sheets; sit-down meals for 300 would lead directly into four buffets and
a cocktail reception for 700—often on the same day. The logistics
involved in buying the food, preparing it and moving it around for so
many people were staggering—the invasion of Normandy every day of
the week. Having an enterprising and capable little bastard like Steven
around was a powerful asset. Here was a guy who could stay up all night
snorting coke and drinking Long Island ice teas, getting into trouble of
the most lurid kind, and still show up the next morning and knock out a
thousand meals. I may have spent way too much time investigating the
criminal activities of the Steven and Adam crime family, always calling
one or the other into my office for a tune-up or an interrogation (I must
have fired them both at least three times), but they, particularly Steven,
always found a way to weasel their way back into my good graces and
make themselves invaluable.
Steven, for a while, it seemed, saw the light (to whatever extent that's
possible with Steven). One night, Nancy and I bumped into him at a bar
in Westhampton. He'd been moonlighting (typical of Steven) for Sears,
and when I saw him, he was slurring his words, his jaw twitching from
cocaine, his eyes scrambling around in his sockets like caged spider
monkeys, and he slapped an arm around my shoulders and announced
that he was going to start showing up to work on time, that he was going
to start behaving responsibly, that he was going to turn over a new leaf.
I remember Nancy looking at me as if to say, "Yeah, riiight . . ."
He was, of course, promising much more than he could ever deliver. Life
with Steven over the last five or six years has been notable for one
hideous outrage after another. But he did begin showing up at work on
time. He stopped disappearing on two-and three-day benders. He tried, as
best he could, to refrain from bringing shame and disgrace upon my
house and kitchen.
Most important, Steven, suddenly and inexplicably, became the sort of