out from that one—that terrible few seconds before the blood came, me
looking at my injured paw and it not looking like my hand at all, just
some terribly violated slab of very pale meat. When the blood came it
was almost a relief.
There are some centimeter-long ridges in the webbing of my left hand,
between thumb and forefinger, from the Dreadnaught, when I would
regularly lose control of the oyster knife, the dull blade hopping out of or
breaking through the shell to bury itself in my hand. The knuckle wounds
are so numerous, and have been opened and reopened so frequently, that
I can no longer recall, in the layer upon layer of white scar tissue, where
or when I got any of them. I know that one of them is the result of
boiling duck fat at the Supper Club, but other insults to the flesh have
come and gone; it's like the layers of an ancient city now, evidence of
one kitchen after another piled up on top of each other. The middle
finger of my left hand, at the first joint, where the finger guides the knife
blade, has been nicked so many times it's a raised hump of dead flesh,
which tends to get in the way of the blade if I'm whacking vegetables in
a hurry. I have to be careful. My fingerprints are stained with beet juice
(hot borscht as soupe du jour yesterday), and if I hold my fingers to my
nose, I can still smell smoked salmon, chopped shallots and a hint of
Morbier rind.
I'm not even going to talk about my feet.
It's been twenty-seven years since I walked into the Dreadnaught kitchen
with my hair halfway down my back, a bad attitude, and a marginal
desire to maybe do a little work in return for money. Twenty-six years
since my humiliation at Mario's when I looked up at Tyrone's mightily
abused claws and decided I wanted a pair like that. I don't know who said
that every man, at fifty, gets the face they deserve, but I certainly got the
hands I deserve. And I've got a few years to go yet.
How much longer am I going to do this?