Greasy Spoon
“Matt,” I began as soon as he answered his cell phone, “You know how we always said that if one of us were to become unemployed the other one could move in?”
“We never said that.” He replied calmly.
“Oh, sure we did, all those nights in our bedroom growing up,” I inform him. “Lying in our twin beds talking about the future. Look, I’m going to need to cash in that marker. Just for a while.”
“Yeah, we never said that.” He protests. “I’m pretty I would remember that.”
We waste a few more cell phone minutes arguing about this minute detail, me embellishing slightly with a side conversation I steadfastly argue we also had about providing a little ‘spending money.’ Nevertheless he agreed to let me sleep at his newly-acquired condo a few nights while I was in Chicago. Before I get off the phone, I ask him some basic color questions so I know what furniture to bring.
“Your crap won’t match anything.” Is Matt’s firm reply. “Bring no furniture.”
Being unemployed (or rather – not working – as a friend told me to use last week, as it’s less pathetic than ‘unemployed’)…ahem. So being Not Working, I decided to visit Chicago for a week so I can remind my family and friends both what they love about me and why I drive them nuts.
First up: the younger brother. Aw, he’s not that much younger. He’s gonna be 38.
Matt and I exchange our traditional greeting banter when I arrive.
“Any house rules I should know about?” I inquire politely.
“No parties.”
I belch a groan of disappointment.
“No strangers. No homeless people or you know…anyone that’s not you.”
“Does this rule include German trannie prostitutes?” I ask politely.
“Definitely.”
“If you use my computer, quit changing the home page to one of your web comics.” Matt growls a bit.
“Ah, so you noticed that.” I remark. “From my last visit.”
“And don’t do web searches on google that you think are funny for me to find later.”
“What?” I protest innocence. “Searches for ‘illegal porn’ and ‘donkey sex’ ARE funny.”
He pauses. “You don’t know who could see that. The government or something.”
I sigh, but perhaps that last request is reasonable.
Matt engenders in me this desire to poke him. Sometimes that’s literal, with a stick or a fork or dangling a piece of string so it’s twitching against his forehead like a bug while he’s trying to nap on Mom and Dad’s living room couch.
But sometimes it’s just to verbally poke him, see if I can make him laugh or at least give up an amused guffaw. He’s trying to do the same. Is this how it is with all brothers? Older brothers and younger brothers? Or is this just because I like him as an adult – genuinely think he’s one of the best people I know? I don’t have an answer to that, as I only have the one brother, so I can’t really research this.
But I do worry about him a bit.
After unpacking all over his living room, an instant mess, I am alarmed to discover from Matt that he hasn’t been to his local greasy spoon. He doesn’t even know its name, just that it’s at the corner of Western and Montrose, a few blocks from his house. Matt is nervously eyeing all my clothes and comic books and items scattered across his floor.
“So you’re just going to leave that there.” He says. “Right there, huh?”
I think he should eat at the local greasy spoon because that’s where you see interesting people. I worry about him watching too much TV (kind of ironic coming from me) and I worry that he may not get into enough trouble in life. That he may not experience enough uncomfortable situations to experience the more golden surprises that often result.
These worries are probably stupid and entirely ego-based because Matt is smart and is adventurous in his ways. He has done speed dating multiple times, which terrifies me.
When I wake up the first morning, smacking my lips on his couch, there’s a detailed note waiting for me in his crooked printing, endearing to me because his chicken scratch looks like 8-year-old Matt wrote it and also because he used little boxes for bullets which is exactly what I do.
I call him at work for directions to the greasy diner. I feel it’s my responsibility to check this out for him, so I can strongly advocate it to him.
When he answers the phone I say, “You didn’t give me any house rules specifically about fire. There were no rules about fire mentioned last night.”
“Uh…” he says in his work voice, “I didn’t think I had to.”
“Yeah, well, you probably should have mentioned any rules about fire if there were.”
“Huh.” He says.
I switch gears and ask him directions to the diner.
“Did you find the keys.” he asks and I did.
Last night Matt handed me a key ring with three keys informing me that ‘these may work or not. I haven’t tested them. So if you leave ,you had better take everything you need, ‘cause…who knows.”
He’s kidding, but not kidding. He hasn’t tested the keys.
This morning I found those keys on the bulleted note but now each key now had a small piece of masking tape and a letter indicating which of the three doors it opened. While I snored and drooled on his new leather sofa early this morning, he quietly tested each key, made little labels, and wrote me a note reminding me there was soda in the fridge.
This is Matt.
Over the next two days, I ate breakfast at Jeri’s Diner and it did not disappoint.
When I walked in, the guy who ran the place was ranting (I could tell he was in charge because he was wearing a giant white apron and patrons were looking hungrily at the empty grill. He waved a spatula that signified he had the power over all things food-related). Anyway, he ranted that there were only three real investigative reports in the world: Edward Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Pam Zekman. She’s a Chicago phenomenon and this is truly one of these ‘had to be there’ experiences from the 1980s.
(I swear, events really transpired like this in the diner; It’s all true. And Pam Zeckman is real.)
There is yelling from a patron who wants more coffee. “Miss? Miss? Miss?” he keeps repeating in an irritated voice. “Miss? Miss?”
I have seen this guy for all of 27 seconds and I want to punch him. He is relentless.
The grimacing waitress remains patient even though he’s repeating the word ‘Miss?’ while she saunters right to his table and she smiles at him while pouring more coffee.
“Thank you my dear,” says the old man in his most charming smile. I still want to hit him.
“I’m gonna poke his eye out with a fork.” She mutters as she passes my table.
Maybe ‘mutters’ isn’t the right word, because her complaint is forcibly loud enough for him to hear, for all of us to hear, and he starts cackling and she starts slamming things around and suddenly I’m the one outside of the joke and she interrupts the investigative journalism discussion to demand a raise for putting up with this crap.
Some yells, “You tell ‘em Ruth.*”
* To be perfectly honest, I’m not 100% sure that her name was Ruth. But it was a Ruth-like name.
I order eggs and bacon and she calls me ‘hon,’ about a half-dozen times over the course of my breakfast and while I smile shly at her. Secretly, I love it that she calls me ‘Hon.’
On the way home, I stop at a bakery near Matt’s house and pick up a piece of apricot, butter-cream-icing marzipan. I remember the name because I made one of the girls name every freakin’ piece of marzipan in the case.
“What’s that one? Oh really. Huh. And that one? Oh, that sounds good. What’s that one?”
The bakery is empty so there’s nothing really waiting for her to do, but she’s irritated nevertheless. Hell, I’d be irritated by me as a customer.
I decide on the gorgeous four-layered apricot beauty and it seems to me that two layers between cake are fruit-whipped something. It’s like wedding cake. I didn’t know you could buy wedding cake in individual slices! When did this start? Someone should have told me this news.
I buy a piece for Matt and I want him to taste this. I want him to eat at the Greasy Spoon and for people to look up when he comes in and say, “Hey Matt” to him in a bored voice. I want the bakery girls to flirt with him when he comes in for a piece of wedding cake. But I don’t get to control the world or my brother’s life, so I will have to being content to extolling the virtue of Jeri’s Diner and hope that he tries the biscuits and gravy because they really were quite good.
I get back to his condo (all the keys were labeled correctly) and tidy up a bit so he’s not bug-eyed in alarm by how much I’ve expanded. I do consider that I have certain squatter rights. But I am leaving soon to go wandering around Chicago and he’ll probably be home from work before I get back to his place later tonight.
I stand at the fridge with the door open, a pen poised over the marzipan box. It’s a cardboard box, the kind you can write on, and I intend to leave him a note. I want to remind him how important it is to do uncomfortable things, things that seem too public or too intimate to share. To meet strangers who probably won’t become your best friends because honestly, you have nothing in common. To have awkward conversations where you open your heart so much it makes you nervous.
And I’m the last person to be giving this advice. I should probably try take a few doses before dispensing so liberally. But I worry about him. I do. I sometimes think that I would agree to miss out on certain life opportunities if I could be guaranteed he would get my share. I have had more than my share of laughter – more than a person can reasonably expect. Is Matt getting his share?
Instead of saying something so absolutely cheese ball, I put my pen to the box holding the apricot marzipan and write:
“THIS IS FOR YOU, MATT. SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE.”