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'All right, all right,' said Steven, grumbling under his breath as he slapped a steak on the grill. 'This is the last time, though. Tell him. Tell him that next time I'm going to let her die. I'm going to throw her in the trash. We can buy bread.'

'We'll feed her,' I told Adam.

I was now committed to wrestling a back-breakingly heavy, ungainly blob out of the plastic Lexan, heaping it in stages into the big Hobart mixer and 'feeding' it with a mix of warm water and fresh flour and yeast. Then I'd have to scrape it back into the Lexan, haul that back up onto its resting place, stack sheet pans and potato sacks on top of it. It was a two-man job, one that would leave flour and goop all over my clean kitchen, leave dough under my fingernails and clinging to my clogs. But anything was preferable to having Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown in my kitchen right now. Anything.

Why did God, in all his wisdom, choose Adam to be the recipient of greatness?

Why, of all his creatures, did He choose this loud, dirty, unkempt, obnoxious, uncontrollable, megalomaniacal madman to be His personal bread baker? How was it that this disgrace as an employee, as a citizen, as a human being - this undocumented,untrained, uneducated and unwashed mental case who's been employed (for about ten minutes) by every kitchen in New York - could throw together a little flour and water and make magic happen?

And I'm talking real magic here, people. I may have wanted Adam dead a thousand times over. I may have imagined, even planned his demise - torn apart by rabid dogs, his entrails snapped at by ravenous dachshunds, chained to a pillory post and flogged with chains and barbed wire before being drawn and quartered - but his bread and his pizza crust are simply divine. To see his bread coming out of the oven, to smell it, that deeply satisfying, spiritually comforting waft of yeasty goodness, to tear into it, breaking apart that floury, dusty crust and into the ethereally textured interior . . . to taste it is to experience real genius. His peasant-style boules are the perfect objects, an arrangement of atoms unimprovable by God or man, pleasing to all the senses at once. Cezanne would have wanted to paint them - but might not have considered himself up to the job.

Adam Real-Last-Name-Unknown may be the enemy of polite society, a menace to any happy kitchen, a security risk and a potential serial killer, but the man can bake. He's an idiot-savant with whom God has serious, frequent and intimate conversations. I just can't imagine what He's telling him - or whether the message is getting garbled during transmission.

The crusaders of yore, it is said, used to stop off at the local church or monastery before heading off to war; where they were allowed to purchase indulgences. This was sort of like a secured, pre-paid credit card from heaven, I imagine, and negotiations probably went something like this.

'Bless me, father, for I am about to sin. I plan on raping, pillaging and disemboweling my way across Southern Europe and North Africa, taking the Lord's name in vain, committing sodomy with all and sundry, looting the holy places of Islam, killing women and children and animals and leaving them in smoking heaps . . . as well, of course, as getting up to the usual soldierly hijinks of casual eye-gougings, dismemberment, bear-baiting and arson. Given this sinful agenda, padre, how much is this gonna cost me?'

'That'll be a new roof for the vestry, my son, perhaps a few carpets from down there. I understand they make a lovely carpet where you'll be goin'. . . and shall we say fifteen percent off the top, as a tithe?'

'Deal.'

'Go in peace, my son.'

Adam gets right with God with every proof rack of sour dough bread he pulls out of the oven: every crispy, crunchy, deliciously blistered pizza. It's God's little joke on all of us. Especially me.

I've hired him three or four times, and fired and rehired him again on countless occasions. He's in his late twenties to early thirties, I think, though he looks older. He's of medium height,