2020-09-15 - Teach a Man to Fish...

What do you call two assholes in a boat with a can of bait (unopened), fishing poles (uncast) and no clue as to what they're doing? Itzhak and Ignacio.

With a sigh Iggy looks to the taller of the pair of New Yorkers and says "Thank you for letting me finally drive the boat. Shit, maybe I should switch off cars and just do this. Float around on my ass and think about thinking all afternoon." There is a sigh of relief as he admits, "You know I ain't been able to swear in public for a fucking month?" Yeah, it is clearly feeling good to get all that out. Still he's got it easy and he knows it. he's living with the other side of the rumor mill's wickedness to not complain. Looking up to Itzhak he asks with a frown. "How's the arm feelin, hermano?"

Itzhak accepted this proposition with his usual grace ("I've known you since you were seventeen, de Santos, don't act like you know how to fish!"). But accept it he did, because at this point, what exactly is he going to refuse Ignacio? Not a hell of a lot. So he watched a few videos on YouTube and here he is, regarding the poles and the bait like another man would regard a complex tension equation.

"A fuckin' month," he agrees gloomily. "At least nobody expects a Russian spy to behave himself." He's still got the cast on his arm. Now he has a faint tan in the shape of the lattice. "Eh, it hurts," he says dismissively, "whaddayagonna do. How's the everything?"

("Shaaaaddaup!" with a handwave is the retort. it's New Yorker for 'love you too. I know.') Ignacio tries not to ask for a lot. while his dad and his brother had a tumultuous relationship he did teach Ignacio the key to being a good man is taking care of your customers, your people. Dad was imperfect at it. Ignacio? He got that part but taking care of himself? Well that's harder. Seeing Itzhak newly out of the cast? well he's starting to thing he's spent more time in a cast himself, than outside of one and the sympathy is there. "Sucks man. Just think the more you take care of it now the less PT is going to be a total dickmunch. You got this, brother."

Looking at the bait he opens it and frowns. "I need a volunteer. The glimmer ripples faintly and...absolutely nothing happens. "C'mon I need a Catfish E'wormdeen to volunteer here... " Looking up he shares, "Worms are not noble creatures." He looks back at the jar to mull the question over and hunts the good. That's his practice right. He is a bit proud in sharing, "I, um, I got my 6 month chip at this morning's meeting. it was... it was really cool. It feels like it should be a weird thing to be proud of but... it's good. Real good."

Itzhak, who fears no insect crawling, flying, or burrowing, digs into the substrate and comes up with a handful. Two or three fat wax worms wriggle in his palm, and he plucks one up to offer it to Ignacio. "Stab it with ya hook. I guess fish are like snakes, they work on scent and motion. So if something's bloody and squirming, they can't resist." He shakes the spare worm back into the can to do this himself. Splurtch goes the hook. The worm thrashes. Itzhak drops it in the water.

Then he smiles, lopsided, private. "Six months. Fuck yeah." The glance he shoots Ignacio is all pride, baby. "You been through seven flavors of hell, tateleh. You done good."

But find an insect riding a carousel...

Ignacio doesn't point that out. SOME DAY he is going to Seattle and he's riding one dammit. Still there's a sigh and he reaches in and wrinkles one eye, "Dude so gross. it's kinda neat. It's like spaghetti that doesn't want to be there. He pulls out a worm he can skewer instead of needing to tie it in a knot around the damn hook. He doesn't enjoy it but he's gonna do this. Deep breath! Okay it's over. hard part done...sort of.

The worm falls off the hook and he goes to catch it, it drops and he does manage to fish around and get it OFF the floor of the boar to try again...Success! Okay! Looking up to Itzhak with the appreciation in the quiet corners of his expression he answer s him, "Thanks. They had this little cake. it was cool. It was... I dunno it was weird like I didn't realize how bad things got until... last fall. We had our fight and Thomisina had to pick me up off... it wasn't okay." He doesn't finish the thought but admitting how messed up things got? It might always be difficult. "Wasn't fair. What I did to me. You guys. I'm sorry." It does feel good to say that. Looking at the hook he gives it a little toss out into the water with a bloop! watching it. "Hard to believe I had to fucking die to a guy parallel parking a city bus on my ass to go 'oh hey, this is a little messed up'"

Itzhak tilts his head and his eyebrows in that way he does, that silent 'ehhhhh'. "You know somethin'? After my pop died, I put my family through hell, too. The shit I did? If there's one thing in my life I could go back and change it'd be that. Wasn't good. Wasn't fair." His eyes are on his line, watching it trace little ripples in the water. "I can't change it. You can't change the shit you did. We just gotta live with it. But you don't gotta be sorry, Naishka. Not to me. Not for that. You just gotta keep getting back up."

Ignacio looks up while his hook dangles in the water doing 0 things impressively. Itzhak doesn't talk about his dad a lot tho. He remembers some of the early stories and really? Well fathers are a difficult thing for either of them to talk about. Itzhak is every bit his brother Rafael is too having been through the long slog that is the rise and fall and climb again.

"A lot isn't fair I've noticed." He chews, carefully, on the side of his lip that has never really worked right thoughtfully. "I'm still sorry man, but... I'm working on it." Brown eyes follow where the line enters the water and disappears. "I wish I could.... I wish I could have learned differently if that makes sense? Wish we all could, but I think your dad would be pretty proud of you. Traditional? Naw, but I don't know they can be mad at us for doin the best we can."

There's a long pause and he says picking up the mood a bit. "Yeah my parents asked about you. I lied to them and told them you were being responsible." There's a wry, dimpled grin that widens. "Ernesto told me to tell you what's up. He's got a kid now!"

Once, Itzhak told Ignacio that his dad died in a drunk driving accident, when Itzhak was fourteen. Just the one time, he told him. Once in a while he talks about him, about how Yusef Rosencrantz could speak Hebrew as easily as English. How he had a beautiful voice. How he never raised his tone or a hand to Itzhak, even when Itzhak richly deserved it, little hooligan that he was. How he'd been in Vietnam, but would never talk about it, and by the time Itzhak was old enough to hear some of the things that happened to him in that war, Yusef had been dead for years.

Not often. But once in a while.

Itzhak, now, slouching over the fishing pole and holding it lightly in the fingers of his right hand as if it's his bow, glances at Ignacio with eyebrows tipped up. "Maybe," he murmurs. "I saw him, yannow. Dios de los Muertos. When--when Mariska came, too." And Ruiz's father (Finch's grandfather, though nobody knew, then), and other of the beloved dead. And Itzhak had claimed Ruiz away from Erin for a few precious moments' dance, and things were so early between them that it was absolutely an imposition on his part and yet Ruiz had taken his hand when he asked. And Marissa's shade got Ignacio to play his horn and Itzhak joined in. It had all been creepy, disturbing. It had been healing and beautiful.

"He said he was proud of me," he says, soft, so soft he can't be heard above the sound of the water slapping the sides of their boat. Then, surfacing from the memories, he laughs. "No shit? Ernesto spawned?"

And then his line goes bloop! yanked underwater. Itzhak grabs the pole, one-handed. "Uh--is that a fish?" It's a fish!

Ignacio lets the smile wrest on his face. the tense love/guilt relationship Ignacio has with his own dad? It's trying sometimes. Maybe it'll sort out. "Ya know, you mentioned that but I figured you'd talk about it when it was time, ya know? He know your'e trying to save a bunch of schmucks from themselves? I mean I think... it's complicated, but I'm glad he sees what we see in ya man." The grin stretching wider he goes to finish that sentence when there's a bloop off the side of the boat. He leans and looks and then looks back to his line and then Itzhak's . Why isn't his blooping??! "Hope it's a fish and not something bigger. Really not in a mood for big scary thing du jour." Officially he says to Itzhak, "Du jour is a French word that means, 'too bad you're getting a big scary thing'."

"Heh, yeah Ernesto spawned. I saw pics. Kid looks like his ma thank god." The grin gets wider on one side at the long distance affectionate ribbing. He'll live vicariously through him. "Was a good holiday. I wonder if I'll see her there again I dunno. Really changed how I've been thinking about this thing with my pops ya know?" Still there's the matter at hand. "Pull it up. If it's a boot I'll work on finding the other one and we'll have a free pair of shoes."

It is a fish and it's a hefty one from the way it bends the fishing pole. Itzhak cusses in Yiddish, laughing, surprised. "What'd you do, de Santos?! This is one a your jokes ain't it!" It isn't and he knows it isn't but things got too real there for a minute and now he's got to retreat into random insults and the giving of rations of shit. He stomps on the pole's butt so he can wrangle it with that plus his one good arm. "Yeah I used to know a French guy giving me a big scary thing!"

The fish, breaking the surface and thrashing, is a big gorgeous Chinook, all sleek and silver and meaty. Itzhak blinks at it in awe. "...it's beautiful."

Ignacio almost drops his damn pole laughing, "I swear, it's not me. Also how?" There is that incredulous look given to his pal there. Then out of the water breaks this giant... fish... sunnovabitsh threatening to rock the whole damn boat. Holding his free hand to the boat he looks at the fish and there's an unbelievable placid calm that drops in the area when he says "Stop!" ...well the fist stops fighting. Ignacio stops arguing and just sits in the boat and boggles at Itzhak holding the fish. "Well... NOW what?!" They didn't plan this far ahead!