Jimmy, still naked, had made breakfast: two perfectly fluffy yellow omelettes sat plated on the kitchenette counter - a spoonful of pilfered beluga on each one. Jimmy's signature garnish: two antennae-like chive sticks projected up from each mound of pearly gray fish eggs.
"I was saving that caviar," said Nikki.
"I didn't use it all," said Jimmy, pouring champagne.
"Where'd you get the champagne?"
"I ran out to the corner."
"You got dressed . . . ran to the corner . . . bought champagne, came back . . . and took your clothes off again?" said Nikki, horrified.
"Hey . . . It's a special occasion."
This was enough for Nikki. "You're not staying. And I'm not eating."
She avoided looking straight at Jimmy. For all his faults, he had a good body. All the surfing, skiing, in-line skating, handball, golf and tennis (when he should have been in his fucking kitchen) had made Jimmy tan and cut, his stomach ribbed with muscle. Even at thirty-nine, he had a boyish, almost irresistably ingratiating smile that seemed to invite conspiracy and bad behavior . .. He was, thought Nikki, watching him reposition an omelette so that the knife and fork faced her, sort of charming.
He had to go. Now.
"Get dressed and get out, Jimmy," she said. "You can take breakfast to go. Take it home to your wife, or your girlfriend or whoever it is these days you're lying to. Just leave." She sat down on the bed, dizzy again, a sudden stabbing pain in her groin. "Jesus . . . what did you fuck me with? A pineapple?"
Jimmy shook his head, smiling like a little boy who'd just successfully lifted a comic book, and sat down next to her. He brushed his lips against her shoulders. She shook him off.
"Just leave, please."
He began to dress. J. Crew polo shirt, khaki pants, Gap blazer, Cole Haan loafers (no socks of course), a baseball cap with the name of a band on it. God, thought Nikki - how could I have fucked this asshole?
"Whatever you say," said Jimmy, fully expecting, it appeared, that she would change her mind.
"I say," said Nikki. Dressed, at least, Jimmy was easier to despise. She looked at the floor, noted with displeasure the trail of clothes she'd worn last night evidence of her stupidity — a reconstruction of events possible from the shoes kicked into opposite corners, the underwear hanging over the rocking chair. The brassiere must have come off last — it peeked out from under a pillow.
"You're losing your hair," she said.
"I am not!" protested Jimmy. "Bullshit!"
"In the back. You're losing your hair. You're going bald."
"I am not going bald!" insisted Jimmy, zipping up his pants but not going anywhere until this issue was resolved. "I use stuff . . . and it's working!
"It's not working," said Nikki, tossing him a loafer. "Maybe you should get that spray. The skull-paint? Maybe that'll work . . . But the Rogaine? The minoxadyl or whatever it is? It's not taking. Believe me."
"You can be a mean bitch, Nikki."
"Yeah?" said Nikki, lip curling as she moved in close. She was taller than Jimmy by three or four inches — and face to face she looked down into his eyes. "You think you seen mean? Lemme tell you this then, chef . . . I hear one word about this from anybody . . . ever . . . One fucking word about last night — and I'm gonna tell every cook, every waitress, every chef, dishwasher, bartender and busboy in town that yes — I did take you home and fuck you - that I got you drunk, took you home and fucked you. And I'm gonna say that you cry 'Mommy' when you come. I'm gonna say that you came in about two seconds, cried for your mommy, wet the bed in your sleep . . . and left a big tuft of hair on my pillow when you got up in the morning. Now get the fuck out of my apartment, you bald fuck. I gotta go throw up again."
"Are you saying you didn't have a good time?"
"Truth be told, Jimmy? I can't remember one way or the other . . . But I'm sure you were spectacular. Feel better? Now get out."
Jimmy walked to the door and stepped out into the hallway, shaking his head. Nikki slammed the door after him. She heard him on the other side, saying under his breath, "Cunt!"
"Got that right, asshole," said Nikki. She began dressing for work.
Bobby Gold, in black jeans, black, short-sleeved T-shirt and black trainers, walked up the steps of the empty club. On the second floor mezzanine, he heard a toilet flush, waited for whoever it was to emerge. The mezzanine was still a mess from the night before — the maintenance crew still busy waxing the dance floor. The door opened and a girl came out, dressed in chef's whites. Bobby had seen her before in the kitchen — they called her the "saute bitch" in there, he seemed to recall.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi," said Bobby, a little flustered. He didn't spend much time with women — and he was thrown by how good she looked in the sexless, double-breasted uniform and checked polyester pants. "You're in early aren't you?"
"Yeah," she said. "Prep for the party tonight. I gotta get the stocks going."
"Oh," said Bobby. She was tall — maybe five-ten, with long, dark hair that smelled like it had just been washed and her eyes — dark, almost Asian-looking — flashed with intelligence. There was the hint of a smile - the slightly sour, self-deprecating smirk of someone who's had their ass kicked and survived the experience.
"You a fan of classic comedy?" she asked, seemingly apropos of nothing.
"What do you mean?" Bobby asked, "Like what? The Marx Brothers? Fields? Chaplin?"
"I meant more like Lenny Bruce," said the girl. "Remember him?"
"I saw the movie — if that's what you mean. Dustin Hoffman played him, right?"
"Yep," said the girl.
"Good movie."
"Yeah . . . well . . . I don't know how to tell you this — but there's a guy doing a really good Lenny Bruce imitation in one of the stalls in there," she said, jerking her head in the direction of the bathroom.
Bobby thought no way she meant what he thought she meant. He hurried into the bathroom, walked quickly down to the last stall - the only one still closed - and leaned against the door. It wouldn't open. When he pushed, it felt as if someone had piled a stack of flour sacks against the other side.
He entered the next stall, stood on top of the toilet and peeked down over the divider.
She was right about the Lenny Bruce thing. There was a man in there — pants down around his ankles, one sleeve rolled up, a syringe hanging out of his arm, just below a tightened belt. He was dead, and he was blue, slumped over to one side with his legs jammed against the stall door, eyes staring straight up at Bobby like a lifeless flounder's.
Bobby got back down from the toilet and went back outside. The girl was smoking, sitting on a banquette, watching for his reaction. She'd gone in there, he realized, found the body and calmly sat down for a piss, before exiting.
"See what I mean?" she said, smiling.
"It's Lenny all over," said Bobby, unable to take his eyes off of her.
He was in love.
BOBBY GETS JILTED
Bobby Gold in black Levis, black trainers and black T-shirt, the word SECURITY printed in white letters across the chest, pushed open the swinging kitchen doors and stepped into the noise and heat. He hesitated momentarily by the door, fully aware that this place — of all the various rooms, areas, offices and fiefdoms in NiteKlub — was not his territory. Here he was an outsider, an interloper, completely unaware of the local language and customs. Dinner was winding down — all the entrees were out, only the garde manger chef still plating a few forlorn desserts — and the cooks were breaking down their stations, wrapping up mise-en-place in clean metal bains and crocks and wiping down their areas. Out in the main dining room, the waiters were beginning to strip the tables, hauling and rolling them off the dance floor. When the last few dinner customers put down their dessert forks and called for their checks, the THUMP, THUMP, THUMP of bass tones would come rumbling through the kitchen walls, then the smell of chocolate from the smoke machine — sucked in by the powerful range hoods. The
Intellabeam system would wink on, bouncing filament-thin rays of colored laser beams off tiny dancing mirrors controlled by computer and joystick in the sound and tech booth. There was maybe a half-hour before the front doors were opened and the lines of people, already two deep and wrapping around the corner onto 8th Avenue, were let in. Two hours from now, every foot of floor space in the main room, mezzanine, Blue Room - even the entranceways, stairs and bathrooms — would be jammed with people.
Bobby stood near the door, unsure why he was even here. He'd told himself, climbing the back service stairs, that he was hungry, that he'd stop by the kitchen to see if there was any staff gruel leftover. But that was something he'd never done before. The truth was, he'd come to see the girl. The cook, the one they called Nikki — to look at her if possible, to get close enough, maybe, to smell her hair — just for a second, to look in those eyes, the ones that hurt when they looked at you. He had no plan - unusual for Bobby, who planned just about everything these days — and that made him nervous and uncomfortable. He certainly wasn't going to ask her out, as he'd long ago forgotten how to do such things, and the whole thought was ridiculous anyway.
He hadn't had a woman for years.
From where he stood, awkwardly trying to figure out what to do, he could see Eric, the sous-chef, counting out dinner dupes by the printer, spiking the little slips of paper onto a spindle, his hair plastered to his skull with sweat. A shorter cook (he thought they called him Lenny) was scraping down the grill with a wire brush, bobbing his head along with the speed metal on the radio, bitching in kitchen patois about some violation of protocol that Bobby didn't understand.
"You want truffle jiz? Get your own truffle jiz, cabron. I tired a you raiding my motherfuckin' meez every time I turn around, pinchay culero. Every time you go in the shit, you sticking your hands in my fucking bains."
Next to him, an Ecuadorian pasta cook named Manuel smiled serenly, shook his head and apologized. Insincerely.
"I sorry my friend," he giggled, turning toward Eric, who had clearly heard all this before. "Chuletita no like I touch the station. He like I touch the pinga. Si! Verdad! Touch his pinga is okay. Culo, no problem. He like that. But no touch the station." He reached over and swatted a dirty side-towel at the back of Lenny's head, before dropping down to his knees to mop out his low-boy refrigerators. Two cooks, Segundo and Eduardo, were dumping a tray of indifferently roasted chicken legs into a hotel pan on the pass. Billy, the skinny white boy with the pierced tongue on the garde manger station, listlessly tossed salad in a large stainless-steel bowl with his hands.
In the corner behind the line, Nikki was heaving a stack of dirty saucepots and saute pans into a cardboard-lined milk crate, a cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth, her chef coat unbuttoned. Bobby saw the pink and red bum marks — like tribal markings — on her forearms, and thought they were the sexiest thing he'd ever seen. Her hair was popping out of its ponytail, long strands falling over her face, and Bobby could not help but be fascinated by how the muscles on her arms swelled and jumped as she slung, one-armed, one heavy load of pans after another loudly into the crate. She hadn't seen Bobby yet. As she leaned over the stove, to remove the burner covers, he stared at the way the boxy, checked poly pants stretched over her ass.
"I'm hungry!" complained Joe, the head tech, with a hoarse, froggy voice. Billy, who relied on Joe for cocaine now and again when the busboys and bar-backs didn't come through (Bobby knew this from observing Joe's mid-shift runs around the corner to the Full Moon Saloon — and the ensuing not-very-discreet sequence of hand-offs and bathroom visits which inevitably followed) was all too willing to make something special for his patron. No chicken leg and wilted salad for Joe.
In the noise and clatter of the kitchen, Nikki still hadn't seen Bobby, who continued to stand there as if invisible, ignored by the cooks and their proteges from the floor. Unlike Frank, now tucking into a porterhouse steak on a broken chair in the corner, Bobby did not share the impounded guns and drugs from the door with the kitchen crew. He didn't let the cook's friends in for free — or give them drink tickets. No one had dared ask him. Everyone eating something other than the staff gruel in the kitchen at this moment had some kind of special arrangement with one cook or another. The waitress, Tina, was a vegetarian. The usually surly cooks had fixed her up with some grilled vegetables and cous-cous. Because she was cute. Because she flirted with the cooks. Because once or twice a year, after a few drinks, she took Eric, the sous-chef, into the liquor cage and sucked his dick. She sat on the ice cream freezer while she ate; a few powerless busboys and newbies poking unenthusiastically at their chicken legs nearby as they slunk off to eat in locker rooms, stairwells and hallways. Even Hector, the night porter, was being taken care of. He was eating a thick slice of pork loin with sauce and mashed potatoes, probably a payback for giving the kitchen a regular cut of all the pilfered goodie bags from NiteKlub industry parties and fashion shows. He also, apparently, threw them the occasional oddity or archeological find he'd come across when clearing out banquettes, or exploring the sub-cellars the club shared with the hotel next door. There was a covert cooks' lounge, Bobby knew, located in a disused storage closet on the fourth floor, which Hector had furnished nearly single-handedly with stolen hotel furniture, pilfered carpet remnants, even a jury-rigged phone line, so the cooks could call their dealers.
A runner arrived with a tray of cocktails for the kitchen: a large pitcher of Long Island Iced Tea, a pitcher of beer, a few Stoli grapefruits for the Chef — who was now hidden away back in his office, no doubt packing his nose with the new hostess. As soon as he'd dispensed drinks and returned from the Chef's office, two steak frites appeared (one for the runner and one for the cooperating bartender) as if by magic on the slide, and the runner wordlessly scooped them up and headed for the door.
Bobby, who'd forgotten to eat since yesterday's breakfast, approached the tray of chicken legs.
"Don't eat that shit," said Nikki, who'd apparently been aware of him for some time. "I'll make you something."
Bobby, surprised, stood upright, stammered, as suddenly all the cooks were staring at him.
"Uh . . . sure. Thanks . . . Th-that'd be nice."
"What?" said Eric, glaring at Nikki through the pass. "Did I hear right?"
"I said I'd make him something," said Nikki. "You got a problem with that? Or does he have to suck you off first?"
Tina, on the ice cream freezer, blushed slightly and the other cooks laughed.
"Whatever," said Eric, backing down. He looked at Bobby, a sustained stare for a few seconds, then went back to counting his dupes. Lenny, the grill cook, however, kept staring, a look of unrestrained hostility fixed on the new intruder.
"It's not necessary, anything special . . ." said Bobby, not wanting to get in the middle of some arcane tribal political situation. "I can have this. I can have the chicken."
"No way," said Nikki, pushing wet hair out of her face. "No way you eat that mung. I make you something nice . . . Fish okay?"
"Yeah. Great," said Bobby, no longer thinking about food at all, really. Trying not to look at the pale expanse of bare flesh between Nikki's sports bra and check pants underneath the open jacket. It looked smooth and hard.
"Ricky!" Nikki barked, calling over a runner. "Get him a chair and a setup!"
The runner dragged over a chair from the nearby wall phone, disappeared for a minute and came rushing back with a rolled up napkin and silver. Bobby sat down at the end of a long steel worktable in the center of the kitchen, feeling all the cooks' eyes on him.
"You want something to drink? We got beer, Iced Teas — anything else you want. Just ask Ricky," said Nikki from behind the line.
"Water. Water is good," said Bobby, uncomfortable with all the furtive looks and barely concealed scrutiny.
"Ricky!" she yelled, again. "Bring him una boteilla de Pellegrino! Rapidemente!"
Richard, the Chef, poked his head in the kitchen, a clot of white powder han
ging from one nostril, a snap undone on his check pants. "Eric! How many?"
"About three hundred," said Eric, not looking up, the last dupe just hitting the spike.
"Smooth?"
"Like Lenny's ass. Like a well-greased machine. No bumps. We didn't get weeded at all."
"Returns?"
"Just the one. A refire steak."
The Chef grunted and went back to his office and whatever he had been doing.
Though there were at least twelve felonies, or violations of club policy, in evidence at this precise moment, Bobby didn't care. He watched Nikki prepare his dinner, absolutely transfixed by her smooth, economical movements behind the line. She seasoned a thick slab of monkfish, grinding black pepper from a mill, then rubbed it with sea salt. She fired up the stove and noisily slapped a pan on it, waiting for it to get hot. Without looking, one hand darted out, grabbed a wine bottle with a speed pourer, and drizzled a little olive oil into the pan, stood back a few seconds, waiting for it to get hot, then laid the fish in the pan with a sizzle and gave it a shake.
Twirling, she fired up another burner, reached for a small saucepot and positioned it over low flame. Bobby saw butter go, a little oil, some shallots. He was amazed how quickly her hands moved, how effortlessly she seemed to handle her knife, chopping the shallots into uniform small dice before scooping them into the saucepot. When Lenny saw her pouring hard pellets of arborio rice into the pan, stirring it with a wooden spoon, he looked shocked. She nudged him out of the way and reached into his lowboy.
"Hey, bitch," he protested, "don't fuck with my meez!!"
"Shut the fuck up, bitch," said Nikki. "I need stock. Gimme some . . . And some porcinis. Some porcinis would be nice."
"Fuck, man . . . they all the way in the back," complained Lenny.
"Suck my dick," said Nikki, ignoring him. "I need stock. I need porcinis. And haul me out some truffles while you're in there, cupcakes." She gave Lenny's fat ass a gentle pat as he ducked into the low reach-in refrigerator to get her what she wanted.