own with the best of the lifers. I could destroy and serve a nice piece of
veal or a Dover sole as fast, if not faster than any of them. I was working
every station in the kitchen, keeping up with the ugliest, meanest twenty-
year veterans anyone back in Provincetown had even dreamed of. I was a
line stud, an all-around guy, a man's man. I was on top of the world.
On the other hand, I was tired. By now, I was going in to work at 7:30
A.M. and working straight through until midnight almost every day. As
soon as I'd finish up in the Luncheon Club or the pastry shop, the chef
seemed always to be wanting to take me aside and squeeze me for
another night on the hot-line. After weeks of this, and still not taking
home over 200 dollars on payday, I finally balked. Unable to convince
me, the chef summoned me for a private chat with the boss, a sinister
Italian with yet another thick accent. The boss looked up at me from his
desk, fixing me in a shark like gaze and said, "I understand you don't
want to help us tonight by staying late?"
I was tired, I explained, and in love, I added, hoping to appeal to that
romantic Mediterranean nature I'd read and heard about. "My girlfriend,"
I said, "I don't see her anymore . . . and I miss her . . . I have," I added, "a
life . . . outside of this place." I went on to describe going home each
night to a sleeping girl, rolling exhausted into the sheets, still stinking
from work, and how I arose at six with the girl still asleep, never
exchanging so much as a word before leaving for work again, for yet
another double. This was no good for a relationship, I said.
"Look at me," said my boss, as if the nice suit and the haircut and the
desk explained everything. "I am married ten years to my wife." He
smiled. "I work all the time. I never see her . . . she never sees me." He
paused now to show me some teeth, his eyes growing more penetrating
and a little scary. "We are very happy."
What my boss meant by this little glimpse into his soul, I have no idea.
But he impressed me. I worked the double, figuring maybe this was what