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By Root 720 0

insolvency, soliciting, pandering, stealing and in every way leaving a trail of destruction and bodily fluids in their wake. Steven returned to New York, probably one step ahead of the law, and worked brief stints at Mathew's with Mathew Kenney ('Asshole' says Steven), Carmine's, the Plaza Hotel, and some other very decent restaurants for brief periods of time. Along the way, he managed to pick up a very respectable set of line-cooking chops, as well as that peculiar variety of less legitimate skills that continue to serve him well to this day. He remains a remarkable font of knowledge about the inner workings of the restaurant business, the real cogs and wheels. He can fix a broken compressor, repair appliances, pick locks, jury-rig electrical power where there was none before, unclog a grease trap, find a breaker, fix a refrigerator door. And he is a close observer of every detail of human and mechanical activity in the workplace - a guy who notices things - probably a result of all those years looking for opportunities for criminality. Little gets by him. If somebody's running a scam, Steven knows all about it. The idea, more than likely, occurred to him first.

As we battled through party season at the Supper Club, Steven and I did a lot of after-work drinking together, sitting around reviewing the events of the evening, planning our moves for the next day, pondering the mysteries of This Life We Live. I came to rely on him more and more, to find out what was going on, to fix things, to help me in the crushing, relentless routine of serving hundreds and hundreds of meals, different menus every day, hors d'oeuvres, a la carte meals, managing a staff of cooks that would swell into double digits for big events then shrink back to a core group of about eight for regular service.

Buying 10,000 dollars-worth of meat a day gave me a strange and terrible thrill, like riding a roller-coaster, and the simple act of moving ceiling-high piles of perishable fish and produce through my kitchen every day was a puzzle, a challenge I enjoyed. I liked being a general again: deploying forces where needed, sending out flying squads of cooks to put out brush fires on the buffet stations, arranging reconnaissance, forward ob servers, communicating by walkie-talkie with the various cornersof the club:

'More filet on buffet six,' would come the call. 'More salmon on buffet four!' 'This is security at the door. I got a body count of three hundred and climbing! They're really coming in!' Amusingly, we shared a radio band with a nearby undercover unit from the street crimes division of the NYPD. They were always trying to get us to change frequency, which we couldn't, as we used them all: one for managers, one for kitchen, and a security band. After threats and shouts didn't work, the cops got clever; they listened, got to know our lingo and our locations and would play games with us, calling for 'More roast beef on buffet one!' when none was needed, or creating notional emergencies that would cause security to gang-rush the 'mezz bathroom' to break up a non-existent fight. It was a wild-style life. It wasn't unusual to see naked women hosing ice cream off their bodies in the kitchen pot sink (the Howard Stern event); sinister Moroccan food tasters packing heat (Royal Air Maroc party); Ted Kennedy in a kitchen walk-through eerily reminiscent of RFK's last moments; our drunken crew, in a hostile mood, bullying a lost Mike Myers into 'doing that Wayne's World Ex-cel-lent thing'; Rosie Pérez hanging on the saute end, fitting right in as if she worked with us, sitting on a cutting board, 'What's good to eat in here, boys?'; a clit-piercing on stage (Stern again); Madonna fans trying to sneak through the kitchen from the hotel (she brings her own eggs for Caesar salad); concerts, swimsuit models, hard-core hip-hoppers, go-go boys. One day there would be a wedding for 100 people where the customer spent 1,000 bucks per person for lobster and truffle ravioli, individual bottles of vodka frozen in blocks of ice, baby wedding cakes for every table, and