merguez, and some Southern French Mediterranean dishes. It was clearly
hopeless. Even my boss, the deli-master, knew. I think he was stoically
flushing money down the tubes to keep his wife out of his hair.
Things had apparently gotten so grim at Tom's after my departure that
Dimitri joined me in my Bogie-themed hell. I was now within walking
distance of readily available heroin, so I was reasonably satisfied, and
Dimitri, while not exactly enjoying the fame and fortune I'd promised
him in P-town, was soon getting regular blow jobs from one of the Rick's
Café waitresses. Life was not all bad.
I was three for three for my last three restaurants. Fortunately, I was still
young, so I could comfortably blame other factors on my unhappy
success rate: bad owners, bad location, ugly clientele, crappy decor . . . I
could live with that. I still had hope.
My problem was the money. I was making too much of it. Instead of
doing the smart thing, taking a massive pay cut to go work for one of the
now numerous emerging stars of American cooking, I continued my
trajectory of working for a series of knuckleheaded, wacko, one-lung
operations, usually already hemorrhaging when I arrived. Instead of
running off to France, or California, or even uptown to work in one of
the three-star Frog ponds as commis—the kind of Euro-style stage that
helps build résumés and character, I chased the money. I was hooked on
a chef-sized paycheck—and increasing dosages of heroin. I was
condemned to become Mr Travelling Fixit, always arriving after a first
chef had screwed things up horribly, the wolves already at the door. I
was more of an undertaker than a doctor; I don't think I ever saved a
single patient. They were terminal when I arrived; I might, at best, have
only prolonged their death throes.
Having only recently achieved my dream of becoming a chef, I
disappeared into the wilderness, feeding on the expiring dreams of a
succession of misguided souls—a hungry ghost, yearning for money, and