• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 255 0

this. When the order was, at long last, finally taken, the waiter dispatched to the kitchen to meet his fate, Eddie was still looking at the menu, unsatisfied. He'd study it for a few more minutes, to see, Bobby thought, where he might have gone wrong, doing an after-action report in his head, analyzing where he might have missed something. By now, Bobby had completely lost his appetite. The customers at the tables around them glared, murmuring in French. Bobby, easily the largest man in the room, felt like a circus bear, staked in place, trapped and uncomfortable.

Eddie straightened his tie and put down his menu.

"Isn't this place great? You can't get reservations here. Six month wait."

"You murder these waiters," said Bobby.

"Are you kidding me? They love me here!" said Eddie, shooting his cuffs, then rubbing his hands together in anticipation of his oysters and his Caesar. "You know how much I tip when I come here?"

Yeah, thought Bobby. Twelve percent.

Knowing the back-of-the-house of the restaurant business as he did, Bobby could well imagine how much they loved Eddie Fish here. They probably had a nickname for him. Catching sight of Eddie, moving brusquely across the dining room to his favorite table (without waiting to be seated), they probably said, "Oh, shit! Here comes that malignant little shit! Please, God . . . Not my station! Not my station . . ." Or, "Here comes the Pomeranian. Look out! That cocksucker can keep his twelve percent. You take that table. I'm NOT waiting on that fuck."

What the chef thought of the troublesome Mr. Fish, Bobby could only imagine. Considering what havoc he played with the man's scrupulously thought out menu, Bobby would be surprised if there wasn't some small way in which the chef revenged himself. If he hadn't already hocked a big, fat phlegm-ball into one of Eddie's from-scratch Caesars, he was clearly a man of Herculean endurance.

Bobby recalled overhearing one of the NiteKlub cooks, talking about what one could do to a particularly hated customer's food.

"Copper oxide, dude," the cook had said. "You can get it in, like, hobby shops, for chemistry sets. You sprinkle that shit in somebody's food, bro'? They gonna slam shut like a book - then it's lift-off time! We're talking projectile vomiting! We're talking explosive diarrhea — that motherfucker's going off like a fucking bottle rocket!"

"What's so funny?" said Eddie, noticing Bobby smiling serenely. His oysters had arrived, and he speared one with a fork, ran it around in his mignonette.

"Nothing," said Bobby, startled out of his reverie. "I was just thinking."

"Oh yeah? . . . Well, think about this: I got something for you to do tonight."

"What?"

"A tune-up. You gotta go out to Queens and see a guy."

"I work at the club tonight."

"Yeah? Well, get somebody to cover for you. This guy needs a talking-to right away."

"Shit, Eddie . . . You don't have anybody else? I'm over this shit. I don't want to do it anymore."

"I don't have anybody big enough. This guy is a fucking gorilla. You should see him. He looks like a fucking building with feet. And tattoos. You never seen so many. I think this goof's been in jail."

"What he do, Eddie? He doesn't sound like a customer."

"He's not. I brought the Jag in to be fixed — this guy," said Eddie, pushing away his plate of oysters, only half of them eaten. "He was supposed to put in a new carburetor. New, Bobbie. New. My regular guy comes back from vacation, takes a look under there, says it's a reconditioned piece a equipment. Fucking guy ripped me off."

"So? Call him up. Tell him what a dangerous man you are. Tell him to put a new fucking carburetor in for Chrissakes . . . What's the problem?"

"This guy doesn't listen to reason. We had a few words on the phone. I make a few suggestions. He tells me to go get fucked. He's a real hard-on this guy. A tough guy. A Nazi. No shit!"

"A Nazi?"

"He has, like, swastikas all over his neck — on his arms. I saw this character when I brought the car in, I couldn't believe it."

"Why you going to Nazi fucking mechanics, Eddie?"