enough to go around.
Bartenders, waiters, managers, cooks, dishwashers, porters tell him
everything. Somehow he induces, without even trying, total strangers to
tell him their most shameful and intimate secrets. They'll do anything
for him, putting up cheerfully with his practical joking, his groping, his
annoying practice of trying to throw petits pois into their ears, his
horribly frank anecdotes about the previous evening's sexual adventures.
I learned never to try to compete with Steven in the practical joke
department. He'll make a life's work out of getting you back. Leave a
potato in his shoes and he'll freeze your street clothes. Put a sticker on
his back, he'll take your locker door off the hinges and stack it full of
porno magazines.
On his birthday, I once arranged for him to receive a free trial pair of
adult diapers. The next day, all the cooks were waiting for his reaction.
He thanked me sincerely. "You know? Those things are pretty cool! I sat
around the couch, eating nachos and watching TV in my diaper, and it
was great. I didn't even have to get up to go to the bathroom! It was
great! And you know, it feels kinda neat!"
Our clean-living, deeply religious Ecuadorian pasta man at Sullivan's,
Manuel, would receive 4A.M. phone calls every night for weeks—Steven
mid-coitus with his girlfriend: "Manuel . . . grunt . . . plorp . . . it's
Steven . . . grunt . . . guess what I'm doing?"
And, like everyone in Steven's life, Manuel played along.
"Oh, Chef . . . Chef . . ." he'd say, shaking his head, the next day.
"Chuletita call me again lass night!" and then he'd burst into giggles.
I don't get it. Still.