“Hi, Gaby Baby, don’t worry, get well soon. New dishwasher hired, you promoted to appetizers. Same pay as before. Hope this news makes you feel better. See you tomorrow.”
I pressed Send, put my phone back in my pocket, adjusted my cap, and passed the joint I’d just lit to one of the sound guys heading over to the mixer. “Here, you finish it.”
Joseph turned on the dishwasher and beamed at me. Michele told me to get a move on, we’re running late with prep. In one fell swoop I had a kitchen hand delighted to do his job and a line cook delighted to do appetizers and grateful for his sort-of promotion. I was a genius. All I had to do now was wing it when it came to Joseph’s imaginary papers.
33.
During service, and especially afterward, I urged Gaby Baby, Sara, Sampath, and all the servers to keep up the pace, because the only way the boss was going to stay out of our hair was if we never let our guard down and never laid bare any weaknesses. It became my own personal crusade, just as it had been Orlando’s in San Pietro a Sieve. It takes a common enemy to rally the troops, and I found one in the shape of that fuckwit of an artistic director. The kitchen brigade’s pact of loyalty had been signed only a few days before, the night the fuckwit sent Luana into the kitchen to ask for a beef fillet with myrtle sauce at one o’clock in the morning, after everything had been switched off, the workstations buffed to a lustrous sheen, and only the floors to mop and the last pans to be put away. I took it upon myself to walk over to where he was sitting, in front of the stage, and personally explain to him, ever so politely, that the kitchen was closed for the night, but if he wanted, we could grill him a steak. Upon which he decided to pull rank and demand the freaking fillet with the freaking sauce, calling Lucrezia on his mobile to complain that the cook refused to feed him even though he had been slaving away all day, working his ass off to keep the place humming. His idea of slaving away was most likely monkeying around on the computer and scoffing up beer between Marlboros, when he wasn’t munching on sandwiches ordered from the bar.
Smiling, I told him it was no problem and that there had been a misunderstanding. Mine was simply a suggestion that at this late hour it might be a good idea to keep things light and his dish would be ready in a few minutes. I returned to the kitchen, opened the meat fridge, cut a nice ten-ounce slice from the middle of the fillet — the best part — massaged it lovingly, added a pinch of green pepper and a dusting of flour, heated and greased the pan, and seared it over a high flame. After turning it, I retrieved the bottle of myrtle liqueur and got a knob of butter that had been in the fridge for only a short time, so it was still soft. I poured the liqueur into the pan and tilted it to set it alight and shook the pan so the juices and liqueur would combine, then tossed in the butter with a good pinch of salt, moving the pan continuously in a circular motion to emulsify the melted butter with the sugars in the myrtle liqueur without burning it. When the sauce reached the right consistency, I picked up the fillet with a pair of tongs and placed it in the middle of the plate. I then poked my head out the kitchen door and called in all the waitstaff. I called in the girl at the cash register too. Michele, Gaby Baby, Sampath, and Sara were already there. Then all I said was, “This is the fillet for our artistic director, will you help me put the finishing touches on the sauce?” and then I hawked and spat a whopping big glob of phlegm right in the center of the pan. First Sampath, then Gabriele and, one by one, all the others, did the same. Even Luana managed to produce a tiny fleck of spittle, apologizing for not doing a better job. “I’ve never spat before in my entire life” she said. I put the sauce back on the flame, added a little more butter and stirred using the beech wood spoon (the best for sauces, and to hell with the health authorities). Then I poured it over the fillet with a flourish.
Never cross a chef. He always has the upper hand. There’s no way you can win against the person who has the power to decide what you put in your mouth.
That’s what I was thinking as I turned on my heels after graciously serving the fuckwit his freaking fillet.
34.
The days flew by and I was still winging it. I told Lucrezia that Joseph had given me a copy of his residence permit, it was downstairs and I’d bring it to her tomorrow. Meanwhile, she shouldn’t worry, it was in the kitchen with all the other important paperwork, and Joseph knew he had to sneak out the back door in the unhappy event of an inspection.
And as time went by, there was still no sign of a contract. Some of the staff were starting to grumble. One of the waitresses, after a particularly grueling dinner service, suggested we all go on strike. Michele worked himself up into a lather and went all union rep on us. I was against striking. I felt that the place was mine. I needed it as much as someone in love clings to a dream. But above all, the days were whizzing by and I was determined to keep my job, at least until September.
The general sense of disquiet was so evident that Lucrezia called a meeting with all the staff. We found ourselves sitting in a circle, with her in the middle urging us to be patient a little while longer, the contracts were on the way. While the others muttered, rolled their eyes, or pretended to send text messages, I was all ears. In a nutshell, she said, this venue was her home, but it was ours too, and we wouldn’t have a roof over our heads without her. She didn’t explain how or when she’d be getting the famous permits from the Rome City Council and legally taking over the venue. Nor did she enlighten us with any well-thought-out strategies for balancing the books and finally posting a profit, starting with the overdue bills for the concerts. All she talked about was her dream, which if we pulled together and worked as a team, with drive and determination, we could share. In the end, she put on a fairly creditable performance, transfiguring her self-indulgent palaver into something she believed to be substance. It was hard to tell if she knew how vacuous she sounded and that she had no chance whatsoever of putting any concrete plans into action or getting anyone to back them, and was relying on her own egocentricity and our understanding. A master of mendacity without a shred of embarrassment.
She was a seasoned politician in full campaign mode, a fine example of faith in the magic of words, the abracadabra, and the hey, presto! of our times. Lucrezia talked to her staff the way incumbents talk to constituents, acknowledging their needs and offering reassurances that their problems would be addressed and resolved because that was the right thing to do, there was no other option, right? Everyone would get a contract. Because the council would give us the venue. They would give it to us because we were working together as a team. Like many other restaurant owners, she made out that the business’s success depended entirely on the staff’s perseverance, and the contracts and everything else would follow as a matter of course.
It was just like Santa Claus when you’re a kid. You don’t need to meet him or talk to him to believe in Santa. They tell you a fat man in a red suit with a long white beard brings you presents. Therefore, if there are presents under the tree, then there has to be a fat man in a red suit with a long white beard who slides down the chimney on Christmas Eve with a big bag of toys. If there’s work, then there must be a business. And we were working, all right, working our asses off.
After she’d finished and even shed a few tears for good measure, we all got up and returned to our stations. She was right, after all.
Politicians can fool voters, and bosses can fool staff, but only up to a certain point. If they overdo it, voters tire of getting screwed by one politician and elect someone new to screw them. Michele was incensed and invited his uncle, the lawyer, to dinner. He arrived and said hello, without a word about how he had saved my ass three years earlier. No one believed that the contracts would ever materialize, and our wages, all under the table, were still overdue.
To keep the waiters and sous chefs happy, I gave up my own wages so they could be paid. Michele did the same. But after a couple of months, everyone’s wages were overdue, with Michele and me owed nearly €5,000 each. The term “labor dispute” started floating arou
nd. I didn’t like it. People talked about industrial action, and all it added up to for me was having coworkers I couldn’t count on when the going got tough. It meant having to go the extra mile to keep the wheels turning while I hatched my own plan to jump ship without drowning in the process. More like jumping from the frying pan into the fire, as usual, but I wanted at least to finish the season in peace.
Trying to put together a plan to get out with money in my pocket and a clear conscience made me nervous and taciturn. Michele, who already scored pretty low on the chattiness scale, virtually gave up talking altogether. As soon as service ended, he’d clean up his station quickly and then disappear. Most times I was the only one left to order supplies and close up, and the only other one who might stay back with me occasionally was Nicolò. This particular evening, I actually had to wait for him, keys in hand.
“Hey, Nicolò, get a move on, I wanna go home!” I yelled at the dining room door. He rushed in, still buttoning his shirt, and laying his backpack on the floor. Hearing the dull clink of glass on glass, I asked him to open the backpack. He asked why. I asked again. He opened it, and inside were three bottles of wine, including a bottle of Barolo Chinato.
“They’re not paying me, and they’re not giving me a contract, so I’m paying myself!” he said, not quite defiantly. I could tell he was uncomfortable.
“So I guess after you’ve taken the wine, you’re going to stop wanting to be paid, right?” I sighed. “And you think taking three bottles of wine will fix everything? Go put them back where you found them. Do it one more time, and I’ll send you packing.”
“What the fuck do you mean, Leo? Aren’t we friends? And you’re breaking my balls over three bottles of wine, when we’re not getting paid and God knows if they’ll ever actually hire us. People who live in glass houses and all that crap …”
“You want to know if I’ve ever swiped anything? Maybe I have. The problem isn’t that you’ve swiped something, Nicolò, but that you’ve stolen it from me. I do the food shopping, Michele and I are in charge of food costs. But the worst thing of all is that you got yourself caught red-handed. So either you’re a wise guy and you think that because you’re my friend I’ll let you get away with whatever the fuck you want, or you’re a dickhead. Two types of people I dislike working with.”
Nicolò put down the bottles and turned to go, mightily pissed off. “Whatever. See ya around, Chef,” he murmured as he walked away.
I couldn’t have felt more disappointed. I was losing control and I couldn’t afford to; I wasn’t ready to give up. What did it matter that Nicolò was the best waiter we had? If he didn’t respect his work, then he’d never respect me. And I would never be able to really, truly trust him. Friendship doesn’t come into the equation. I needed people I could trust.
The following day I told Lucrezia that I was letting Nicolò go, that I’d let him stay until Saturday but I wouldn’t be calling him back. She didn’t even ask me why and said it was fine.
Nicolò deleted my name from his contacts before leaving. Which I knew because he shoved his phone under my nose while I was checking the meat orders.
That night Michele informed me that he was leaving. His uncle was suing, and when I asked him why he wasn’t going to the union instead, he replied that that was what he wanted and that he was heading off to England to work.
William was waiting for me in front of the gate in the courtyard. He’d come and go, like grown-up kids who stop by every now and again to visit their elderly parents, telling them jack shit about their lives. I scratched him under the chin and he purred back. His fur was wiry and wild: He’d become one very big, badass cat. I felt ridiculously proud of him. We went up the stairs together.
“Hey.”
“Yo.”
“It’s happened again, Matte, I’m up shit creek. Wages overdue, people pissing me off, and the usual house of cards that’s come tumbling down.”
“So you must be used to it by now.”
“Yeah, but it’s just not normal.”
“What’s not normal?”
“That the same thing keeps happening over and over again.”
“I dunno. Sometimes it’s a matter of timing.”
“What …?”
“You say, ‘I want to quit the rat race,’ so you do, but then wham bam, you land in an even bigger rat race.”
“And so?”
“So it’s all normal.”
“You’re saying I should quit?”
“Sure, what else?”
35.
Lucrezia’s brother shook my hand and promised things would get better. I’d be the first to receive my overdue wages, but even the cockroaches hiding in the walls of the farmhouse that had been converted to a concert venue knew that things could only get worse.
I told him it was fine, we’d keep the restaurant going through winter, but I wanted all my money right now. That would prove his goodwill, then we could wipe the slate clean. In reality, I had already found a chef to replace Michele. His name was Vincenzo. We were good friends and, in the name of friendship, he had agreed to work as a chef de partie, one step down for someone of his caliber. So I told him he was hired. Lucrezia’s brother told me to pass by his sister’s office the following week, she’d be paying me all my arrears.
Michele sent me an e-mail telling me all about his new life in London. He’d shaved his head like me, and had an American girlfriend who was mixed race, with green eyes. The restaurant he was working in as a line cook had a good chance of earning its first Michelin star next year.
“Here you are, Leo, as agreed, here’s your back pay, exactly six thousand euros. It’s all in the envelope.”
I stretched out my hand and put the envelope in my pocket without opening it, then I looked Lucrezia square in the eye and took a deep breath.
“Thanks. I’m finishing up today. I’m sorry, but I’m leaving.”
“What? What do you mean? You said that you’d stay, we had an agreement …”
“If I hadn’t said that, you would never have paid me. Michele is suing you, the others have left with money owing, and who knows if and when they’ll ever get it. It’s been nine months now that you’ve been promising us contracts. I’m sorry, but I’m sick and tired of working for nothing. Vincenzo is a good guy, he’ll keep the kitchen running smoothly, no need to worry. I’m not leaving you short staffed. I think that’s all I owe you.”
She muttered something and remained immobile with her vacuous thoughts, as useless as an ear trumpet for a deaf man. She shook her head and I could practically hear her brain bouncing around in her skull. We both knew there was nothing else to say. As I exited the office, I thought about Sessanta and how I had agreed with Sandro to start working there three days from now. I’d be returning, with my name embroidered in burgundy on my black uniform, to the place I had left wearing the white T-shirt of a dishwasher — cum–salad guy. I should be happy, and I was, I suppose, and as I walked away my heels made a pleasing tapping noise. I stopped and closed my eyes, letting the sun warm my eyelids, and felt my last paranoid thoughts plop to the ground like ripe peaches.
In the weeks that followed, I spoke to Ciccio and he told me things were going a whole lot better at the Verve. He’d changed the menu, though he wasn’t thrilled with the waitstaff. Everyone adored him, he said. Michele wrote to say he couldn’t take England anymore and was returning to Italy. They’d offered him a chef’s position at Il Quadraro. Sampath and Gaby Baby would be joining him there.
Dirty tricks, corrupt politicians, and cocaine made the headlines in 2006. The news on TV droned on endlessly about the left-wing coalition captained by Romano Prodi winning the elections by a handful of votes, and the arrest of the Sicilian Mafia boss Bernardo Provenzano. A book by a twenty-seven-year-old journalist lifted the lid on the Italian crime syndicate La Camorra, which no one had ever done before. I read it and admired the author (as much as I envied him) for his skill and daring. The word “Camorra” towered over everything
else because it seemed that the young author had received death threats. I envied him a little less after that.
Sandro loved Southern Italian cooking, running kitchens by the seat of his pants, and men. The realization that he was gay hit him almost overnight. Giovanna fleeing back to Paris into the arms of the sales assistant now made sense. I believe that some things happen like that, out of the blue. All your life you’ve driven a sport bike and then one day you wake up and discover that all you ever wanted was a Harley, so you go out and buy a Hog. You’ve always lived and thrived in the homophobic environment of a restaurant kitchen and you’ve joked about tits and asses with your work buddies and cheated on your girlfriend with the waitresses, and then one fine day you discover you like men. It doesn’t solve any problems, nor does it create any new ones, life just goes on as it did before, period.
The buzzwords in restaurant circles were “fusion” and “molecular cuisine” and Sandro didn’t like either, just as he did not like flouncing queens. Obsessively plating every dish with the same swoosh of sauce and decorative droplets of balsamic reduction made him puke (as it did me). His tastes were not that far removed from mine, except for his disgusting mint panna cotta and his penchant for men. I still preferred women, but there’s no saying where curiosity will lead you.
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