Bone in the Throat by Anthony Bourdain Page B

thinking about when the knife got so fucked up. See the chef keeps asking who could've done it and I realize who it was in the kitchen the night before. It was that night Sally was there."
    "What did you tell him?" asked Al.
    "Michael? I didn't tell him anything. I don't really know anything. I mean, I know who was down there, Sally and Tommy and all. But what am I going to say? I told him maybe the porters did it trying to scrape out a pot or something."
    "That satisfy him?"
    "I guess so."
    "So what are you telling me, Harvey," said Al. "Sally is dropping by your kitchen in the middle of the night to play with knives? Is that what you're telling me, Harvey?"
    "I don't know. I don't know who did it. I just know Sally and Tommy were there that night."
    "Maybe it was somebody else," said Al.
    "Everybody in the place knew about that fuckin' knife. Nobody was to touch it. Chef told everybody. Cooks, waiters, dishwashers, porters. He told them all a million times. Somebody put a little ding in it one time, he called a staff meeting to tell everybody not to touch his damn knife."
    "And it wasn't the porters," said Al.
    "The porters weren't there," said Harvey.
    "Right, right," said Al.
    "Anyway I thought about that today when I'm talking to Sally."
    "Anything unusual about the place when you came in?"
    "When?"
    "The day after Sally used the place."
    "Unusual. Like what?"
    "Like how did the place look? Ashtrays full of mysterious cigar butts? Any booze missing? Sinatra tapes you didn't previously own left in the machine? Anybody cook anything? Maybe Sally just had a few friends over for a late supper. Fucked up the knife cutting lamb chops for some buddies. You see any dirty plates with some half-eaten lamb chops on them? Help me out here."
    "No. I was the first one in. There was no plates. Somebody did them all."

Eighteen
    T HE CHEF STEPPED reluctantly into the shower. The bathroom was filled with steam. It was a hot day, but he broke into goose bumps. The drain wasn't working well, and soon empty bottles of shampoo and conditioner were bobbing around him in the ankle-deep water, souvenirs of a long-gone girlfriend.
    Teeth chattering, the chef turned off the water and wrapped himself tightly in a dirty towel. He stood shivering in front of the mirror.
    His face in the bathroom mirror was pale and bloodless. Tiny pupils floated around in watery, bloodshot eyes. His thick brown hair was too long, sticking up at odd angles, and his sideburns were uneven. The chef opened his mouth and grimaced at himself, examining his teeth. One tooth was missing on the right side, but you couldn't see it; there was one crumbling molar on the left, also invisible to the casual observer, and a chipped eyetooth.
    The chef moved his eyes down over his naked, bony chest: protruding ribs, the stomach that was showing the beginnings of a paunch. He examined his arms. There were no tracks to speak of, only a small, yellowish bruise in the crook of his left arm. He walked into the living area of his narrow apartment and put a CD into a portable player. He looked around the room.
    The chef was suddenly struck by how little remained in the way of possessions from his previous lives. There was a mattress on the floor, a twenty-one-inch TV set, the CD player, a few CDs, the tiny speakers. A few cables lay useless on a bare shelf, left behind when he sold the tuner, amplifier, cassette deck, turntable, and big speakers. The records were gone too—sold off with most of his books. He'd actually stood there in the street, selling his treasured collection of cookbooks, the classic LPs from the sixties and seventies, many of them irreplaceable. The first Stooges album . . . that Yard-birds record that was only on the shelf a week before they pulled it . . . the Dolls records . . . that Nazz album, the one with the red vinyl. . . All gone. Sold for as little as a dollar each.
    The Velvet Underground played "Sweet Jane" in the background while he dressed. He selected a