bear’s bets, Lenny’s more apt to lead with his head than his heart, which might finally put him on the winning side of the ledger. While he is a die-hard Bear’s fan and part of the Soldier Field faithful, Lenny follows Issac into acquiring a slice of the interception-wager, which leads Lenny to wonder if Issac’s finally come around to his way of thinking.

“Tell me again why you went to Wisconsin,” Lenny asks, “cause so far your story ain’t making any sense.”

“The corn’s been cut,” Issac offers while setting a fresh pint down. “The leaves are turning so I figure Sara probably ain’t never seen anything like it; ya know, her being from Texas and all.”

Lenny wipes foam from his face. “Ain’t nothing those cheeseheads got we don’t have here.”

“We ain’t got FLW?” When Lenny stares in blank ignorance, Issac continues. “Frank Lloyd Wright, he was probably the most innovative architect in history. Has a wonderful museum up in Talliessent, beautiful place to spend the day and maybe have a picnic.”

“Yeah, I seem to remember your uncle saying we should take a ride someday there on our Harley’s. We never got much past that.”

“They got the Harley museum in Milwaukee, isn’t that like Mecca for you?”

“Between all the bikes the boys in my club ride, I pretty much work on every Harley worth a damn already, so don’t need to be running up there for anything.”

Issac gets suddenly serious, “Let me ask you something, you’ve been around a long time, probably met most guys with bikes-”

“Serious guys,” Lenny caveats, “not like them posers on their BMWs or crochet rockets.”

“Fair enough,” Issac continues, “but have you with your limited exposure to motorcycle enthusiasts, ever come across a guy with a tattoo of a woman wearing a red hijab?”

“What is that, like a ruby necklace or something?”

Issac laughs while wiping down the counter of condensation. “No man, a hijab is the scarf Muslim women wear around their heads.”

“What the hell would a Harley guy being doing with a tattoo like that!”

“The heart wants what the heart wants and somewhere in the annals of Chicago land Harley lore, there has to be a biker dude who falls in love with a Muslim woman.”

“Not in my lifetime my friend.”

“Maybe he wasn’t in some sort of forbidden love with a Muslim woman, maybe the woman in the red hijab was a metaphor. In this guy’s tattoo, everything was covered except her eyes, it could mean, she could see him but he couldn’t see her, you know, like she say all his flaws but he never saw hers, or he had no idea the pain she was hiding behind her mask, a pain so powerful and consuming, she could no longer be with him, which is why there were tears in her eyes?”

“Alright dude, don’t be going all Darwin on me, next thing I know you’ll be talking brickyard shit from Saint Stan’s and then this whole dance we’re doing is gonna get weird, so no, I never met a guy with a Muslim tattoo.” Lenny takes a drink and wipes his mouth in his sleeve. “Why are you asking about crazy shit like that anyway?”

“The other day I got to remembering a time my uncle took me for a ride up to Wisconsin, I was probably ten and we probably rode your Harley. Anyway, we stop for lunch at a truck stop, and this group of Harley guys roll in, who knows, could have even been your club secretly crossing state lines to get good cheese. Anyway, this one guy, huge guy, he’s got this amazingly beautiful tattoo on his left arm of a woman in a red hijab whose face is covered so that only her eyes can be seen. Before long, this dude starts telling me about his tattoo and talking about some pretty profound stuff.”

“Oh yeah, like what?”

“Like everyone we love eventually breaks our heart.”

Lenny takes a swig of beer as he thinks about the tattoo on his heart. “Bet you didn’t know us biker dudes were so deep.”

“I’ve been replaying a lot of old memories lately and the stuff he said mixed with other memories from that day had me up the other night,” Issac takes his time with the next part. “In light of what you said about my mom and how she’s the reason my uncle disappeared, well, I ain’t saying you’re right, but maybe you’re not wrong. I ain’t in no way apologizing for what went down between you and me but I can admit that I’ve been going through a lot of shit lately and-” Issac pauses to further refine what he’s trying to explain. “What I’m saying is that I can see where some of what you said could be true, that’s all, so don’t go reading past that.”

Lenny laughs, “You know what you are, a hedger. You hedge life like you hedge bets, always working the margins and angling for shit. You’ve already decided what I said is true, yet you sit here splitting hairs. Well kid, at the end of the day, it’s a distinction without a difference.”

Issac sets a fresh pint down deciding if there’s anything Lenny’s said is cogent. “Well first of all, it’s a difference without distinction.”

“Says you.” Lenny wipes the foam from his face. “And what you’re saying about Darwin is definitely a distinction devoid of difference.”

Issac immediately starts to respond but just as quickly sees the silliness of engaging Lenny in yet another debate. “That pretty much sums up what I’m saying, you say shit that ain’t right, but at the same time, ain’t wrong either.”

Lenny laughs at the repartee he’s crafted, “That’s why I say what I’m saying.”

Issac knows from past interactions someone has to be the adult. “I’m getting off your clown carousel cause quite honestly; you do this shit just to screw with me.”

“I gotta do something to keep the free pours coming.”

“Be that as it may, what I’m trying to say is that since that night when you said all your shit about how it broke my uncle’s heart to be kept away, I’ve been replaying past memories and can see where some of it could be true. It don’t mean I forgive the bastard, but I can see where maybe it wasn’t all on him. Guess where I’m going with this is that maybe this thing between us doesn’t have to be about forgiveness.” He considers the best way to state his proposal. “What I’m trying to tell you, is maybe next time you see him, you can pass that along.”

“Happy to kid, only-” Lenny takes a swig of beer and wipes away the foam. There’s a guy at the bar trying to get Issac’s attention but he’s not a local so Issac’s in no hurry to help.

“Only what?” Issac presses: suddenly and unexpectedly caught up in Lenny’s cliff-hanger.

“Something odd’s going on in New Mexico.”

The guy at the bar’s getting pissed, but that’s because he’s not listening to the mystery drama playing out on Issac’s other side. “Whatta ya mean,” Issac asks, “like some Roswell sort of shit?”

“I don’t know what that means, but Darwin was supposed to be here this week. We had plans to run over to Lafayette and catch the Boilermaker game only, he doesn’t show. Not like him to miss something as important as Purdue’s Old Oaken Bucket. I call and leave multiple messages, but he hasn’t called me back. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before, so likely no need to worry, and I wouldn’t, but something just feels odd.”

“Excuse me!” the guy on the other side of Issac abruptly interrupts, “can I get a beer.”

“Yeah” Issac says gesturing to the far end of the bar, “go ask Murphy.” Issac can’t be bothered by customers when compelled to come back to Lenny. “Uncle Darwin was gonna be here this week?”

Lenny looks at his favorite bartender in disbelief, “really, that’s the part you heard?”

#

Normally Issac doesn’t see Sara after a shift, by the time he has things squared away at Murphy’s it’s too late for her and she gets up too early for him. As part of her mentoring rotation, Sara now works the morning mis en place shift, where her primary responsibility is to prepare ingredients the afternoon shift uses to prepare evening shift entrées. Her new tasks include things like chopping vegetables, soaking meat in marinades, cutting and toasting yesterday’s bread for croutons, and making salad dressings early so the ingredients have all day to marry.

Sara’s not annoyed Issac knocks on her hotel door so much as she’s in need of context, which Issac struggles to provide because he doesn’t have a certain crisis or dramatic dilemma in need of resolution, he just needs to be with someone who understands he has strange emotions gripping him. Why should he care that his Uncle Darwin missed a football game defies logic and yet, Issac’s been infected by the same eerie sense something ominous is afoot that’s got Lenny all spun up. What scares Issac is that this sense is the same unsettled indescribable feeling he had the night his dad died and his mom had yet to return from New Mexico, a feeling of utter loneliness; and that’s something a young boy learns to never forget. He tries explaining this to Sara and can see she’s not getting it but thankfully, he also sees that all she needs to know is that he’s in crisis and that as much as anything is why, he now knows he loves her; not in the good-time Charley way he once thought he loved Gabriella, but in ways beyond physical or even emotional. While accepting all the metaphysical elements of how he now knows he loves Sara, he stops short of believing his love is spiritual; after suffering alongside his mom as the cancer slowly takes her, he’s abandoned thoughts of spirituality in his life. Rather, he just accepts that he profoundly loves Sara and there’s no reason to dissect that into elemental units of complex compounds.

“Of course it’s okay you came.” Sara tells him. “Your upset about something you can’t talk about and I understand. If you want us to just silently sit here together that’s okay; often when I’m upset, that’s all I really need.”

“I can’t explain this unsettledness I feel. I mean tonight was going just like any night wth Lenny was talking shit like he always does; next thing I know I’m telling him that while I don’t forgive my uncle for what happened, I can sort see things from his perspective. Next thing I know, I’m telling Lenny he can pass that along to my uncle and then he starts going off on being worried something’s happened to Uncle Darwin and next thing I know I’m having these goofy-ass feelings of like, I don’t know, worry or remorse.”

On some level, as Darwin’s telling all this to Sara, he has to concede that there’s a part of him would rather be talking about love and all the ways she’s come to mean so much to him. Loving Gabreilla was hard, if he could even call what their dynamic was love; it was more like the comfort of convenience. He thought he loved her because they matched for a moment but once that moment ended there was nothing to hold them over. Of the many ways he knows he didn’t really love Gabriella, the fact that once she was gone, he didn’t miss her ranks high. At the time he wrote it off as too much in crisis over his financial calamity to devote any bandwidth to dissecting his feelings, or lack thereof.

Later he decided that his lack of interest in finding any kind of way to win her back was further evidence that what they had could probably be called a lot of things, but love certainly wasn’t one of them. It’s different with Sara, certainly he’s different, more mature, wiser perhaps, more capable of seeing the world in real terms. That is anything is the gift working at Murphy’s provides, a chance to see the world in real terms for the first time really. There’s the obvious world of being behind the bar where he interacts with patrons and their problems and the demographic at Murphy’s is so different from what he’d spent his life prior to that around. There’s being around Murphy himself, the gruff old bastard is hard for sure, but the command he has of his life as well as the lives of his employees are impressive. Prior to appreciating Murphy, Issac only saw a guy shagging for a buck and for a time he found that degrading. Now through, Issac’s come around to the fact that there is nothing degrading about working hard to make a living but Murphy’s much more than that. At first Issac thought that Murphy gave him a paid position out of pity and it offended him a bit. He has come to understand that Murphy has some sort of deal, or understanding, or arrangement with everyone and that it is those micro-measures of accommodation he makes with both his employees and his patrons that make him so beloved.

That’s the gift, in so much as one can call becoming destitute a gift, that working at Murphy’s has taught him, what it means to be part of a community where you not only care about someone other than yourself, you allow others to care about you and when really peels back the onion of his love for Sara, that’s what is at the core, she has become a part of his community, it may not be the most affluent and it is most certainly as far removed from the world he was roamed, but Sara is a part of the circle of people he cares about, and just as importantly, who care about him and that’s how he knows he loves her, which is why he’s completely uncertain he hears her correctly.

“I’m sorry, I was distracted momentarily, can you repeat that.”

“I think this is about loneliness, this sense you’re feeling that’s causing your crisis. Souls can sense a stirring; a coming together or a pulling apart. Your soul is talking, only it’s not telling you about your uncle.” Sara takes Issac’s hand, she smiles softly, looking sympathetically into eyes. “I was waiting to talk to you after today when we both have time off, but your soul got my message early; that’s why your here.”

Issac looks at Sara uncertain what she’s talking about; he’s already confused and in crisis, and she’s just making things worse. “I don’t understand.”

Sara continues to hold Issac’s hands while compassionately looking into his eyes. “You always knew I was only in Chicago for a mentoring rotation; we’ve talked about it many times.” She smiles uneasily, not so much about the news, but the irony of the timing and knows no matter how difficult it is, coming out straight forward is best. “At the end of the month, I rotate to the George Cinq in Paris.”

Issac looks at the woman he loves in disbelief, of all the things he thought she might say, “that wasn’t even on the list.”

#

Patrick watches Issac slice lemons into half-moon disks, “You okay kid, you seem a little off.”

Issac doesn’t look up, “just got a lot going on.”

“I know it’s been tough, kid, it ain’t’ easy going from a ne’er-do-well trust-funder to a working stiff barely having two coins to rub together but I got something that’ll cheer you up. Got a call today from the Chinese poker guy, wants to host another event; says it’s a tournament, many players, multiple days, big money. I say we recruit Sara and the four of us knock this out. Of course, she has to work under my Sous Chef. Hey Santi,” Patrick shouts, “you okay if Sara works our gig?”

Santi shouts back, “Si chef.”

Patrick smiles in satisfaction, “there, everything’s set.”

“Tell me how this works; you’re a fry cook at a dive bar where Santi washes dishes and somehow you two caterer large corporate events?”

“The world belongs to hustlers’ kid, never forget that. You look at me and Santi and see a fry-cook and a dishwasher, but have you ever noticed as soon as this dive gets busy, we’re ghosts? That’s because we got our own thing going. We agree to do Murphy’s mis en place on game day and in exchange, he lets us use his kitchen when we get a gig, it’s win-win. You look at Santi and see a Mexican washing dishes, but if you look past the obvious, you see he helps me. Santi maybe didn’t go to a fancy culinary institute like Sara, but he’s mentoring under someone who did, and someday, Santi’s gonna be a damn good chef; every bit as good as anyone at Four Seasons. Here’s the deal with life kid, fancy credentials get you in the game, but it takes talent that can’t be taught to excel and Santi’s got that talent. So, what say you call Sara and ask if she wants in, this event is gonna be big and we’ll all make bank.”

Issac looks up in a way that dispells any myth Patrick might have that he’s excited about this gig. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“Why not kid, we both know you need the money.

“Well,” Issac struggles to say out loud what he’s been avoiding hearing himself say, “Sara and I broke up.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, what happened?”

“She’s being transferred to Paris.”

As a veteran of constant culinary change, Patrick understands the magnitude of the moment and compassionately puts his hand on Issac’s shoulder. “I’m sorry kid, I know it seems unkind, but I’ve been in Sara’s shoes many times, that’s the unfortunate nature of a culinary career. Just cause she leaves you, don’t mean she doesn’t love ya.”

“Yeah,” Issac states with complete clarity, “she just loves her career more.”

Having had this conversation before, Patrick knows what to say in these moments and is about to, when Murphy enters the kitchen from the bar, he stops by the gas range beside multiple aluminum pots boiling with steam. After a brief hesitation, he slowly makes his way over to Issac. “I’m so sorry lad, I just got the news myself and I am completely devastated

“Thanks,” Issac quietly answers.

“I mean we go through life and we all know shit like this happens, but we never are ready for it to happen to us. And the thing is lad, the longer you go in life the more you learn shit like this gonna happen to you eventually.

“Amen to that brother,” Patrick adds. “I was just telling Issac that constantly transferring to new kitchens is part of being a chef.”

Murphy looks at Patrick with perplexed confusion, “What the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Sara’s leaving Chicago at the end of the month, being transferred to the Four Seasons Paris, what are you talking about?”

“Issac’s Uncle.” Murphy takes a moment to read Issac’s reactions. He pauses, not sure how to proceed. “You don’t know do you lad?”

“No what?” Issac asks with hesitation born of experienced angst.

“I’m sorry lad,” Murphy says in his patentably abrupt way of driving to the point, “your Uncle Darwin is dead.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”