was getting paid, security would give him a cut of whatever drugs they
impounded at the door, and the techies let him play with the computers
so that when an order for, say, swordfish came in, the dupe would also
say, "Fuck Me Hard". Maintenance gave him a share of the lost-and-
found and split the leftover booty from the promotional events—goody
bags filled with cosmetics, CDs, T-shirts, bomber jackets, wrist-watches,
etc.; the chief of maintenance even gave Steven the key to a disused
office on the Supper Club's neglected third floor, an old janitor's storage
room that, unbeknownst to management, had been converted to a
carpeted, furnished and fully decorated pleasure pit, complete with
working phone. It was a space suitable for small gatherings, drug deals
and empire-building. The room was decorated with posters of Latina
women penetrating themselves with vegetables, and it had been done up
with pilfered carpet remnants and furniture from the adjoining Edison
Hotel. As the space was located up a long flight of garbage-strewn back
stairs, behind the reeking locker-rooms, down a dark, unlit hall where
spare china was stored, management never visited—and a young man
could be secure in the knowledge that whatever dark business he was
conducting, no matter how loud, unruly or felonious, he was unlikely to
be disturbed.
When management finally got wind of the fact that Jimmy was getting
paid for not working at the Supper Club, I was made the chef.
Unfortunately, Steven had already carved out his own invisible empire
within my own.
It made things difficult.
The boy could cook, though.
The Club, particularly during the winter party season, when we regularly
did banquets and sit-downs for hundreds and hundreds of people,
required strength, skill and endurance, and an ability to improvise fast of
its cooks. The bulletin board on my office wall was clogged with party