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It was Friday, an hour before service, when I was introduced to Tyrone the broiler man, whom I'd be trailing. Looking back, I can't remember Tyrone as being anything less than 8 feet tall, 400 pounds of carved obsidian, with a shaved head, a prominent silver-capped front tooth, and the ubiquitous fist-sized gold hoop earring. While his true dimensions were probably considerably more modest, you get the picture: he was big, black, hugely muscled, his size 56 chefs coat stretched across his back like a drumhead. He was a gargantua, a black Viking, Conan the Barbarian, John Wayne and the Golem all rolled into one. But unintimidated as only the ignorant can be, I started shooting my stupid mouth off right away, regaling my new chums with highly exaggerated versions of my adventures at the old Dreadnaught - what bad boys we had been. I blathered on about New York, trying to portray myself as some street-smart, experienced, even slightly dangerous professionalgun-for-hire of the cooking biz.

They were, to be charitable to myself, not impressed. Not that this deterred me in the slightest from yapping on and on. I ignored all the signs. All of them: the rolling eyes, the tight smiles. I plunged on, oblivious to what was happening in the kitchen right around me; the monstrous amounts of food being loaded into low-boys and reach-ins for mise-en-place. I missed the determined sharpening of knives, the careful arranging and folding of side towels in kitty-cornered stacks, the stockpiling of favorite pans, ice, extra pots of boiling water, back-up supplies of everything. They were like Marines digging in for the siege at Khe Sanh, and I registered nothing.

I should have seen this well-practiced ritual for what it was, understood the level of performance here in Marioland, appreciated the experience, the time served together which allowed these hulking giants to dance wordlessly around each other in the cramped, heavily manned space behind the line without ever colliding or wasting a movement. They turned from cutting board to stove-top with breathtaking economy of movement, they hefted 300-pound stockpots onto ranges, tossed legs of veal around like pullets, blanced hundreds of pounds of pasta, all the while indulgently enduring without comment my endless self-aggrandizing line of witless chatter. I should have understood this femme/convict patois, this business with the women's names, the arcane expressions, seen it for what it was: the end result of years working together in a confined space under extreme pressure. I should have understood. But I didn't.

An hour later the board was filled with more dinner orders than I'd ever seen in my life.

Ticket after ticket kept coming in, one on top of the other, waiters screaming, tables of ten, tables of six, four-tops, more and more of them coming, no ebb and flow, just a relentless, incoming, nerve-shattering gang-rush of orders. And the orders were all in Italian! I couldn't even understand most of the dupes, or what these waiters were screaming at me. The seasoned Mario cooks had an equally impenetrable collection of code names for each dish, making it even more difficult to make sense of it all. There were cries of 'Ordering!' and 'Pick up!' every few seconds, and 'Fire!', more food going out, more orders coming in, the squawk of an intercom as an upstairs bartender called down for food. Flames 3 feet high leaped out of pans, the broiler was crammed with a slowly moving train of steaks, veal chops, fish fillets, lobsters. Pasta was blanched and shocked and transferred in huge batches into steaming colanders, falling everywhere, the floor soon ankle-deep in spaghetti alia chitarra, linguine, garganelli, taglierini, fusilli. The heat was horrific. Sweat flowed into my eyes, blinding me as I spun in place.

I struggled and sweated and hurried to keep up the best I could, Tyrone slinging sizzle-platters under the broiler, and me, ostensibly helping out, getting deeper and deeper into the weeds with every order. On the rare occasions