Chapter 14

New York
2003

‘HERBIE, KEEP THE fuckin’ noise down, will ya?’ Mitch pounded on the paper-thin wall. He could hear Herbie and his girlfriend like they were next to him in the bed, with Linda gasping and shrieking as Herbie panted and groaned with the effort of banging her.

I gotta get some decent sleep, he thought blearily, but now he was awake, he couldn’t fall back into oblivion. The sound of Linda’s ecstatic orgasm gave him a rearing hard on, so he shuffled off a quick one for himself then lay back on his thin futon, trying not to worry about the restaurant.

It’s all right for Herbie. He’s so crazy, no one’s ever gonna make him in charge of shit. But me … they keep giving me more and more to do.

Mitch had given up on his ambitions years ago, but they still kept coming back to haunt him via the chefs and restaurants where he worked. No matter how hard he played, how many hours he stayed up drinking and smoking, it seemed that his natural talent for cooking made people notice him. And then they realised that he was also good at running a kitchen: his staff liked him (particularly the waitresses, who were always ready to welcome him into their beds) and worked hard for him, and he grasped quickly and easily the mechanics of running a business. He knew how to squeeze every bit of value from the food, how to turn valuable scraps and leftovers into delicious – and cheap – daily specials, and how to keep his staff costs low. All of this meant that he could keep the narrow restaurant margins as healthy as possible, and his bosses liked him for it. They were always sorry when he decided to move on, which he did often, usually because Herbie was fired and Mitch, from some inexplicable sense of loyalty, went with him.

Then somehow, after three years of bumming around the New York restaurant scene, he’d got a job in a classy midtown joint called the Greywell Brasserie, where the head chef, Patrice, ruled by terror and the sonic pitch of his screams. He was a crazy guy, a bona fide psychotic Frenchman who yelled and spat during service if things didn’t go his way, threatening his sous chefs with knives if he didn’t like the way they worked. But he cooked like an angel – real, classical French stuff, a world away from the burgers that Mitch had started out flipping, or the fries he’d learned to turn out by the basket full back home. He felt his old enthusiasm, long dormant and kept that way by the shit he still liked to smoke, stir and awaken as he became excited by what Patrice could teach him.

‘You gotta go to France, man,’ the chef would drawl to him as he sucked down another glass full of the rich red wine he loved while they sat in their favourite late-night drinking dive after the restaurant was closed. His accent was a curious mix of French and New York slang. ‘I’m telling you, Mitch, you can’t cook until you’ve learned ze French way. You should go to Paris. I got friends zere, I can get you a place if you want one.’

‘Maybe.’ Mitch took a long toke on his Camel, sucking it in like a diver pulling on his oxygen tube. He puffed out, his knees jerking and his fingers tapping the counter. He still found it so hard to come down after seven hours in the kitchen. The whisky helped. He lifted his glass to his mouth and drank.

‘You gotta do it, Mitch! You got talent, eet’s true. But wizzout learning French cuisine …’ Patrice gave a Gallic shrug. ‘You can’t make ze big time.’

‘I don’t have to go to France. I could go to catering school.’

‘Uh-huh.’ The chef laughed derisorily. ‘Oui. But you wanna learn to turn out avocado mousse, cut tomatoes into roses and cry when your fucking soufflés sink? Fuck zat sheet! Go to France and get your fucking ’ands dirty, man.’

Mitch stared at him, then shrugged. ‘Maybe. We’ll see.’ The truth was, he didn’t want to go anywhere. He liked it in New York just fine, even if he was still sharing dives with Herbie and looking down the barrel of his thirtieth birthday – now only two years away – with no savings and no real idea of what he was going to do with his future. Maybe partying and living the single life would get boring in a while, but he was in no hurry to pack it in just yet.

Once he was up, there was no point in hanging around the apartment with Linda there. The place felt crowded with the three of them so Mitch decided to go for a walk uptown to Central Park, get some clean air in his lungs.

He felt like he was wandering into a strange country as he made his way up the broad sidewalks into the more expensive part of town. Did he really live in the same city as all these people? These were daytimers, who got up at normal hours and went to bed before midnight. Mitch felt grey and unhealthy as he wove his way through the tourists and the office workers, aware that he was looking jaded by his nocturnal, hard-drinking, hard-living lifestyle. He was dazed by the colour and noise of the outside world.

He stared into the shop windows as he passed: impossibly slender mannequins modelled the latest fashions. Who the hell really looks like that? he wondered, but then he realised that there were girls climbing out of discreetly expensive cars and tottering into the boutiques who were just as slim and unreal-looking as the pretend ones. They had glossy curtains of highlighted hair, immaculate, velvety skin, and whiter-than-white eyes and teeth. Huge handbags in exotic leathers – snake, crocodile, ostrich – hung off their waif-like arms, and they balanced on the kind of shoes that no one who did anything sensible for a living could possibly wear.

Rich bitches, he thought darkly. He saw plenty of them in the restaurant: sleek little honeys who only ate the meat on their plate, or demanded food off the menu, or simply returned everything untouched. Dried up harpies, he told himself. They’re not real. You don’t get to be that way by eating and drinking and acting like a normal human being. Then he laughed at himself. And how much of a normal human being am I?

He walked on, eager for greenness and nature, resolutely turning his back on the Park Avenue princesses. They were nothing more to him than dolls.

But those slender legs and the smooth, golden skin must have stirred something in him because when he got to the restaurant that night, he pulled Willa, his favourite waitress, to their regular meeting place in the dry store and humped her hard up against the wall, while she dug her fingers into his back and rubbed herself against him until they both came fast and hard.

‘Seemed like you needed that, Mitch,’ she said, smiling, as she straightened her clothes afterwards.

He grinned at her. ‘Maybe I did.’

‘You know, we could always make this little arrangement more … permanent, if you like?’ She spoke casually as she put her hand to her hair, making sure it was still neat.

‘Uh-uh.’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, sweetheart, I’m doing you a favour. You don’t want to get mixed up with a dead beat like me. I’m no good for any woman – not in the long term, anyhow. You’ve just had the best of me, and that’s the truth.’