A Regular Polish, Fries, anna Coke

22 March, 2001
(Chicago, Illinois)

I woke up alone.

No, I hadn't expected anyone in my bed! Everyone else was out of the house: Katie was accompanying Tiffany to dance classes and rehearsals and supposedly due back around noon, Jhary was off finding out where he was doing his residency, scheduled to be back about two-ish, and I was supposed to go sightseeing and be back in time to rally the troops for dinner.

The only problem with this was that I had no idea who had left me their keys, who was therefore without keys, and who I had to be around to re-admit. Moreover, it was by now about ten, meaning I wouldn't really be able to leave until Tiffany was due back.

I thought about this, shrugged, and got into the shower. So much for sightseeing; I was in this trip more for the people than the buildings anyway. Besides, as Tiffany was due back around lunchtime, I'd know where keys were by then, and could plot the rest of the day accordingly. Confronting and acquainting myself with yet another odd shower-related bit of ironmongery was a prelude to anything I might do in any case, so I gathered my things and entered the bathroom.

Wow, I hadn't seen this level of plumbing technology since we had to fake something like this for the seventh-grade talent-show production of "Splish Splash." The bathtub was a free-standing monster of white-enameled cast iron on the expected claw feet -- I'd seen that at Gus's, and he hadn't gotten around to installing a shower yet. I'd grown up with baths in my mother's house, until my stepfather installed a bona fide shower in my absence.

Here, a shower head rose directly from the outboard faucets, extending two arms around the bathtub to ring it with curtain rod. None of this was attached to the walls, really, and overall it was something I'd only seen in old movies, and my apologies to anyone offended by my description of your plumbing. This just doesn't happen anymore.

It worked in the usual way, though, and I got dressed. Hrm. I could do laundry, or I could just wait until Minneapolis. Do I have enough clean shirts and underwear? Yup. Besides, it was two floors down to the washer -- it could wait.

I nosed around the bookshelves. Hey, I have that Tarot book... here's a bunch of Campbell... Hey! Here are the Sandman graphic novels I haven't read. It'll go well with the morning e-mail and news check.

Noon came and went without the return of Tiffany and Katie; I figured they'd stopped for lunch. Tiffany's mother called, I had her call back and leave a message on the machine. Rez/John called; he needed to ask Tiffany's permission to come to dinner -- I also made him use the machine. Around one-thirty, Jhary buzzed at the bottom of the stairs -- okay, it was he who'd left his keys for me. I let him in and grinned, pouncing on the privilege of being the first to ask the question everyone else would be sure to ask for the next several hours:

"Where?"

"Seattle." He groused, followed by a thoughtful, "But it was the city I'd liked best..."

The problem with Seattle wasn't that it was Seattle -- he had genuinely liked the interview -- but that it was number five on the list, and wasn't a Big Name. I've never put much stock in Big Names, myself, figuring another school will likely do as well with less hype and expense, but he'd genuinely wanted it, and I tried to simultaneously be sympathetic to him while trying not to exult too hard that he'd be substantially nearer, well, California.

I'm greedy, but at least I'm honest.

I'd also been charged with a sacred task that fell well within the bounds of my expertise. As he gathered his forces for a telephonic family barrage, I asked, on behalf of his best beloved, "Have you eaten yet?" All right, self-interest would be served: I hadn't, and having someone else around made me devote enough attention to my body to work out I was hungry.

He hadn't, of course. I proposed a Chicago regional standby that he had, himself, proposed the night before: that I take myself a block or two down Belmont away from the El tracks and avail myself at Murphy's, a local landmark for bits of sausage in buns, most notably hot dogs and Polish sausages. We blatted the order at each other in bad parodies of Chicagoan accents, "Reg'l'r Pohlish, fries, anna Cohke." He allowed as how that was a good idea, so I let him make his phone calls in peace while I puttered about and did the last couple things to get ready to go.

Phone calls honorably discharged, we did exactly that. What goes with 'the Works' at Murphy's? Well...

Start with a noble example of the fine products of the Vienna sausage company, to wit, a quarter-pound Polish sausage. Split it, grill it over a fire (boiling is for Philistines and Cheese-Heads), and introduce it to a poppyseed bun, with a little mustard acting as a chaperone. Ketchup is anathema, although some will be provided for the fries.

Then your toppings. This apparently included the sort of miscellaneous pickled vegetable medley I'd only heretofore seen in English pubs, some medium-spicy pickled peppers that weren't pepperoncini, a healthy dose of celery salt, tomatoes, raw cucumbers, and lettuce. If a sprig of parsley on a T-bone is Australian for 'salad,' I reckoned, this must be Chicago for a similar idea. The fries were as they should be: slight crunch on the outside, fluffy potato on the inside. Cokes are the same everywhere, no surprise there.

I eyed the overlarge completed sausage sandwich warily. I have a double-jointed jaw and all, but this looked like quite the challenge, even so. I jettisoned the Iceberg lettuce as valueless filler, opened wide, and took a bite.

Hey, this was pretty damn good! The rest was summarily inhaled. The owner, apparently, had been approached by Japanese entrepeneurs, who wanted Japanese franchise rights, which he'd sold. They'd had to change things in translation to work better with Japanese sensibilities and the like, but Murphy's now had outposts in Hiroshima and Chiba.

Yes, Chiba City. Now, you too can have a Chicago dog to accompany a Gibsonian cyberpunk moment.

We went back home after that, awaiting the arrival of various and sundry people. After awhile, the buzzer rang -- again? It was Tiffany, who had also left me her keys, apparently, so I could go sightseeing, and Katie was with her. Apparently things had, and had always supposed to have been, rounded up at two, not noon, and they'd come home just after we'd left for Murphy's to a locked door. Er... oops?

We called John, who begged Tiffany for entry and was granted leave to join us. I've known John as Rez Pez, gallantly greedy grunting guildmaster of Retro's Troll "Guild," for several years, and he'd only just yesterday found out I was in town -- not to permit him entry would have been a tragedy, but I gather there had been some tension between Jon and Tiffany in the past, making the granting of extraordinary license a necessity. We told him how to approach by train (dispatching a sub-party was deemed unneccessary), and waited for Kadlin to finish work and come by that we might head out to Gino's.

Update: It turns out that all it was was that John had invited himself over without asking a couple times, and Tiffany just wanted to make sure he asked this time. My bad.

Meanwhile, Jhary let Tiffany in on the location of their new home. This was apparently the only city in the top ten on the list she hadn't tried looking into contacts for -- I grinned, and made the obligatory Discordian reference that obviously, it all came back to the University of Washington being number five on his list of choices. We all had a good laugh about that!

John came in by train and joined us, as did Kadlin. We trooped down to the L and took a train downtown to Geno's. I have to say I was rather disappointed by the food and the decor -- it's all well and good to encourage patrons to scribble graffiti on your walls, but quite another to maintain a clean, well-lit restaurant, which they didn't trouble themselves to do. We later learned that this restaurant had been franchised out to another family and was no longer owned by the original clan, which may have been the reason for the run-down appearance.

Here's a picture of John:

On the way back to the train, a homeless fellow asked us to buy the local homeless persons' paper. I handed him the leftovers instead -- while I won't give panhandlers money, i've been known to give actual food from time to time, either leftovers or things I buy especially for them. Maybe that makes me a soft touch, but I'd like to think it doesn't.

When the Red Line subway rumbled into Belmont's station, Kadlin bid us farewell -- she had to get up in the morning. After more gabbing and gossip-swapping at Jhary and Tiffany's place, the rest of us also fell asleep -- well, to bed in my case, reading another Sandman graphic novel...

Tomorrow, Minneapolis!