Bone in the Throat by Anthony Bourdain Page A

watch, the brown, suit-cut leather jacket with the wide lapels, that so impressed Tommy's other friends.
    Upon seeing Sally one day in the street, she had whispered a quote from a late-night TV commercial in Tommy's ear, "It looks like hair is actually growing out of the scalp," before breaking into peals of laughter. None of Tommys other friends ever laughed at Sally. "That's my uncle," Tommy had confessed, his ears burning.
    When school let out for the holidays, Diane went away with her family, to places like Cape Cod, Aruba, Taos . . . She'd return with a suntan, a new favorite band to go see, stories to tell about people and places unlike any Tommy knew of.
    By the time he graduated from high school and Diane had disappeared from his life forever, gone off to Boston and college, Tommy had, in his heart at least, turned away from Sally's world and the ambitions of his old friends. He'd cringe when Sally would raise his voice in a restaurant, bossing around his waiter. He began to hate the bluff, uncaring style with which Sally and his friends swaggered through life, oblivious to all the new pleasures that Tommy now knew of. His ears would burn with embarrassment when Sally would offer him free tickets to see Neil Diamond at the Garden, a new V-neck sweater, Ferrari sunglasses, a fat signet ring.
    And when somebody Tommy knew would disappear—when, suddenly, somebody Tommy had seen around his whole life went missing only to reappear as a grainy newspaper photograph of a zippered body bag or a sprawled figure on the floor of a restaurant, shirt pulled up over a naked belly, spattered with blood and clam sauce—it didn't seem romantic at all. The life didn't even seem dangerous anymore. Dangerous, Tommy now believed, meant dangerous to the social order, not sitting there in Umberto's waiting for one of your friends to shoot you. The Sex Pistols were dangerous. Sally and his gangster friends were . . . well. . . kind of irrelevant.
    T OMMY STOPPED in the Lion's Head for a drink. He stared down at his vodka. He reminded himself that Sally had got him his first restaurant job out in Sheepshead Bay, and when that passed, another one at a large French place in midtown. Sally had an in there through the union. Tommy heard later that a Puerto Rican cook had been fired to make room for him. And finally, the Dreadnaught . . . His first sous-chef's job. A few well-timed words in Harvey's ear, and Tommy was a sous-chef. Sally didn't think much of Tommy's new life in the restaurant business, but he had helped him out anyway. The least he could do was return the favor.
    Tommy drained his drink and ordered another. Somebody put Lou Reed on the jukebox. The chef, Tommy knew, loved Lou Reed. Tommy liked the chef. He was impressed by him. Sure, he was a junkie. He fucked up. He forgot to order things. He showed up late or sometimes not at all. He leaned on Tommy to cover for him in a way no other chef had done. But Tommy enjoyed working with him. He was a very talented guy, and smart, and Tommy had learned a lot from him. He'd studied cooking in Paris. He'd worked in places Tommy had still only heard about. He was a good guy, a friend. Tommy wanted to stay with him. He wanted to stay at the Dreadnaught, make nice food, get famous maybe.
    But this goddamn favor of Sally's. It threatened to pull him back to places he never wanted to return to. Threatened to contaminate him, remind him of all the things in his life he didn't want to look back at right now. But he owed. A lifetime as a beneficiary of Sally's rolling flea market, his precious job, his mother, his—he hated the word—his family. He'd just have to do what Sally wanted.

Eleven
    T OMMY SAT in the chef's office, waiting for Sally and the others to arrive. It had been busy that night, and Tommy was tired. He needed something to keep himself awake.
    The chef's office was little more than a closet with a big steel desk and some shelves wedged into it. There was no door, only a few