Bobby Gold Stories by Anthony Bourdain Read Free Book Online Page A

index finger, her heart sank. Whoever he was, he was in the business. This was bad. Everybody would know. All the other NiteKlub
     cooks; the chef, the sous-chef, even the floor staff —they'd all know about it by tonight.
    Nikki knew how these things went in the small, incestuous subculture of cooks and kitchens: first, the initial report, then
     the reviews, then additional commentary. Word would spread. Kitchen phones would be ringing all across town. "Did you hear
     who the saute bitch went home with last night?"
    Who had she taken home anyway?
    Nikki turned over, carefully, so as not to wake the sleeping man. She held her breath, then pulled down the covers to take
     a look. It was Jimmy Sears.
    "Oh, NO!" she yelped, sitting bolt upright now. She delivered a sharp blow to Jimmy's well-muscled shoulder.
    "Get up!! . . . Wake up you asshole!! . . . Oh, shit . . . oh, FUCK!!"
    "Morning," said Jimmy, sleepily, already looking much too pleased with himself. He rolled over onto his back, a morning hard-on
     poking out from under the sheets, rubbed his eyes and stretched. She considered braining him with the lamp. That would keep
     his mouth shut. Maybe she could even dispose of the body - bit by bit - if she had her knife kit. She could break him down
     like a side of veal. How hard could that be? She knew veal, beef, lamb, venison, chicken, rabbit, pork . . . how different
     could human anatomy be? But her knives were at the club, rolled up in their leather case and safely stashed in her locker
     - and who was she kidding anyway? This was awful. Of all the rotten people in the world to get drunk with, take home, let
     between her legs —this had to be the worst-case scenario.
    Jimmy, while cute — and hung like a donkey — was the sleaziest, most loud-mouthed Lothario in the restaurant universe: a braggart,
     misogynist, prevaricator and all-around bullshit artist. To make matters worse, he was the NiteKlub chef's arch rival. This
     wasn't just an embarrassment. This was treason.
    Nikki flashed back to when she'd worked for Jimmy — how she'd heard him, on countless occasions, bragging to his entire crew
     how he'd bagged some round-heeled hostess or rebounding bar customer —the excruciatingly clinical details: the way Jimmy would
     imitate the noises a girl had made when he'd "walked her around the room like a wheelbarrow," how she'd "looked like a glazed
     donut" when he'd blown his load all over her face. The room seemed to tip sideways for a second, and Nikki ran for the bathroom.
    She made it to the bowl with no time to spare, hurled yellowish bile into the porcelain, seeing stars. She was in there a
     long time, intermittently lying naked on the cold tile floor, and crawling back to the toilet, her stomach muscles convulsing
     with the effort of trying to squeeze out what was no longer there. After ten minutes or so, staring up at the ceiling, the
     sink making drip drip sounds, she tried listening for Jimmy in the bedroom, hoping he was gone. She thought she heard the
     refrigerator door closing.
    Memory was returning. She recalled Siberia, last night . . . the crowd at the bar, people jammed around the jukebox, Tracy,
     the owner, dancing with a pastry chick from the Hilton, remembered herself on the couch in the back room, drunk on tequila
     shots, Jimmy's tongue down her throat — and her with her fingers down the front of his pants, teasing the head of his oversized
     dong.
    "Please kill me now," she said to the bathroom ceiling, "I'm ready . . . I deserve to die. Please . . . just get it over with
     . . ."
    When she finally stood up, her vagina hurt. She was horrified by what she saw in the mirror: eyes, mascara-smudged sinkholes,
     the skin around them puffy and bruised-looking from throwing up. Her hair was a rat's nest, sticking out at all angles like
     it had been teased with a weed-whacker. There were purple marks on her outer thighs where Jimmy, no doubt, had held her while
     he'd drilled away with