consecutive double shift—he was a goddamn Sistine Chapel of skin art.
And where am I going to find a convict without a tattoo? The Watergate
burglars weren't, to my knowledge, available.
Things only got worse. He came in the next day, obsessing about gold
chains and jewelry. My grill man had the usual ghetto adornments of the
day. "Where do you think that eggplant got all that gold?!" he raved,
spraying food and saliva as he talked. "Selling drugs. That shit is poison!
Mugging old ladies! I don't want that in my restaurant! Get him out!"
This was clearly impossible, and I sought counsel with one of the silent
partners who, as my boss had become increasingly distracted and
unpredictable, had grown noticeably less silent. He and his associates
had started to attend management meetings. "You hear what he wants me
to do?" I asked. The man just nodded and rolled his eyes,
sympathetically, I thought.
"Do nothing", he said, and then, with truly dangerous intonation, added,
"Aspeta," meaning "Wait" in Italian.
I didn't like the sound of that at all. He smiled at me, and I couldn't help
picturing my boss, slumped over a dashboard after one of those meetings
in a car they were all so fond of. When things came to a head a few days
later, my boss openly screaming in the middle of a crowded dining room
that he wanted all the tattooed guys and gold chain-wearers "Out! Now!"
I told him to pay me what he owed—I was leaving for good. He refused.
The silent partner came over, peeled off my pay and an extra hundred
from a fat roll in his suit pocket, and gave me a warm smile as he bade
me goodbye.
I don't know what happened to Billy's. It certainly never developed into a
worldwide chain as my crazed boss had envisioned—or even a second
store. The next time I was in the neighborhood, a picture framer
occupied the space where the restaurant had been. What happened to the