Never a City So Real - Alex Kotlowitz [19]
Alexander believes in redemption. But he also exhibits the pragmatism of a businessman and recognizes that if his restaurant is to survive, the community around it must thrive. If his employees return to school, he’ll buy their books. “You’re not going to make it by working here,” he tells them. There’s Maurice Gaiter, a recovering heroin addict, who now helps manage the place. And remember the pimp Don Juan? In 1988, he discovered God and changed his name to Bishop Don Magic Juan. For two years, Alexander rented out a spare storefront to him for his church and provided him with an inexpensive apartment.
Alexander, who has never raised the price of lunch (meat and two sides for $5.95), may not know much about food, but his recipes, which come from his sister, keep folks coming back. (The crowd pleasers are the fried chicken and pork chops smothered in gravy, though I tilt toward the baked chicken with collard greens and yams on the side.) The customers here, who have included Snoop Dogg, the Cubs’ manager Dusty Baker, and Police Superintendent Terry Hillard, are mostly blue collar, usually lively, and mostly African-American, though not without a sprinkling of whites and Hispanics. I, for one, eat at Mac Arthur’s more regularly than anywhere else in the city.
I caught up with Alexander a few weeks after I met Mosby, and told him that Mosby took great pride in the fact that he was the employee whom Alexander entrusted with handling the restaurant’s cash—at times as much as two thousand dollars. “He trusts me,” Mosby had told me. “I can’t let him down.”
Alexander twirled a toothpick in his mouth. He smiled. “I still tell him he’s not going to make it,” he said. “I don’t tell him he’s the best I got. I don’t want it going to his head. I don’t want him to know I was wrong from the beginning.”
Brenda calls me. Can I meet her at Mac Arthur’s? Millie has hit a rough spot, and Brenda wants some advice, some help really, in reaching out to her friend. Mac Arthur’s just seems like the natural place to consider good deeds. When I suggest to Brenda that Alexander’s “soft heart” seems to wear off on others, she tells me about a previous lunch visit to Mac Arthur’s. She was ordering her food when she recognized one of the servers. It was a former client of hers. Brenda didn’t remember much about the woman’s situation except that the last few times she’d seen her there had been a remarkable decline in her bearing. She’d appeared tired; her clothes were soiled and her hair unkempt. Brenda soon learned that she was “on the pipe,” addicted to crack cocaine, and that she was shoplifting to support her habit. Brenda’s worked with so many young mothers that she couldn’t remember the woman’s name. “Hey, girl,” Brenda said when she saw the woman at Mac Arthur’s. “You look good.” She didn’t want to say much more as she didn’t want to embarrass her in front of all the customers. “I was real proud,” Brenda tells me. The woman—whom Brenda thinks she might have helped get into rehab but again can’t remember—smiled back, and handed Brenda her dessert, a banana pudding. “It’s on me,” the woman said. Brenda laughs to herself. “Ohhh,” she says. “That felt good.” We make a date for lunch.
Give Them What They Want
Milton Reed is a lanky, long-legged man, and so I need to walk briskly to keep up with him. He carries a large sketch pad under one arm, and he has stashed his sketch pencils in the pockets of his beige cargo pants, along with a box opener, which he uses as a sharpener—and which