Isa’s Noodle Brothel: Part 2
On losing lunch, love and teeth
If you haven’t read Part 1…you shall not pass. Read it now.
My eyes fall away from Isa’s face to absorb more visual data. As it collects, my brain struggles — feverishly flipping through archives and card catalogs of past experiences. It’s a bone yard. It’s dark. It’s a bar. It’s a dark, basement bar full of bones and dead animals. She’s big. I’m in a basement on a remote island in Iceland with a giantess. No one will hear my screams. I close my eyes and attempt to formulate an intelligent question or explanation. But my brain is still frantically trying to get on top of this. There is no plan of action, so I default to observation.
A grey squirrel sits frozen atop the large horseshoe bar in the center of the room. Steely-eyed, it stares at me, little red boxing gloves on its front paws, ready to strike. Skulls checker the left wall — some of them I recognize — a cow, a horse, a giraffe, a wildcat of some kind. A dozen puffins fly in freeze frame circular formation just above my head at the entrance. The right wall is a patchwork of photographs. I assume they are past customers or customers who have passed. Each person different from the next — different colors, countries, shapes, sizes, beliefs and hopes, but they all have one thing in common — a big toothy grin hovering over a giant bowl of noodles. Below the wall of smiles are two pigs the size of hay bales. Facing each other, they stand at eternal attention. Each admiring the giant white angel wings attached to the other.
I step closer to the bar. It is a molasses-colored oak with a strange resin top. Within the resin are…pearls? Pebbles? I step up to the bar and run my hand across the surface as if following the lines in a book. My hand freezes. Not pebbles. Not pearls. But teeth. Hundreds, no thousands of teeth meticulously arranged.
It is a mastication mosaic. I purse my lips and my brain gently asks why I didn’t just go to Bali, and also why I never took a basic self-defense class, or ever read the chapter in The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook on how to escape from giant Icelandic serial killers. I’m sure there is a chapter on that?
I turn to Isa. She is smiling at my inability to make sense of anything.
Isa asks through a laugh, “Is this totally freaking you out?”
A scene from Jeunet’s film Delicatessen plays in my head. My adrenal glands are a pair of Rottweiler’s waiting for the command. Instead of running, I nod and allow her to expound.
She places her bag at the feet of a pink flamingo wearing rain boots next to the door. She wrestles her sweater and tosses it on one of the many warthog tusks mounted to the wall. Her electric blue apron hangs lifeless from the lower jaw of a mounted hyena skull. She grabs it, swoops it over her head and walks behind the bar.
She begins, “To start, I love bones. I love taxidermy. I especially love teeth. And I love to cook. I spent the first half of my life in South Africa. Neither of my parents were hunters, but for some odd reason, I took a fancy to…blood, guts, and bones. I watched a lot of YouTube videos on childbirth. My mom was amazing. On my 4th birthday, I told her I wanted a brain cake and eyeball cupcakes. Lucky for me, she never had dreams of raising a fairy princess. The brain cake was delicious.”
She preps her space to make my lunch. Figuring I am safe, I take a deep breath, pull up a stool and commit.
She shuffles pots, pans and large jars of ingredients. Eggs, shiitake mushrooms, fish flakes. She disappears under the bar for a few seconds and emerges with green onions, garlic and ginger. Knife in hand, she chops and continues. “I was sad when our neighbor’s dog died, but it was mostly because I didn’t get to see the body before it was buried. I wanted to see the blood. I kept waiting for my mom to tell me when I could dig up the bones. Strange, hey?”
She interrupt herself. “Oh! I’m so rude. Let me get you a drink. Einstok or tap water.”
Before I answer, she manifests a frosty mug, pops the bottle cap, pours and slides it in my direction. I sip and listen.
She resumes her prep and storytelling. She spoke of her teenage years in Iceland. Her family moved here when she was 11. Her noodle blonde hair and fair skin made it easy for her to blend in aesthetically. She found the Icelandic kids to be kind, but a bit weird with a dark sense of humor. This suited her. Though her size intimidated a lot of people, finding friends was surprisingly easy because she was friendly and loud. Her dad ignited her love for cooking and hard work. Her mother inspired her to be resourceful and travel the world. When she was 18, she and two friends spent a year in Japan disappearing into the culinary jungles of Tokyo. Two years later, she found herself back in Iceland. One of her friends brought back a Tibetan boyfriend, and the three of them opened a tiny ramen house along an unnamed alley in Reykjavik.
I interrupt, “What did you do in the second year? Before you returned to Iceland.”
“Ah, yes,” she reassures. “I’m getting to that.”
She prepares the broth; gently sautéing the onion, garlic, carrots and celery. She adds the water and as it heats, in goes the cod carcass along with a scattering of bonito flakes and kombu, skimming every so often to keep the broth clear. I sip my beer and my mouth dreams of umami. The pots of water she put on earlier begin to boil. She tosses some thinly sliced cabbage into one and udon noodles into the other. After tossing the blanched cabbage and chopped vegetables with ginger, garlic, and onion, she baptizes the mix with sesame oil and soy sauce. Goyza dumplings are on the way.
She stuffs, seals, sears and boils the dumplings and says, “I worked nights in Tokyo. Because I knew I needed to find work after my year in Japan, I spent my mornings looking online for contract jobs in America. One ad in particular caught my eye. It read: Special Ops Rodent Trainer, 1-year contract, nights and weekends, training provided (TFC). I had no idea what TFC meant until much later, but it was based in Ft. Myers, Florida, it paid well, and I thought, ‘I have no idea what this is, but why not?’ So, I applied, went through three rounds of interviews via Skype, and I was hired.”
I feel the weight of glassy stares. I look around the bar, and there they are. Mice. Everywhere. Fixed stares and poses, like the end of Madonna’s song “Vogue” never really ended for them. One is perched atop a swing above the bar, leaning back — tiny hind legs in the air. A dungareed pair sits in a canoe by the cash register. Their whiskers are on point and still as their tiny front paws grip the paddles. A dozen or so fly suspended in frozen bliss, each with a pair of tiny moth-like wings and a small burlap pouch cinched around their portly waists. It is taxidermy meets Cirque du Soleil.
Throughout my visual exploration and her culinary mission, she continues. “Going from Tokyo to Ft. Myers was quite a culture shock for me. I went from owl & kitten cafes and giant robots to the winter estate of Thomas Edison and spray-tanned geriatrics. It was wild.”
She has my full attention. I’m already dipping my third Goyza in her homemade “soya-skyr” fusion sauce. I taste the adventure and it’s delicious. I chew and sip as she assembles my bowl. First the broth — clear, fish-based goodness. Next, a rainbow of vegetables followed by the noodles. Last, a bouquet of toppings — green onion, purple carrot and spinach confetti, a heart-shaped sheet of nori, and a drizzle of toasted sesame and chili oil. As she places the bisected, soft-boiled egg in my bowl, she double checks to make sure I want a soft-boiled egg. I smile and confirm. Just before she parts with her creation, she sprinkles black sesame seeds and plops an iridescent orange nasturtium flower in the middle of the bowl. She smiles and presents.
She is proud. This process makes her happy. Whether or not I enjoy my meal seems secondary. Spoon in the left and chopsticks in the right, I take my first slurp. And just like all the little mice, I am frozen in a moment of pure, unbridled joy. How can soup do this? She laughs because she knows. With a full mouth, I mime my astonishment and she laughs again.
“Good,” she says.
I want this kind of confidence so I continue to slurp and listen.
“Where was I?” She looks up at her mice as if waiting for them to prompt her.
“Oh yes. Long story short, I get picked up at the airport by a really nice and very small, black man named Henny. I mean, most people are small to me, but this dude seemed really small. He was the last one to interview me and I remembered him having a deep voice. Dark green eyes, really wide smile. We were both a little surprised by each other, I think. It’s hard to explain, but it’s kind of like we were looking into a mirror, seeing that we had the same surprised reaction, and we caught each other doing it. So, we had a good laugh, and an awkward handshake-turned-hug.”
I take a break from the slurping and prod regarding what the job entails.
She grins and asks cheekily, “Is this my story or yours?”
My eyes narrow and through a sideways grin I reply, “Yours. Carry on.”
“Right,” she confirms, “so this is where things get weird. I had a night flight so we arrive at the training center at about 10:00. I’ll never forget the way the air stuck to my skin when I got out of the truck. It was so humid. Crickets singing all around me, the smell of night jasmine — it was magical. We parked near Edison’s botanical garden and he led me to this gigantic banyan tree draped in orchids.”
She slows her cadence. “Henny walks right up to this banyan tree, in between two of the roots. And these roots are crazy. They stand up from the ground like giant talons. Anyway, he pulls at this retractable key card thing on his belt loop, waves it in front of a low-hanging orchid.”
At this point, I put my spoon down and furrow my brow.
This day cannot possibly get any weirder.
I wait for it.
Isa, also with a hint of disbelief of her experience, motions with her hands and exclaims, “and the effing tree opens up! He walks halfway IN THE TREE and he looks at me. And I’m just standing there like giant…thunderstruck banana. He laughs and then motions for me to follow.”
She pauses.
I push, “And??”
She shrugs, “So, I follow.”
Stay tuned for the third and final part of Isa’s Miso Brothel in the next post!
