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Reliving Cerviche At The Alias
I was seated between friends at the bar of the new Alias restaurant in New York City's Lower East Side situated on the front porch of a home in River Ridge, Louisiana, performing my duties as the dedicated housepainter, inside the vibrating buzzing world of a dual action sander, which was acting as facilitator to my duality.
My boss had missed me in my absence and had already warned me of the owner's professed experience with refinishing fine furniture, and how this owner had taken issue with the use of a DA sander on the cypress doors we were preparing for a natural finish. The door frames would be painted. My boss and I had discussed this at 6:30 in the morning which is when we start our work day and is an hour when we can cuss homeowners with impugnity. "Well, he can kiss my ass," I had said before removing the three dip stripped cypress doors from their frames, and taking them to the front porch for sanding.
I wasn't just inside a daydream, I was back in NYC, despite recorded information showing me gone from there two days previous. I was back at the restaurant seated at the bar, on Clinton St., actually living in the past. Successful transportation. The maitre d' was pouring wines all night long. I was drinking them--the reds, the whites, the desserts, the champagnes, I have no idea. It was a relaxing luxury, no one was sniffing corks or pausing between the taste and the pour. Brief consultations, bottles opened, bottles emptied. The tables behind us were covered in white tablecloth but the atmosphere was pleasantly devoid of pretense. Glasses were removed and replaced with appropriate counterparts without me knowing of the switch. Trust was involved, and rewarded.
Commuters converged from three different directions and departed for their own worlds but I was not with them. I was the early bird doing my job with the sander, spring had sprung, the air was warm. I would not leave this restaurant ever. I would not step out into the frigid air. I was frozen in time. I would not be aware of the homeowner lurking nearby, not until the last cork was extracted. I would not.
Bastard's not going away.
I could hear him before he spoke. My lack of focus proving both salvation and damnation. I turned the sander off and faced him. "Comments?" I said. I was already pissed. He has no idea how complex is the simple luxury. How far I've travelled to have this absolutely unneccessary conversation.
"Uh, yes, uh, don't you have one of those..." he pantomined an orbital palm sander. I am normally a polite person, but I could tell from the get go on this one, I wasn't going to be.
"No, I don't." If I kept it short, I reasoned, I could still make it back for another champagne, or hell, I could rewind to the backrub of mistaken identity, and the opening Guinness. "Hey, what's with that new bottle," I could have asked, even though I did not ask it at the time.
And he proceeded to tell me of his past with furniture, before his ascension into the world of digital cable sales. I nodded, impatiently. Is there any way I can communicate how totally uninterested I am in what you are about to say? Could we please avoid what is now the certainty of my imminent rudeness? Eventually I would bottom line with the question "do you want me to stop?" The guy was looking at a middle part of a process and deeming an unseen final product unacceptable. I wasn't getting back to New York. My heart rate was way too high now for such travel. Bastard. Like I get out all that much.
I had opened with a line I never imagined I would actually use in serious conversation.
"This ain't my first rodeo." He countered saying it wasn't his either.
Erlich and crew are burning down, slinging gourmet at all who come through the door. They are the proverbial purveyors of good taste. Everything I sampled was delicious, the shrimp, the pork, the trout, but it was the sea bass cerviche appetizer that rocked my world. I'm not there to see it or taste it, I'm only remembering it. I could have though. I was working up to reliving the cerviche, before the interruption. Late, an off duty chef comes in. He doesn't like the nickname so stop using it. Don't make me get rude about it.
I said, finally, deciding consciously to be plainly rude, "If I'm doing it, I'm using my methods and my tools." The tone I used implied a great many other words, none of which I use regularly in polite conversation. He threatened to tell my boss, cancel checks, etc. I smiled, I mean grimaced. He left me alone. Later that day his wife came and apologized, clearing the cloudy air with a few smiling words. I apologized to her, explaining in less detail than this, what he had interrupted. She understood. Women, you gotta love 'em.
What was almost lacking from that evening at the restaurant was not lacking. At some point very late in the evening I had the opportunity to look deep into myself to wonder just what the hell was happening in college basketball. March Madness. This being a rare year where I had a team moving close towards the final four. I had for a couple of years followed a Louisiana highschool team on their trips to the state playoffs and two players from that team, Hollis Price and Quannas White, play for the Oklahoma Sooners. But nobody in this group has any reason to give a holy hell about that. Except the kid. The kid might know. So I asked him. He did not know if Oklahoma won the previous night, but he knew of the Indiana upset over Duke. We made a simple bond. A bit later, leaving the restaurant, and the kid turned around from where he sat with his girlfriend and said, "Oklahoma." I said, "Hollis Price." He repeated it.
They got it going on down at the Alias.