"They're gonna screw you, man," they said. "You gotta do something.
You're fucking up! They're gonna get you!"
By this time I was thoroughly wiped out.
"Guys, I know, believe me . . . I know. But I'm not prepared to do any
better than I'm doing now. I'm going on all eight cylinders, I'm doing the
best I can, and I know I'm gonna get fucked sooner or later. When it
happens it happens. I'm not prepared to do anything I'm not doing
already. Sorry."
When Mad 61 suddenly and unexpectedly closed, supposedly the result
of a pissing contest between Pino and the Barney's owners, the
Pressmans, I knew my goose was cooked. More as an academic exercise
than out of real interest, I inquired of the reptilian GM and my chef de
cuisine what they thought would happen here, now that there were fifty
or so longtime loyalists footloose and fancy free and looking for work
elsewhere in the company. I knew the answer, of course; I just wanted to
see if they'd lie to my face. They didn't disappoint me.
A bunch of us went out for drinks one night and I found myself among a
party of eight, all of whom knew that of which I had yet to be informed:
namely that I would be asked to step down, to work with the nauseating
and sadistic little creep who was my chef de cuisine. (I caught him
constantly hitting the Ecuadorians on the shoulder, them not knowing
whether to take it as a joke or not, and immediately I offered a bounty of
five dollars for every time one of them hit him back.)
The next night, at the end of the shift, the GM had a martini waiting for
me at the bar. I knew it was over. He began, elegantly couching his
words in all sorts of qualifiers, yammering on about redeployment,
unfelt and insincere praise for my work etcetera. I quickly cut him off.
I'd injured my thumb earlier, and in spite of a butterfly closure and three
layers of bandage, it just wouldn't stop bleeding; blood drained onto my