The Autograph Hound Page 5

  Morning’s the nicest part of the restaurant day. Lunch is nearly two hours away. The kitchen’s quiet. Light shines off the copper pots. Tiles smell sweet from mopping. Zambrozzi’s taken the meat out of the freezer and laid it on the marble table-top. It’s his custom every day. He inspects his meat like John Wayne checking the troops. Lamb. Ribs. Pork. Beef. Zambrozzi walks slowly around it, flops it over, pokes it, feels the grain. Meat hangs in our cellar for days. “Great food takes great care and time,” according to Chef. Zambrozzi says meat has to decompose. This helps taste and tenderness. People pay up to $15 a portion.

  Since Garcia put a clock over the stove, Zambrozzi’s set up a table in the far corner. He sits there when he needs to rest or to think. It’s a home away from home. Zambrozzi has his books between lion’s head bookends: The Philosopher in the Kitchen, Cooking in Copper, Dining at the Pavilion, and many others. Zambrozzi’s a very historical man. It’s fun to hang around and hear Chef talk. He knew Tetrazzini of the chicken, his grandfather served Melba her first peach dessert. Behind his chair are two framed pictures with sayings underneath. The first is Escoffier’s menu for George V’s coronation at the Carlton Hotel in London, 1911. Under it is typed—“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star—Brillat-Savarin, 1826.” The other’s a picture of Vatel, the famous seventeenth-century chef standing in what was called in those days “the galley.” According to Zambrozzi, he was the king’s chef and killed himself with a kitchen knife when Louis XIV’s filet of sole didn’t arrive on time. Zambrozzi quotes himself under this one—“No hurry, no worry—Desidario Zambrozzi, 1969.”

  I step into the kitchen, keeping to the dry tiles.

  “Va bene?” Zambrozzi says. He never gets my name right. “Garcia stink up the place looking for your autographs. He find nothin’.”

  “Mad, huh?”

  Zambrozzi makes a sign with his hands. Very mad.

  The letter says to go to Mr. Garcia’s office immediately. I show it to Zambrozzi. “You wait some minutes,” he says, pointing back to his table, where Victor’s just clearing a place for the soup tureen. Anthony carries the big bowl. The ladle is stuck in his belt. The kitchen crew gathers around.

  “We gonna draw,” Zambrozzi says. “Monday. Eleven o’clock. Every week. Every year. Rain or shine.”

  Zambrozzi’s big on tradition. He’s Catholic. In Europe, he worked only for hotels with long-standing reputations. He brought Claridge’s drinking song from London to The Homestead.

  “Pool Parties,” he says, “are Homestead custom.” The chef decides when they will happen. He orders the wine that hasn’t been drunk the day before by the customers poured into a bowl and chilled. He could call for a pouring every day, but Zambrozzi saves it for special events. He puts cut flowers on his table. He gets out his cooking medals. He takes the first sip and then calls out the name of each member of the staff, who dips in and joins him. Zambrozzi only allows the kitchen help to take part. He says waiters make too much money in tips. He considers me part of the kitchen. I don’t get tips. I don’t talk back, either. I listen. Standing by the big bowl, lifting his special goblet of Baccarat glass, Zambrozzi talks of restaurants long ago.

  Zambrozzi reads to his staff each Monday morning. He says this makes us proud of our calling. It does. Every week he quotes a famous menu and tells another installment of his history of cooking. In less than five years he’s made professionals of greenhorns.

  Today, Zambrozzi says, is the two-hundredth installment of his history. He stands tall behind his desk. A book lies open on the table in front of him. The New York Times is at his right hand. In honor of the occasion, he says, he’ll read from the Memoirs of Carême and try out the New Big Draw.

  “Thank God,” whispers Anthony. “I haven’t won squat for two years.”

  Zambrozzi asks for quiet. “Like I say before, your clock-in time’s your number. If that number matches the enemy body count or American casualties—you’re a winner.”

  “You mean two people split the pot?” says Garofolo, moving closer to the table.

  “Poor bastard,” Anthony says to me. “Garofolo came in early this morning just to get a better number for the prize.”

  Zambrozzi clears his throat. “Carême, Marie-Antoine. Born 1784. From the third chapter of his memoirs translated by the best-selling French author, Alexandre Dumas fils …”

  At first it was just the drinking and the song by the Big Bowl. The Draw came later. Each time we’d pick a player from a hat and pay fifty cents into the kitty. If nobody’s player was leading the league in anything, the money went back into the till for Zambrozzi’s next Pool Party. The New Draw is better than the Old Draw. The numbers are higher, so is the pot.

  “‘… The illustrious pastry cook Avice was then flourishing. I sought to follow without imitating him. I learned to execute every trick of the trade. But to get there, young people, how many sleepless nights.’”

  “What about the Draw?” Victor pipes in.

  “I no finish,” says Zambrozzi, taking the book in his hand and looking at us as he speaks. “‘From behind my stoves, I contemplated the cuisines of India, China, Egypt, Greece, Turkey, Germany, and Switzerland. I felt the unworthy methods of routine crumble under my blows.’”

  Chef snaps the book shut. Then, putting on his glasses, he picks up the Times. “Now,” he says. “Everybody know their numbers?”

  “Yes.”

  Zambrozzi studies the small print. He looks up, smiling. “A lot of money in this one.”

  “C’mon, Chef. How many of our boys wounded?” says Victor.

  “Eight hundred and thirteen this month,” says Zambrozzi.

  Garofolo throws up his arms. “Great!” he says, walking around in circles, grinning, pounding his fist like a mitt. “I had a hunch. I knew it. I knew it!”

  “Now the big number,” says Anthony. “The enemy body count.”

  The room gets as quiet as the inside of the freezer. I’ve got butterflies in my stomach.

  “The total is one thousand forty-two. The winner—Benny Walsh.”

  I feel like Audie Murphy and Bobby Thomson rolled into one. I’m blushing. Hands slap me on the back. The crew talks clubhouse talk to me. “How you go big fella,” “The luck of the Irish,” “Easy come, easy go!”

  Victor puts his hairy arms around me and gives me a brotherly hug. It’s embarrassing. “You done it, Benny. You split the fifty smackeroos with Garofolo.”

  Zambrozzi asks Garofolo and me to come forward. He gives us our money and glasses of wine as full as his. The others stand in a semicircle around us. Only the winners keep quiet. The rest of the crew, including Chef, raise their glasses and sing:

  “Drink her down

  You Swazi warrior!

  Drink her down

  You Zulu chieftain

  Chieftain!

  Chieftain!

  Chieftain!

  Chieftain!”

  I can’t gulp my wine as fast as Garofolo. I hold it in my cheeks. The crew keep chanting, “Chieftain, chieftain, chieftain, chieftain, chieftain” until I’ve swallowed the last drop.

  “How do you feel hitting it right on the nose like that,” says Anthony, putting his hat on my head for a second.

  “Dizzy,” I say.

  Everybody knows about Garcia’s office. He leaves the door half open when he’s out front. We’ve seen the picture of his three kids and the wife with hairy legs. We’ve touched the famous Kitchen Devil carving knives on the wall that he says beat Henri Soulé’s record for cutting a chicken in forty-eight seconds. We even know what’s hidden under his desk set. When Garcia’s in the office, the rule’s to knock three times. Only the Boss enters without knocking.

  Garcia’s by the blackboard. “Walsh,” he says. “We have what night school she call a comunicación problem.”

  “Communication.”

  Garcia turns and smiles at me. He sits down and puts his boots up behind the desk. “What
we gonna do?” He points to the collapsible director’s chair. It’s light and easy to open, but a tight fit. I take my autograph pad out of my pants pocket to squeeze in.

  “Walsh, where you think I learn to carve like I do? The streets of New York—that’s where. I had to defend myself.”

  “Really?”

  “I can attack meat from any angle. I keep my knives sharp as switchblades. I slice thin. I jab and cut. I fought my way up. Carving’s in my blood.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “There’s much you should know.” Garcia stands and walks back to the blackboard. “Look here, Walsh. This is the organization. The ideal the Boss and me we work out before his first stroke.”

  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.r />
  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.