The World in My Kitchen by Colette Rossant Read Free Book Online

the office from 9:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. every day and answer the phone, and for this, I would be paid $35 a week, twice a month. I immediately said yes, overjoyed to have a job. I was then handed a key, and I promised that I would be on time the next day. I called Jimmy and said excitedly, “I have a real job!”
    The next morning Jimmy walked me to the subway, explaining what station to exit. I looked for my station, but I must have missed it because twenty minutes later, I found myself in Queens. I got out of the train and tried to ask how to go back to Manhattan. I did not understand what my would-be rescuers were saying to me: “You can take the IRT or the BMT to go back to Manhattan.”
    What did these letters mean? I did not know what to do and ended on a bench, crying. I was lost, totally lost. As I sat on that bench, forlorn and thinking that I would be fired, an older man approached me and asked if I needed help. As I explained through my tears what had happened, he laughed and told me he would take me back to the Forty-second Street station. I learned in the subway that his name was Renaldo Butoni, he was an Italian journalist attached to the United Nations, and he lived in Queens. When he left me in front of The Fuller Building, he handed me his card and said he hoped we would see each other again, but not on a subway platform. Later, Renaldo and I would become quite good friends, and he would often help me in my work.
    As I reached my office, I tried to imagine what excuse I could give M. Ribaud. To my astonishment the office was empty. On my desk were six newspapers, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily News, The New York Post, The Sun, and The Herald Tribune and instructions on how to teletype the article I would write on Friday morning. The note also said that he would come by on the fifteenth of the month to pay me. M. Ribaud kept his promise, only showing up twice a month, promptly at 9:00 A.M. , staying just long enough to hand me my bimonthly check. I never found out if he or the paper liked my work or what he did the rest of the time. I was always alone in the office with my newspapers and a pair of scissors.
    On the first day, I started to read The New York Times. I had problems with the political articles, since I wasn’t familiar with the workings of political parties or the government, so I turned to the local news, which was also quite a mystery to me. Robert Wagner Jr. was then mayor of New York. There were articles about corruption, others about a mysterious Boss named Carmen DeSapio. Who is this “Boss?” I wondered. Since I had to wait until the evening to ask Jimmy, I went on to read the next story. This was an article about a controversy on Robert Moses’s plans to build more public housing downtown. I doubted that Brussels would be interested, so I turned to the entertainment pages and read about Carnegie Hall and Mayor Wagner’s hope to rescue it from demolition. Musicians and composers all over the country and abroad were gathering forces to protest its imminent destruction. This article was cut and stacked away. I read about Mayor Wagner’s decision to create a free Shakespeare theater in Central Park. Again this article was cut and put away. On Friday, I would write an article incorporating all the tidbits I had read. By 12:30 P.M. , it was time for lunch, and I went to explore Fifth Avenue.
    Forty-second Street was lined with cafeterias and coffee houses. Which one to choose? They all seemed the same to me. I read their menus and wondered what could I eat. What is a Triple Decker? Finally, I chose a restaurant that did not look too intimidating and sat down at a small table. I ordered a hamburger but could not remember how to say rare, and I was presented with a gray, overcooked hamburger, topped with a slice of orange cheese and sweet pickles; it looked and tasted like rubber. I discovered that beyond American coffee, which I disliked, and Coca-Cola, which I found