The Autograph Hound (7 page)

UNITY OF COMMAND

“Every autograph breaks the chain of command, Walsh. It slows down business. Speed's the big and the little brick of a great restaurant.”

“Levy didn't mind.”

“Levy was a lardass. A
gandul
. A clown.”

“Everybody loved him. You bad-mouthed the service and the decor.”

“I was deputy then. The Boss made me deputy. That was my job.”

“You got him fired.”

“In Puerto Rico, we've the saying, ‘
Los niños son sombras de sus padres
.'At The Homestead, I'm parent—all those under me, the child. If the child's bad mannered, it no its fault. They blame Enrique Garcia. They write letters. The shit hit the fan.”

“You meet everybody. It's easy for you.”

Garcia raps the blackboard. “See, Walsh, everybody has a place. They teach this in school. ‘Speedy
diseminación
, prompt
ejecucíón
.'”

“Zambrozzi says great cooking takes time.”

“He no understand about turnover. He no study the science.”

“I've never seen this chart. Who's Willie?”

“You.”

“I'm Benny.”

“Willie's what the textbook calls people like you.”

“I'd like to be under Zambrozzi. He knows my name. He says I'm part of the kitchen.”

Garcia laughs. “I'd like to be Boss. The chart's the chart.”

“You made it up.”

“It's The Homestead Plan. Every business has one. You got a job. You got a place. When you do the job and stay in the place, The Homestead she work like an orchestra. The kitchen she plays, the customers they sing, Garcia, he conducts. Beautiful music.”

“The trouble with you, Mr. Garcia—you don't believe in people.”

“A maître d's many things—actor, leader, engineer. Things gotta get done. You yell first, smile later.”

“But …”

“Don't push me, Walsh. I'm trying the new diplomacy. In this business, it's eat or get eaten. I want Garcia to be written about like Soulé. ‘The ability to never say no, saying yes when no is meant, and when all else fails appeasing with a smile.'”

“You're always saying no.”

“
Idiota
. You make trouble. You fuck up.”

“I scrape the plates. I pour the water. I bring the butter. I know my job better than any chart.”

“I could pick up the phone and get ten busboys.”

“Customers send you pictures. They do it in confidence. You put them in the window. Or behind the bar.”

“I want to say yes, Walsh, I want to lock up each night like Soulé—without one complaint. Last night I say to my best customer, ‘Mrs. Paley, how you like the dinner?' She says, ‘Everything was cold except the champagne.' I got my honor, Walsh.”

“A few autographs don't hurt anybody.”

“People speak to me last night. They're disgusted.”

“There's nothing dirty about my signatures. At least, I don't collect disgusting pictures. I've nothing to hide under my desk.”

“Huh?”

“Combing the stripper's cunt at your Knights of Columbus dinner. Your name on your hat.”

Garcia gets red as rhubarb. “That's it!”

“I'll say. Nobody could miss you. The scandal would ruin The Homestead.”

“Walsh, I'm giving you till Friday.”

“You're not firing me?”

“Yes.”

“It's the new diplomacy. Yes means no.”

“No,” says Garcia.

“Then I'm staying?”

Garcia stands up. I try to stand, but the chair sticks to my hips. He puts on his Stetson. He goes to the blackboard. He writes—FIRED. The chalk breaks. The scratch makes my mouth taste of brass.

Garcia walks out.

“Puerto Ricans should be rounded up, put on Ellis Island, and burned! Goodbye
cuchifritos! Adiós West Side Story!
So long cha-cha-cha!”

I really give him an earful.

Zambrozzi calls me over to his table. “Garcia let you go?”

“Wrote it on the blackboard like I was part of next week's menu.”

“He tell me to stop tonight's
ossobuco
. A chef's fame is in
plat du jour
.”

“He's ruining the kitchen.”

“In Italia, he scrub floors.”

“It's America. He's got unity of command. He could fire you, too.”

Zambrozzi laughs. “Don't worry about Garcia. Take today off, Benny. Get some autographs. Spend some of that money. I tell him you sick. He don't argue. I won't cook his meals.”

“I keep track of things about The Homestead other people forget. I don't want to leave, Mr. Zambrozzi.”

“When the boys come back, we gonna have a talk, we gonna settle this.”

“I'm not in your section.”

“Leave it to me.”

Zambrozzi puts his arm on my shoulder and walks me toward the pantry. He hums our drinking song. He stops to watch the pasta being made. A cook's helper spreads flour in a wide circle on the table. He breaks an egg with one hand in the middle of the circle. It's beautiful—a yellow sun surrounded by white stars. Then he whips the egg with a fork. All the flour comes together in the yolk. Not a speck's left on the table. Nothing's lost. Everything sticks together in a white lump. The flour's part of the egg and the egg's part of the flour. Suddenly, the pasta's there.

“Cooking's like life,” says Zambrozzi. “You have to have the right ingredients and the know-how.” He thinks for a second. “Write that down,” he says.

I put it in my pad, but I disagree. Cooking's not like life. If you get a bad meal, you don't have to eat it.

There are many penny arcades around Broadway, but the best are on 42nd Street. I go only on special occasions. It costs more to play Fascination than the other games, but the prizes are bigger. There are movie houses on both sides of the arcades. They used to be theaters. The Earl Carroll Vanities, the George White Scandals—all those good times and great people who were in them used to be right on this street. There's no theater now except a strip show on Eighth Avenue. But the names of the theaters have been preserved. That's the most important thing, VICTORY, LYRIC, LIBERTY. At night that's all you see in the sky. It's fun.

There's a fortune teller in this arcade that looks like my mother. She's old. Her fingernail polish's chipped. Her skin's rubbery and kind of yellow. You have to watch very closely to see her move. But she does move once you put your nickel in the slot. She also tells you to get comfortable, pay attention, and come again.

I put in a coin. She talks for a minute, then a card passes out at the bottom of the machine. It's the only scary part.

Say farewell to those blues you have been nursing. Get in the habit of looking at the brighter side of life. You have a temperamental nature. You lose your temper easily but regret it as fast.

The last time she said I was a sweet person.

You have a brilliant mind and enjoy reading and the fine arts.

Icing on the cake, but getting warmer. The last sentence gives me a shock. I can hear my heart.

A dark-haired person who is trying to harm you will soon disappear from your life, and you will prosper.

How could she know? Just beneath her prophecy's a note.

Drop another coin in the slot and I will tell you more. Your Lucky Numbers—56, 57, 58.

It's good to know this for Fascination. I quit while I'm ahead.

I take stool number 57. The rules to Fascination are the same as poker, except you play with five rubber balls. You roll each ball down the table, aiming for the holes, which are numbered like a pack of cards. You play against the machine, and like the sign says outside the arcade—EVERYBODY'S A WINNER.

The game's tense. The prizes are on the shelves above the machine, so close you can almost touch them. Mixmasters, waffle irons, radios, golf clubs—the same prizes they have on quiz shows. Jeanette comes by your seat when you win and gives you coupons. The better the hand, the more you get. Each gift has the number of coupons under it. You know what you're working for.

A man with a microphone calls out the winners. He talks to us while we roll. “Every man a winner, not a sinner. Three aces, now you're going places. Four of a kind, rob us blind.” Sometimes I know I've won even before the announcer sees. I push back my stool (you get tired from the pressure). I pretend Steve McQueen has just folded his cards. He's signing over his motorcycle to me. Tough nuggies, Steve. Straight, ace high.

“Winner on fifty-seven. Little closer to heaven.”

Jeanette gives me four coupons. She smiles. Sometimes when players have been at the table a few hours and are really doing good, they give her their coupons. I don't believe in that. To the victor belongs the spoils.

The backspin's really cooking today. After each game, I rest and think about how I'll play the next. I like to remember the wins. I look around at my competition. Only ten people are playing.

Time flies when you play Fascination. There's never a dull moment. The man at the microphone names me again.

“Winner on fifty-seven. Full boat, buy your lady friend a coat.”

This makes me think of Gloria. I decide to stop for a while and walk around. If you can't concentrate, you can't win.

I stop at Boothill, a gun battle in the rear of the arcade—three shots for a quarter. It'd be silly if the gunman didn't look like Garcia—yellow-brown skin, Stetson, rodeo shirt. I deposit my money, and right away a record of insults start coming from the guy—typical. “All right, you polecat, you lily-livered toad, no varmint's gonna talk to me this way. Go for your gun, whippersnapper.” The gunman has the advantage. His hand's on the six-shooter. I crouch. I slap leather. I fan the gun, three shots in the dead center of the scum-sucking pig. A meter at the foot of the gunman lights up—QUICK DRAW. I pay another quarter and pull the gun far to the side. The gunman doesn't even see me. I fire a second round of hot lead into Garcia—one for Tina, one for Zambrozzi, and the last for me. He squirms. “Aaaaargh!” Self-defense.

I'm ready for the Cock Shop.

I only go into the back room when I'm feeling strong. The peep show's right next door. From where I'm standing, I can hear the whispers: “Ooooh. Ooooh. That's good. Deeper.” I never watch. It makes me sick.

I try not to look at the glass case filled with plastic cocks, but I'm a sucker for scientific breakthroughs. I can't get them out of my mind. “Double Dong Lesbian Type” looks like a majorette's baton with rubber nobs at both ends. “Smooth Sleeve” is an ice-cream cone, tan and rough. “The Thriller” is as pink and spiny as Mom's haircurlers. It'd make a good backscratcher. All of these have “halters,” according to the sign. Imagine wearing them! Bumping into people. Getting caught in revolving doors. You couldn't put your pants on.

Is this the normal size? Maybe for athletes. They eat special food. They have trainers.

When I take my bath, I sometimes look at myself and think of the Cock Shop. Now and then, when I'm running after a big signature, I can feel it coming back into Cock Shop shape. “Guaranteed dependable,” they say—I can't count on mine. Maybe it's because of the time I lifted the chopping block at The Homestead, and strained something down there. Or maybe it's because of Prudence “The Pig” Grasso from Trade School.

They made me take her out. They gave me money for the movie show, but I had to promise to tell what happened. They told me certain words to say. We were in the balcony of the Ocean Beach Orpheum—a Red Skelton double feature. The last row.

Prudence rubbed against me. I couldn't eat my popcorn. She kept touching my hand and knocking the bag off my knee. Finally she said, “Let's do something.” It's what they told me she'd say. “Okay,” I said, and waited. She put her hand under my jacket and stuck it down my pants. Her fingers were sharp, and cold. I was scared to look at her. She grabbed it, just as Red Skelton was swallowing a bowl of goldfish. It was the funniest part of the movie, but I couldn't laugh. Prudence was breathing heavy. “Whaddya feel? Tell me what you feel?”

I felt sick to my stomach, but I couldn't say that.

“Whaddya want me to do?”

“Beat it,” I said. It's what they told me to say, I think. But it was the wrong thing to say. She yanked it from side to side—left, right, up, down. She banged it against the armrest. I was in terrible pain, nearly on my knees. I couldn't yell or the usher with her flashlight would've run up the aisle. Prudence's fingers were as strong as steel coils.

“Say what it feels like,” she said. “Say …”

I couldn't speak. “Oooh!” I said.

She took my arm. She put it between her legs and squeezed. She wiggled for a second. And then suddenly she went all calm, and let go. Later, standing by the bus stop, she said, “I love you.” They told me she'd say it. I let her go home by herself. I could hardly walk. That night, before turning out the light, I looked at it. There were scratches. It was bent.

But I know real love. You see it all the time. Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn in
Funny Face
, Gene Kelly and Vera-Ellen in
On the Town
. They're in love. They never say these kind of things. They dance and sing. They look into each other's eyes. No touching, just respect.

A sign on the far wall points up the staircase. I start to have a look. Then, I hear it—the jingle of spurs. My neck aches. My palms go damp. I peek up the stairwell. Garcia! What's he doing here? He's handing cheroots to Victor and Anthony! They're smiling. I have to get out!

Luckily, my sneakers don't clatter. I've got suction grip for fast starts. I back away. There's no cashier at the entrance to the peep show, only a change machine and a black velvet curtain, otherwise I'd be too embarrassed to go in. It's dark behind the curtain. But through the seam I can see Garcia coming closer.