original rhinestone-aproned stage, where Billy Rose's famously zaftig
chorus line once kicked, was still there, and the giant space where the
horseshoe-shaped bar once stood was empty, the floorboards torn up.
Around the edges of the cavernous chamber were the remnants of private
booths and banquettes where Legs Diamond and Damon Runyon and
Arnold Rothstein and gangsters, showgirls, floozies and celebrities—the
whole Old Broadway demi-monde of the Winchell era—used to meet
and greet and make deals, place bets, listen to the great singers of the
time and get up to all sorts of glamorous debauchery. The sheer size, and
the fact that you had to slip through a roughly smashed-in wall to enter
the chamber, made the visitor feel he was gazing upon ancient Troy for
the first time.
Upstairs, in the real world, however, things were going quickly sour.
I was, I'm telling you for the record, unqualified for the job. I was in
deep waters and fast-flowing ones at that. The currents could change at
any time, without warning. One day, I attended a chefs' committee
meeting on the East Side and returned to find that the whole menu had
been changed back into Italian! This included the listings on the
computer, so that when I expedited that evening, I found myself in the
unenviable position of having to read off items in Italian, translate them
into English in my head, and call them out to my Ecuadorian crew in
Spanish. I had to learn some fast mnemonic tricks to keep up, like: "I
want to Lambada—just for the Halibut," so that I would remember that
lambatini was Italian for halibut, or "I fucka you in the liver" to recall
that "fegato" meant liver.
I worked seventeen hours a day, seven days a week, surrounded by a
front-of-the-house crew who'd been, for the most part, with the company
a long time, and were fiercely dedicated to all things Pino. They were so
gung-ho in their ambitions, or so frightened of failing, that they'd
cheerfully drag a knife across your throat if you so much as dropped a
fork. The GM was an overgroomed tall blond northern Italian, an