Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [97]
“All right, Pete,” Eminem says. “We’re going to be sitting here awhile. We plan on getting drunk.”
“OK, drink up,” Pete says.
“Pete’s cool,” Eminem says. “But the owner, Louie, he ain’t here. That motherfucker was a fuckin’ dick. I worked here for three years, cooking, washing dishes, I was a busboy, all that. And the whole time I kept saying I was going to be a fucking rapper. Louie used to always come in when I was cooking and be like, ‘Oh shit, Marshall, you’re here. I thought you’d be gone, blowing up as a rapper by now.’ That guy always fucked with me. When I got fired right before Christmas, he was the one who OK’d it. It was like a week before Christmas and then they hired me back eight months later.”
The waitress is more friendly now. “How are you doing over here!” she says.
“I’m wasted and good!” Eminem says.
“This shot is from Kathleen, she wanted to get you drunk.”
“Well, OK,” he says. “Tell her she’s too late.”
Pete and two waiters return with plates and a sizzling pizza, preceded by roasted garlic aroma. “Here’s the special,” he says.
“Marshall here was a good worker,” Pete tells me, sitting down in the empty chair, “but I always knew his music mattered the most. I had to stay on top of him sometimes. He’d be in the back rapping all the orders! I had to tell him to tone it down sometimes. But he was good about that.”
“He’d rap the orders?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Everything that came out of his mouth was a rap. Every once in a while, I had to check on him and make sure he wasn’t fooling around back there too much. No matter how much he was joking around, he always took his music very seriously. We were all really surprised when we saw he really did it.”
“Did you think he sounded like a good rapper?” I ask.
“Oh, I don’t know anything about it,” Pete responds, chuckling. “I wouldn’t know at all. I listen to Greek music. Call me next time you guys are coming in, I’ll bring my bouzouki.”
“And I’ll bring my bazooka,” Eminem says, in a mobbed-up Italian accent. “And ah, I’ll blow up the place. Then we’re good.”
The pizza is eaten and the beer is drunk. The plates are cleared and a round of shots arrive from the bartender.
“OK!” Eminem says. “You gonna drink that, Paul?”
Later, TLC’s “No Scrubs” plays as we walk to the door.
“Hey, Marshall,” says a smiling lady, “I see your video all the time.”
“Hi, Holly,” Eminem says.
“I’m so fucking proud of you!”
“Thanks a lot, Holly.”
“How’s your daughter doing?”
“She’s good,” he says. “Real good.”
“You take care of yourself, Marshall. Be careful.”
Eminem walks across the parking lot, crunching snow underfoot. He strides along an invisible path he knows well, but he doesn’t go to the Dumpster this time; or around the back to where he’d park his worn Ford Tracer. He opens the door to the chauffeured van that is billowing smoke, and he disappears inside.
DETROIT IS AND IS NOT A TYPICAL American city. It is a Midwestern metropolis with all that entails: the full spectrum of neighborhoods, from no-frills, working-class life to suburbs as plush as executive pay can buy. But Midwestern small-town quaint resides next to burned-out factory wasteland; country clubs and crack houses lie within short miles of each other. As a great flat bastion of conservatism, the Midwest screams organized homogeneity lacking in character, while Detroit flies the bird.
It is the fuck-you cousin of the Midwest, if not the country. Safety after dark in metropolitan Detroit is a legitimate concern; a trip to a downtown club can be on par with taking your life in your hands. People raised in Detroit have their stories involving random acts of violence or scenes taut with threat. They relate them with a mix of pride, nonchalance, and Midwestern economy. There’s a tactile air to Detroit, like New Orleans or New York—a permeating mood. Detroit feels dead yet electric, animated in rigor mortis. Like New Orleans’s mausoleums, the decay is above ground, among the