I Will Rise by Michael Louis Calvillo Read Free Book Online

hundred and fifty dollars easy. Imagine that, one hundred and fifty dollars for a pair of shoes. I hit p ayless, buy one pair for $14.99, get another at half price, and sneak a third pair into my backpack when no one is looking.
    But goddamn, Buck’s shoes sure are nice.
    I imagine grabbing his ankles, yanking him down and twisting those shiny leather bad boys from his feet. Yeah right. Where would I wear shoes like that? What would I wear with shoes like that? Why would I want to wear shoes like that?
    I bite my lower lip hard. Sharp pain and the taste of blood snap me back into reality.
    Why would I want to wear shoes like that?
    Where would I get the desire, the stupid, drooling, sickening desire, to want a pair of shoes like that?
    Media twisted, remember? I can’t help it. High-gloss magazines. Entertainment Tonight . Inundated and mutated by a TV world. A culture that keeps giving and giving so we all keep buying and buying.
    But I don’t want this.
    Yes you do.
    But I don’t need this.
    Yes you do.
    You are what you own.
    Buck’s feet alone are worth one hundred and fifty dollars.
    Bruno Malie puts out shoes that cost upwards of four hundred and fifty dollars.
    Me, if you count that a third of the time my shoes are stolen, a third of the time they’re half-price and a third of the time they’re under fifteen dollars…well you get the picture, I’m not worth much.
    Needless to say, Buck and his one-hundred-and-fifty-dollar status boosters never notice me. A little after one a.m. the restaurant is completely closed down and I’m ready for action. Shaking out the leg cramps, I crawl out and stand.
    When I work I make a beeline for the kitchen and when I leave I jet for the exit so I generally don’t spend much time in the dining room. Right now, amped-up and sick on the idea of a world lost to materialism, the fine wood and ornate fanciness makes me want to puke, puke, puke. I can see the dinner crowd, glasses clinking, teeth sparkling, finely manicured asses wriggling, downing bottle after bottle of overpriced wine, happy to shell out thirty dollars a plate. Do you know how many groceries I can buy for thirty dollars? Nausea rising, I scoop up my backpack and run to the kitchen.
    Just as I enter the server station a red streak flashes within the corner of my eye. I pause and backpedal. Nothing. Focus. Turning on the kitchen light I remind myself to ignore the hand tricks. There’s work to be done.
    Tonight’s special is stuffed prawns served with wild rice and asparagus tips. Twenty-three ninety-five a pop and it won’t even make you full. People buy them up just the same. Mr. Shithead anticipates moving about two hundred plates, so Jose and I spend two days prepping over eight hundred giant prawns. Maybe one of the reasons Mr. Shithead never gave Buck orders to terminate me is because Jose and I still have tons of prawns to stuff and bread. Maybe he’s holding off until the prawns are ready. This thought really makes my blood boil.
    The secret to the success of the Stuffed Prawn Dinner Special is the breading. Mr. Shithead doesn’t use traditional bread crumbs; he uses a mixture of flour, fresh basil, thyme, marjoram, Parmesan cheese and garlic. The basil, thyme and marjoram are dark in color and their dirty green, almost bluish tint is what I’m banking on to conceal the Ajax. I’m not sure if it will work, the contrast might be too obvious. If it looks wrong and blends strange I will have no choice but to cut my losses and destroy the prawns. I suppose canceling Stuffed Prawn Dinner Night would be a nice, tidy victory in itself. But successfully poisoning all of those rich fool motherfuckers and watching the ritzy seafood restaurant I work for come apart sure would be nice.
    The first thing I do is drag the fifty-pound vat of flour mixture from its storage space. I take a tube of Ajax, open it and sprinkle a little into the mixture. The speckled cleanser doesn’t exactly blend, but then again, it