old man and his dreams of a poultry empire for his son? I can only guess.
I worked at a Mexican restaurant on upper Second Avenue for a while,
one of those places on the frat-boy strip with the obligatory margarita
sno-cone machine grinding away all night and vomit running ankle-deep
in the gutters outside. The place was owned by a very aggressive rat
population, fattened up and emboldened by the easily obtained stacks of
avocados left to ripen outside the walk-in each night. They ran over our
feet in the kitchen, hopped out of the garbage when you approached and,
worst of all, stashed their leavings in the walls and ceilings. Every once
in a while, the soggy, acoustic tile ceilings would crumble, and moist
avalanches of avocado pits, chewed chicken bones and half-eaten
potatoes would come tumbling out on our heads.
I was reaching rock-bottom, both personally and professionally. I got
canned from the Mexican place, for which particular reason I don't
know; there were plenty of good ones—alcoholism, drug abuse,
pilferage, laziness—I don't know which of these unlovely traits actually
did me in. But I didn't mind; the rats were really bugging me, especially
when I was high on coke, which was most of the time.
I worked in an all-Chinese kitchen for a time, squatting on the floor with
my fellow cooks, sharing their simple staff meals of rice gruel, pork
broth and fish bones each day, shoveling in my food with chop sticks and
betting on how many plum tomatoes would be in a case in the day's
delivery. I cracked oysters at a shellfish bar, watching as drunken
customers gobbled jumbo shrimps without bothering to remove the
shells—so pickled from booze they were beyond caring. I came to know
actors, loan sharks, enforcers, car thieves, guys who sold false ID, phone
scammers, porno stars, and a dope-fiend hostess who attended mortician
school during the day. She came up to me one night at the shellfish bar, a
blissed-out look on her face, and said, "We did a baby today in school . .
. and it . . . like . . . aspirated in my arms, man. You could hear it sigh
when I picked it up!" She looked happy about this. She had a fetish for