Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook by Anthony Bourdain Read Free Book Online Page B

ride, no plans, no friends I was aware of, and no place to stay. A famous guy said hello to my friend by the luggage carousel. They exchanged witty banter. He did not, however, offer to let us crash at his place. There were no taxis in sight.
    From a comfortable rented villa on a nice island, where—despite my nightly flirtations with vehicular homicide and suicide—I was at least able to swim, eat and drink fairly cheaply, and eventually sleep securely in my own bed, I now found myself suddenly homeless. Worse, my partner, as I quickly discovered, was a spoiled, drunk, and frequently raving paranoid-schizophrenic.
    And cokehead. Did I mention that?
    Any pretense that mysterious Russian friends with a villa would be there for us had somehow dematerialized somewhere on the flight over. Similar departures from reality would become a regular feature of the next few days. After a long time, we found a taxi to a hotel—where, once the staff laid eyes on my mysterious but increasingly mad companion, a room was hastily made available for a night. A very expensive room.
    One of the things I’d forgotten about seriously wealthy people, something I’d noticed during a brief previous exposure in college, was that the old-school, old-money kind of rich people? Those motherfuckers don’t pay for shit. They don’t carry cash—and even credit cards seem always to be…somewhere else, as if whatever small sums as might be needed are beneath notice or discussion. Better you pay. And pay I did. Days and nights bingeing on overpriced drinks, bribing bartenders to scoop us up in their private vehicles at end of shift and drive us off into the dark to wherever she thought we might stay that night. One crappy motel-style room after another that cost what a suite at the St. Regis would. More drinks.
    By now, I was a prisoner of her escalating and downright scary mood swings and generally bad craziness. She’d turn on a dime from witty and affectionate to hissing, spitting psychotic. One minute we’d be having overpriced mojitos on a lovely beach, the next, she’d be raging at the manager, accusing the busboy—or whoever was at hand—of stealing her cell phone. Fact was, she constantly misplaced her cell phone, her purse, anything of value she had. She’d get sloshed, forgetful, impulsively run off to dance, to search for coke, to say hello to an old friend—and she’d lose track of shit. She’d forget where she’d put things—if she’d ever had them in the first place.
    I am not a fan of people who abuse service staff. In fact, I find it intolerable. It’s an unpardonable sin as far as I’m concerned, taking out personal business or some other kind of dissatisfaction on a waiter or busboy. From the first time I saw that, our relationship was essentially over. She accused me of “caring about waiters more than I cared about her,” and she was right. From that point on, I was babysitting a madwoman—feeling obliged only to get her crazy ass on a plane and back to England as quickly as possible and with as little damage done as could be managed. I’d gotten her here, allowed this to happen, it was impingent on me, I felt, to at least get her back in one piece. This was easier said than done.
    People were afraid of her. I noticed this early on.
    She had mentioned something earlier, back in England, about an ex-boyfriend who’d supposedly “stalked” her. How Mom had had to call some “friends” to “talk to” the fellow in question. How there’d been no problems after that. Somehow I’d blown right past that flashing red warning light, too—along with all the others. Now, all I wanted to do was get her on a plane back to London, but it was like reasoning with a wild animal. She didn’t want to go. Wouldn’t go.
    By now, middle of the night, she’d jack the volume on the TV all the way up and flick rapidly back and forth between news stations, raving about oil prices. Strangely, neither neighbors nor management ever