It was oppressively hot on the street, a hundred degrees and humid. Inside the basement kitchen, with the ovens on, the grill fired up, the broiler cranking away, and the steamtable and the dishwasher giving off clouds of moist, hot air, it was far worse.
Tommy's chef jacket was soaked through. It clung to his back and shoulders; chafed him under his collar. The bandanna he'd tied around his head didn't prevent the sweat from trickling into his eyes, clouding his vision. Leaning over the grill, he removed the last slices of fennel and eggplant and stepped over to the small hand sink in the corner. He took off his bandanna and the wet towel around his neck and ran them under cold water. He put them both in the small reach-in freezer. He slipped the charred, black skins off some red peppers, covered the peppers with olive oil while he waited. After a few minutes, he took the bandanna and the towel out of the freezer and put them back on.
The chef wasn't hot at all, though he was sweating. He was cold; his teeth were chattering. He stood directly in front of the broiler, arms crossed tightly across his chest, hugging his shoulders. He rocked back and forth on his feet, like a sailor in rough seas. It felt like the marrow in his legs was going to explode, like it was swelling up inside the bones. Any second, he thought, there would be a bang and a long hissing sound, the bones would crack, and it would all come rushing out. Maybe that would relieve the pressure. Anything would be better than this.
Tommy looked over at his suffering chef, huddled and trembling in front of the broiler. The chef's nose was running, of course; his eyes were tearing, and he had just come off a twenty-minute sneezing jag that had the whole damn floor staff asking if he had a cold. Watching the chef's discomfort, he thought about hell and wondered how much worse it could be.
The chef was around less and less these days. Tommy officially picked up an additional shift for which he was paid, and another shift and a half worth of extra work and overtime for which he was not. The chef was just not holding it together, and the only person left in the place who seemed not to know about his heroin addiction was Harvey. The chef was hitting Harvey for an advance every week, usually only a day or two after payday. And this, when he was taking home what, six, seven hundred dollars a week? Tommy had noticed that he'd begun to turn in dummied-up receipts at the bar for items never purchased. He'd even been adding on ghost shifts to the schedule.
"You're gonna be scheduled for an extra prep shift," the chef had told him, "only you're not gonna work it. We split the difference." Naturally, Tommy had gone along with it. He felt bad for the chef; he was dissolving into his constituent parts, for Chrissakes. People on the floor were talking about it, shaking their heads when the chef walked by, smiling knowingly when the chef was on the nod. Not too cool.
Why the chef was trying to do without today, Tommy didn't know. He did this every once in a while. He'd come in junk-sick, trying to make it through the shift, knocking back Sea Breezes and Daiquiris and beer after beer, unable to work. He could only wield a knife for a few minutes at a time. He'd wander around the restaurant, his clipboard under his arm, like the Flying Dutchman. He thought the clipboard made it look like he was doing something important, something supervisory, conceptualizing, he sometimes said. He couldn't really even do that. He could only drink and suffer.
Tommy saw the chef step back from the broiler. He turned and gave Tommy a familiar look. He'd had enough.
"Cover me, alright?" he said to Tommy. "I gotta get a few things at the store. Back in a few minutes."
The chef slipped quietly out of the kitchen. Tommy was relieved. At least, when he got back, he'd be able to do some work. It was a heavy prep day. Ricky had scorched a five-gallon batch of soupe de poisson. Tommy had to put a whole new batch on the fire. Ricky had just started piping seafood mousse into the vol-au-vents; he was no help. Mel was shaving a big block of semisweet chocolate in the walk-in; he'd be lucky if he got through the shift without cutting his own hand off. Little Mohammed was hip-deep in salad greens, singing quietly in Arabic.
"I hate these fucking potatoes," said Tommy, when the chef had returned.
"What's the matter with them?" asked the chef.
"They stick to the fucking pan!" said Tommy. He scraped some burnt slices of potato into the trash with a spatula from a black, pressed steel pan.
"They love them," said the chef. "And they love them at three-fifty a pop."
"They eat enough a the damn things," said Tommy. He laid some more slices in a clean, freshly buttered pan and arranged them carefully in overlapping concentric circles. He drizzled clarified butter over them and sprinkled them with kosher salt. He opened the oven door and had to reach around a foil-topped hotel pan of duck confit to pull out another two pans of potato, burning his wrist on the shelf in the process. He put two more pans of potato in the oven and kicked the door closed with his foot.
"You know how much a potato costs us?" said the chef, his wine reductions for the beurres giving off blue flame in front of him. "Like ten bucks a bushel. You do the math. It's a moneymaker."
The chef was feeling better. He put a cassette in the machine and hopped around his station to Stevie Ray Vaughan, cutting confetti vegetables in time to the music.
"How many orders of pommes you got?" he asked Tommy.
"Twenty-five," answered Tommy.
"What's veg?"
"Grilled asparagus."
"Cool. Where's the new Mel?"
"He's still in the walk-in. He's shaving the chocolate for the tone."
"Christ. . . You'd better send out a search party, see if he's still alive in there," said the chef. "Probably tripped over his dick and broke his fuckin neck."
"Leave him alone," suggested Tommy. "At least he's not in the way.
Tommy opened the oven again and removed the duck confit. He peeled off the foil and gently removed a duck leg from the rendered fat. The skin on the legs had just begun to break away from the knuckle.
"Perfect," said the chef, smiling, "Smells good, too. Gimme some a that. I think we better do a little quality control here. I think I can actually eat."
The chef picked a piece off the board and popped it in his mouth. "That's really good," he said. Tommy nibbled at the few shreds of meat left on the bone. Ricky, finished with the mousse, came over and grabbed a piece for himself.
"You save the extra skin for cracklins?" asked the chef.
Tommy pointed to a small metal crock. "All fried and ready to go," he said.
Service began. The waitrons set up their iced watercress, sprigs of fresh thyme and rosemary, butter curls, and chopped parsley. Mel returned from the walk-in, wearing a Band-Aid over one knuckle. But there were no orders right away. After a short while there was an order for two soups and a half order of pasta; then nothing.
After a few more minutes, the chef beckoned Tommy back to the office. "Let's go over the specials for tomorrow," he said, grinning.
Seated behind the desk, the chef put his grimy workboots up on a stack of magazines and took out his cigarette pack. He reached into the space between the cellophane and the pack and removed a glassine bag of dope. He got a cut-down piece of a plastic straw out of his desk, stuck it in the bag, and snorted most of the contents. He held out what was left to Tommy, the straw sticking out of the bag.
"You want a poke at this? You can kill it."
Tommy thought about it for a moment. "No, thanks," he said. "I'm trying to be good."
The chef replaced the bag in his cigarette pack, nodding his head in approval. He pursed his lips and said, "You know, I got myself on a waiting list for a methadone program."
Surprised, Tommy said, "Oh, yeah? That's great."
"I went in and signed up the other day. But I gotta wait till a spot opens. I don't know when that's gonna be."
"At least you're on the list, right?"
"Yeah . . . " sighed the chef. "That's something . . . " He rubbed his face with both hands. "I gotta get off this shit, that's for sure. It's taking away all my money, all my time. You know, I forgot to call in the fish order the other night? I had to run leftover stuff... I lucked out, we were dead or I never would of had enough. Can you see me eighty-sixing fish? The shit is fucking my whole life up."
"When do you think you're gonna start?" asked Tommy. "How long you have to wait?"
"I don't know, I don't know. They said they'll call me . . . when there's a space. They're gonna call me."
"You gonna make it? You can hang in till there's a space?"
The chef shrugged. "Don't have much choice . . ." He looked up at Tommy and lowered his voice. "You know, I can hardly even get a hard-on anymore?"
Shocked by this confession, Tommy didn't know what to say.
The chef continued, undaunted. "At first . . . at first. . . it's good for sex . . . but later . . . you know . . . " The chef shook his head, sadly. "You know, I was gonna ask Cheryl out the other night. . . Stupid, right? I got all dressed up in clean jeans, put on a clean shirt. Even managed to save a few bucks I didn't spend on dope. I come all the way over from my place at the end of her shift, I was gonna go in, she's getting off, ask her out to the Crow or someplace . . . You know what happened?"
Tommy looked at the chef intently.
"I stood there. I just stood there out front a the restaurant. Afraid to come in . . . I mean, what if something happened? I go home with her or something, get her in the sack, my prick's just hanging there like a fuckin noodle . . ."
"So, what happened?" asked Tommy, quickly.
"I went home. Never even came in," sighed the chef. "A glorious and triumphant end to a glorious fuckin' day. Went home and watched Dobie Gillis and shot up." He shook his head and crinkled up his eyes, disgusted with himself. "Can you believe that?"