It would always take to the end of the Chef's visit for the main body of reserve be dropped for a moment.  The visit with open with the joy of his return and the promise of a glass of wine, the activity of friends joining him.  "Mister Ted..."  And in the last five minters, as I have the privilege of being behind the bar to keep him company over a last Stella before he heads to Dulles Airport, our bond is eternal and timeless thing.  He shows me pictures of his farm, the vineyard, the cork trees, the farmhouse, low like an Irish cottage but with tile rather than thatch for a roof, some interior renovations.  He encourages me to download WhatsApp, as he, after Cambridge Analytica, no longer on Facebook.  The two ladies I work with, approach me while he is there at this last visit to his bar, and they are insistent about me seeing something of the new computer system, the Jazz Night menu.  "Come on, really?" I say, standing up for myself once.  "Look, I pick up the slack for all the other bartenders...  Just please leave me be so I can enjoy the Chef's company for his last five minutes..."  The solid shorter one, "Ted, do you remember that book I gave you, yes, The Tools..."  "Yes, I know, Alina, face your fears as if they were a cloud... I know, but I just want to hang and talk to Bruno.."

And then the older one, into a reiki-like energy exercise thing from Japan, in her bovine sweetness drags me over to the screen, and I go, yeah, yeah, appetizer, entree, yeah, I think I get it...

And then with a hug, let us know if we can do anything to help (you with your mom)... and with an obvious respect for what I do, even if I am silly and foolish and temperamental at times, placing me on solid ground, as long as I wish, he departs and it has been a good visit, though I missed the early part of it visiting with mom.


The night of hearing of Bourdain's death, tired from going out into Georgetown the night before with an old girlfriend who is doing well now, walking, too much pollen, I put a shirt and pants on and go by Bistrot Du Coin around 12:30 at night.  I imagine there will be a gathering of chefs, and the guys worked for the DC Les Halles, and knew the man.  But even though they are supposed to serve dinner from a late night menu until one, the woman hostess tells me, sorry we are closed.  Okay.  There is one guy at the bar, and he is paying his check, and the stools are up on the table already.  And I am feeling very sad.

I walk down the avenue, past a homeless guy I sometimes nod to--he is vaping smoke, and smiling and I say hi, how you doing, man.  Back home in the apartment on the quiet street, I have a pack of ground lamb that will expire in a couple of days.  I pour myself a glass of wine and set to making a ground lamb version of Navarin,  given what I have in the kitchen, onion, beef stock, red wine, frozen peas, tomato sauce and paste, zucchini and squash, and rosemary and thyme and bay leaf plucked on my little sad walk back along R Street in the quietness of night, only one pedestrian passing as I climb the little cobblestone hill of 22nd.

Grease rises as I brown the lamb, but I make my headway through the improvised recipe in the order Martha Stewart gives me over my iPhone, and I hope for the best, bringing it to a splattering boil there in the green Crueset dutch oven, and then letting it simmer away as I drink a bit of Beaujolais, finding Anthony Bourdain On-Demand, in the Basque Country, and in Uruguay, and I cannot believe he is gone, and that his voice will utter no more, and no more of the fresh tales that always soothed me and interested me and were a pat on the back for what I do, both as a barman in a French Bistrot, and, and maybe more importantly, as an honorable attempted writing guy trying to prove his liberal arts education did not go to total waste.

It is a rug pulled out, from underneath many, I'm sure.


The writer has a private life.  There's  no way around that.   There has to be time for work.  And perhaps sometimes his work is largely to understand himself, to understand, why, why write, what's the point.