have to call Steven. I'm still buzzed with adrenaline when I finally push
through the last waiting customers by the hostess stand and out the door,
and wave for a taxi.
I'm thinking about going home but I know I'll just lie there, grinding my
teeth and smoking. I tell the cabbie to take me to the corner of 50th and
Broadway, where I walk downstairs to the subway arcade and the Siberia
Bar, a grungy little underground rumpus room where the drinks are
served in plastic cups and the jukebox suits my taste. There are a few,
cookies from the Hilton at the bar, as well as a couple of saggy, bruised-
looking strippers from a club up the street. Tracy, the owner of the joint,
is there, which means I won't be paying for drinks tonight. It's 1 A.M.,
and I have to be in at seven-thirty mañana, but the Cramps are playing on
the jukebox, Tracy immediately fiddles with the machine so there's
twenty free credits—and that first beer tastes mighty good. The Hilton
cookies are arguing about mise-en-place. One of them is bitching about
another cook nicking salt off his station, and the other cook doesn't see
why that's such a big deal—so I'm gonna be involved in this
conversation. The Cramps tune is followed by the Velvets singing "Pale
Blue Eyes", and Tracy suggests a shot of Georgian vodka he's got stashed
in the freezer . . .
SOUS-CHEF
MY SOUS-CHEF, IN AN ideal situation, is like my wife.
I'll go further: my sous-chef, in an ideal situation, is closer to me than
my wife. I mean no disrespect to my wife, Nancy, whom I adore, and
with whom I've been stealing horses since high school. It's just that I
spend a lot more time with my sous-chef. The judge, as Nancy likes to
remind me, will never believe it.
Steven, my sous-chef from 1993 until recently—when he finally took on
a kitchen of his own—was my evil, twin, my doppelganger, my director