THENASTYBITS (33 page)

It was no longer unusual for Rob to not be around, to have gone off on "research" trips to the Napa Valley or France, a book tour, a foodie symposium, golf weekends, or just to hole up in some fuck-shack with whoever he was doing lately. But it
was
unlike him to stay away for so long, especially when the situation was so desperate. Michelle finished dressing and poked her head in the office, where she found Paul at the desk, staring blankly at a spreading water stain on the acoustic tile on the ceiling.

"Paul," she said, "has he called? Does he know what's going on?"

"He knows," said Paul.

"What does he say about all this?"

"I haven't heard from him in a couple of days," admitted Paul. "Two days ago, he said he was coming in. He said he had to talk to me. Since then? I ain't heard shit. He doesn't answer the phone. There's nobody at his house and his cell phone goes right to voice mail. I just don't know—"

"Where could he be?"

Paul just shrugged. "Lissen, okay?" he said, lowering his voice, "it's not just here, all right? The whole fucking empire is going down. He's got bigger problems than just this place." Paul turned his gaze to the bulletin board on the office wall. Between price quotes from produce companies, a calendar with a wine company's logo, cooks' schedules, and a fuzzy faxed photo of the
New York Times
food critic, was an old snapshot of Rob and Paul, standing out front of Red House: two young men, looking cocky and triumphant in snap-front dishwasher shirts, brandishing their knives and grimacing for the camera. Red House had been the place chefs ate after work! All twelve tables were constantly booked! They had been the toast of the town . . .

Things were different now, he thought. Turning slowly to Michelle, he asked her for a cigarette, lit it, took a deep draw, and sat back in his chair. "I know where he's going to be tomorrow," he said. "Get somebody to cover for you until nine. We'll go and get him."

The Hitchcock Annual Christmas Party was in full swing at the Turgeson Galleries in Chelsea. An entire floor of industrial space had been set aside for the event. In the center of the room, an enormous ice carving of a letter H kindly provided by Tavern on the Green melted slowly into a bed of crushed ice and seaweed. Behind it, two uniformed oyster shuckers from the Grand Central Oyster Bar, dispatched at the last minute after a late-night request heavy with implicit threat and promise, opened littleneck clams, Wellfleet oysters, and sea urchins from a not-characteristically-so-generous seafood company. Cooks from a cross-section of New York restaurants struggled to keep up with the hungry partygoers, arranging tiny sculpted portions of intricately garnished food on paper plates and decorating them with squeeze bottles, tiny heaps of frizzled vegetables, and truffle chips, while their chefs looked nervously on in their best embroidered finery with pained rictuses of smiles stitched across their faces. A charcuterie and provisions company had come through with twin towers of Armagnac-soaked foie gras-stuffed

prunes, pate assortments, galantines, and sausages, and a cook seared tiny packages of
feuille de brie
pastry filled with duck rillettes on a hot plate.

Rob Holland, dressed as Santa Claus (though without wig or beard), posed for photographs with giggly female Hitchcock staffers and their mothers. He was drunk and smelled of old lady.

"And what do
you
want, little girl?" he managed to say, as yet another blushing assistant from the ad sales department squirmed sweatily on his lap. Jesus, she had her legs apart on his thigh, was rubbing herself on his red polyester-clad upper leg while her pink-blotched mom snapped a photo. This was the final straw, Rob was thinking. Free food, fine. Reservations at the last second, sure. Sending over some hors d'oeuvres for his cocktail parties, kiss the ring. Reasonable. Hook him up with a Viking range or a Sub-Zero at cost (or better), all right, why not? It sucked, but this is the business we chose. And he is the all-powerful one who must be pleased at all costs. How this latest outrage would forestall what was clearly shaping up to be the inevitable, however, Rob didn't know. He'd agreed to do it when the despotic entrepreneur had last been in Saint Germain for dinner. Hovering cheerfully at the table after the last course had been served, fussing and flattering Hitchcock for the benefit of his guests (two future victims, no doubt), Rob had been too surprised, too horrified, too pressed against the wall to give what should have been a flat "no" followed probably by two kicks in the groin. He'd found himself saying, to his surprise, that yes, yes he'd be delighted to play Santa at the annual Hitchcock Christmas party. Of course he would.

It had taken a half bottle of vodka to get him past his bathroom mirror in the Santa suit: floppy peaked cap with white pom-pom, oversize red coat with fluffy white trim, red pants with black synthetic boots that were made of the same material as a child's Halloween costume. This was it, thought Rob, as a cruiserweight-size assistant editor took her place on his lap and a gaggle of girlfriends snapped her photo. The wait between pressing the button and the blinding flash seemed always to take forever. Rob was already drunk. Spots swarmed around in his eyes, making it even harder to focus on what was happening in the rest of the room. The other chefs were no doubt snickering up their sleeves at his sorry predicament. Oh Jesus, oh God, please make it stop, he was thinking. Where is
my
fucking Santa Claus? Who will save
my
pitiable restaurant? How will I escape this headlong rush to shame, embarrassment, disappointment, and ruin? Is
this
the bottom of the barrel? How much lower can I go? Rob pictured himself flogging Ronco garlic presses at mall openings, doing infomercials for fat-free grills, print ads for Lomotil and Kaopectate. No. It could not possibly get worse than this.

"Fuck it!" he said suddenly, unsure if it was he who had said it. He stood up, nearly upending an approaching office manager, and lurched toward the bar. He saw a worried Hitchcock shoot him a look, but he ignored it, making straight for the bar, where two well-built young men in tight-fitting black T-shirts and elf hats served martinis donated by a liquor company.

"Give Santa a fucking vodka mart," he snarled, pushing between two representatives of a suburban shopper newspaper. "Santa needs a drink—or he'll put a cluster bomb up your chimney." When the drink arrived, he knocked over a bowl of taro chips but managed to negotiate the thin-stemmed glass, draining the drink in one gulp and quickly demanding another.

At some point someone, he wasn't sure who, put a hand on his shoulder, suggesting in the kind of tones you use with a recalcitrant child that he once more take his place in Santa's North Pole workshop. He responded by balling up his fist inside the black polyurethane Santa glove and slamming it as hard as he could into somebody's face.

After that, there had been some jostling and struggling. He would later recall that he might have reacted badly, responding with some additional moves of his own, possibly a kick or two here and there and maybe a few blows, before he was wrestled to the ground and beaten and kicked by headset-wearing security goons who were most definitely not in the spirit of the season as they frog-marched him to the door and shoved him onto the freight elevator. That he vomited on himself at some point was without dispute, as the evidence was now spread across his red and white coat and wide black belt. As career moves go, thought Rob, sagging inexorably to the floor as the freight elevator began its descent, this had not been a good night.

"Dude! Wake up!" came the voice. Rob opened his eye, the one that
did
open (the other had swollen shut after contact with an elbow), and saw Paul and Michelle, looking down at him. "What the fuck happened to you, bro?" The two grabbed him under his arms and managed to haul him to his feet before half dragging him to the street.

"Rob!" said Michelle. "For Chrissakes. Wipe your mouth! You're drooling!"

It was snowing hard outside, the large flakes burning cold when they landed on his skin. They were big and fat and slow-moving and they were everywhere, swirling and drifting slowly around him, collecting in heaps as the plows made their first forays down the streets and the shop owners cleared their sidewalks. The black plastic boots had no traction at all. Rob's feet slipped out from under him again and again, finally forcing Paul and Michelle to sit him up as best they could in the service entrance of a clothing store. As he slipped into unconsciousness again, Rob heard the distorted tones of "Jingle Bells" playing from a damaged speaker and glimpsed an unhappy-looking Pakistani, also in a Santa suit, handing out flyers for the clothing store's Christmas sale at the corner. The two locked eyes in a brief second, a shared moment of misery.

"So, genius," said Paul. "What now?"

Michelle had never in her life been an optimist. Her faith in her fellow man had generally, up to this point, extended only to what she could see with her own eyes. Given inadequate scrutiny and half a chance she'd found, after years in professional kitchens, and more than enough unhappy relationships with men, that people will inevitably disappoint you. She had, she thought, comfortably reconciled herself to this, careful at all times to have low expectations. But looking down at Rob's unconscious face, his eyes closed and without expression or care, blissfully snoring as "Jingle Bells" played on and on, the snow-flakes beginning to collect on his lashes, she found herself thinking how sweet he looked, how strangely innocent he'd once been. She remembered the first time she'd met him. Just a quick hello between orders at Red House, where she'd had to poke her head into the kitchen to greet the people who'd prepared what had been a spectacular meal. He'd been distracted. His eyes had swept right across her face without registering. He'd managed a "Nice to meet you" before hurrying back behind the single six-burner range to rescue an order of skate grenobloise. It had been all about the food then. She'd recognized that look.

They could leave him like this. It might serve him right. Could be a much-deserved wake-up call, coming to in a doorway in a puke-stained Santa suit. But he looked so abjectly helpless, didn't he, so fucking adorable lying there in that ridiculous outfit, snow collecting on his chest and legs like something out of Dickens. She could take him home. Drop him in a hot tub. Feed him hot cocoa with marshmallows. Or she could draw the word
asshole
on his forehead with red lipstick and leave him to possible hypothermia and a "Page Six" item. She looked at Paul, saw the fatigue, the worry, the disgust in his face—the look she'd seen in so many good cooks' faces over the years when faith and hope had begun to ebb. And then she had an idea.

"I know what to do," she said. "Hail a cab and help me pick his sorry ass up. America's sexiest chef is gonna work the line tonight."

When they arrived at Saint Germain, Michelle and Paul hauled Rob down the service stairs and hosed him off. Michelle then helped peel off the sodden Santa suit and they managed to dress him in a snap-front dishwasher shirt and some ill-fitting checks borrowed from Manuel. After several large mugs of coffee and threats and numerous stomach-emptying trips to the bathroom, Paul announced to the crew that Rob would be working the saute station for the rest of the shift.

"I can't do it," Rob had protested, as he was half carried, half pushed onto the line. Kevin, eyes gaping, stepped aside after a final wipe of his cutting board, and Michelle moved in to take over at grill. Paul took his place at the expediting station. "You can do it, chef," he said. "Remember? Out all night snorting blow and doing Jager shots, puking on the line into the trash bins? Cold sweats and shakes? We
cooked,
man. We got
three
fucking stars working like that, bro. You can do it. Think of the good old days."

"Oh God . . . Please . . . kill me now," said Rob, leaning down instinctively to check his mise en place in the lowboy refrigerator. "Just come now, tear my head off, empty out this rotten husk of a body and leave the pitiable empty shell right here. Oh God . . ."

"That's it, chef," said Michelle. "Nice and morbid, that's the spirit."

Suddenly, the printer began to click out its taktaktak tune, spitting a curl of three-layered paper into Paul's hand.

"Oh fuck
me.
Oh God, oh Jesus
...
a motherfuckin'
orderl"

"Relax. It's for Marvin," said Paul. "And the missus. They're having dinner together tonight." He adopted his best, most impersonal expeditor tone, the fighter-pilot drone he favored, and began to read: "Ordering: One Dueling Foie . . . one sweetbread . . . followed by a lamb MR and a Dover sole!"

Rob snapped into motion, reaching down for a trimmed, boned-out loin of lamb and a whole Dover sole, laying them out in separate sizzle platters and then preheating two pans.

"It's Robo-Chef," said Michelle.

Out in the empty dining room, Marvin nearly choked on his lamb when he heard that Rob had actually cooked the thing himself. What was going on? He looked around the dining room, trying to gauge from the expressions on his staff's faces what might be happening. Was there something he should know? There did seem to be something, a collective smirk, a slightly cheered look of amusement or something that he couldn't put his finger on.

"Is something wrong?" asked his wife.

"No," said Marvin. "Everything's fine. Little slow tonight. They're probably coming late."

Maybe there are Christmas miracles. And maybe there are special angels for chefs and cooks and for all the people who toil and scheme in the vast underworld of the restaurant business. Maybe once in a very great while, everybody who deserves a break gets a big fat one. All at the same time and on the same night. Because that's what happened on that night before Christmas at Restaurant Saint Germain. The doors opened, an icy draft blew in a few flakes of snow, and with it came Roland Schutz, the poodle-coiffed multimillionaire developer, with two girlfriends and a bald-headed security guard. Alexandra, the good hostess, greeted them warmly and helped them with their coats.

"I guess we don't need reservations," quipped Schutz as Alexandra pulled his camel-hair coat over his thick, stubby, but well-manicured fingers. "Wow!" he said, momentarily concerned as he looked around the empty dining room. "Did I come on a bad night? What the hell
happened?"