his knuckles with a satisfying crunch. Luis screamed like a burning
wolverine and fell to his knees, two wide holes—one on each side of his
middle knuckle—already welling up with blood. He managed to get up,
the whole kitchen crew screaming and hooting with laughter, his hand
blowing up to the size of a catcher's mitt and taking on an interesting
black-and- blue and red color. After a visit to one of the fine, union-
sponsored medical clinics, the hand was even larger, looking like a
gauze-wrapped football and leaking yellow antiseptic.
My life improved immediately. The other cooks began addressing me as
an equal. Nobody grabbed my ass anymore. People smiled and patted me
on the back when I came to work in the morning. I had made my bones.
My job at the Room, initially, was to prepare and serve a lunch buffet for
about a hundred or so regular members of the Rockefeller Center
Luncheon Club—mostly geriatric business types from the building who
assembled in the Rainbow Grill every day. I had to prepare a cold buffet
and two hot entrees, which I'd then serve and maintain from noon to
three. This was no easy feat, as the buffet was comprised solely of
leftovers from the previous night's service. I'd begin each morning at
seven-thirty pushing a little cart with wobbly casters down the line,
where the cooks would hurl hunks of roast pork, end cuts, crocks of
cooked beans, overcooked pasta, blanched vegetables and remnants of
sauces at me. My job was to find a way to make all this look edible.
I have to say, I did pretty well, using every dirty trick I'd learned at CIA.
I turned leftover steaks into say, Salade de Boeuf en Vinaigrette,
transformed dead pasta and veggies into festive pasta salads, made
elaborately aspic'd and decorated trays out of sliced leftover roast. I
made mousses, pâtés, galantines, and every other thing I could think of
to turn the scrapings into something our aged but wealthy clientele
would gum down without complaint. And then, of course, I'd don a clean
jacket and apron, cram one of those silly coffee filter-like chef's hats on
my head, and stand by a voiture, slicing and serving the hot entrees.