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By Root 692 0

as a rule will not drink anywhere where there isn't this kind of 'trade discount'. After work, posses of chefs and cooks will bounce from bar to bar, on a loose, rotating basis, taking full advantage of the liberal pouring policies of bartenders they know from working with them before. They're careful not to 'burn' their favorites hitting their bar too hard or too often - which is why they tend to move from place to place. The bartender is repaid when he swings by their restaurants with a dinner date and gets treated like a pasha: free snackies, maybe some free desserts, a visit from the chef, fawning, personal service - in short, the kind of warm welcome and name recognition all of us beaten-down, working-class slobs crave when going out to dinner.

ADAM REAL-LAST-NAME-UNKNOWN

THE KITCHEN PHONE RANG, followed by a beep, the little green light indicating that the hostess at the front desk had a call for me.

'Yeah?' I said, covering one ear so I could understand what she was saying over the radio and the clatter of pots and the noise of the dishwasher.

'Call for the chef,' she said. 'Line two.'

I pressed the red flashing light, signaled for Steven at the grill to turn down the radio.

'Feed the bitch!' said the voice on the phone. 'Feed the bitch or she'll die!'

It was Adam.

What he wanted me to do - what he was telling me - was that he was too drunk, too tired, too lazy, too involved in some squalid personal circumstances to come in and feed his starter: a massive, foaming, barely contained heap of fermenting grapes, flour, water, sugar and yeast which even now was pushing up the weighted-down lid of a 35-gallon Lexan container and spilling over on the work table where it was stored.

'Adam, we're busy here!' I protested.

'Tell him I'm not doing it,' yelled Steven from the line. He'd been expecting this call. 'Tell him I'm letting her die if he doesn't get his ass in here!'

'Dude . . . I've got like . . . a situation here, man. And like . . . I just can't. Please. Do me a favor. I promise . . . I'll bake tomorrow night. Please . . . feed . . . the . . . bitch.'

'What's so important? What's so important you can't come in here?' I asked, knowingly soliciting an untruth.

'Dude. They're trying to evict me from my apartment and like . . . I gotta be here. I have to be here when my lawyer calls, man.'

'They're always trying to evict you from your apartment, Adam,' I said. 'So what else is new?'

'Yeah . . . yeah. But this time, it's serious,' said Adam, slurring his words slightly. 'I gotta wait for my lawyer to call; otherwise I'm fucked, you know?'

'What lawyers call at eight fucking thirty on a Friday night, Adam?'

'Well, he's not really a lawyer, per se. He's more like a guy who's like helping me.'

I could picture the scene on the other end of the phone: Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown, the psychotic bread baker, alone in his small, filthy Upper West Side apartment, his eyes two different sizes after a thirty-six-hour coke and liquor jag, white crust accumulated at the corners of his mouth, a two-day growth of whiskers - standing there in a shirt and no pants amongst the porno mags, the empty Chinese take-out containers, as the Spice Channel flickers silently on the TV, throwing blue light on a can of Dinty Moore beef stew by an unmade bed. He's been snorting coke and smoking weed and drinking vodka from a half-gallon jug of Wolfschmidt's or Fleischman's (if he's drinking a better brand, he probably stole it from the restaurant) and now he's out of money. He doesn't have enough for a cab and he's too lazy and incoherent to hump twenty blocks down and feed the bitch.

I pondered the situation, looking first at the 250-pound blob of starter, and then at Steven.

'I'm not doing it!' said Steven (his voice gets high and squeaky when he gets indignant). 'Tell Vinnie to go fuck himself!' (Steven calls Adam 'Vinnie'. I don't know why. Maybe it's his real name.)

I kept Adam waiting.

'I'll help you feed her, man,' I told Steven. 'I don't want to look at the guy, the way he sounds. You really want to see him? The condition