Hiroshima
The beef and bird are dead-on-arrival, already processed and packaged directly for the grill or a deep fryer. Everything else ends up at the steam station—which, because we were young, because we were dumb, because we could, we called Hiroshima—and is kept alive at all costs. The oysters, mussels, shrimp, and scallops require hands-on cruelty when it’s time for them to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the restaurant industry, playing their supporting roles in the movie called “The Customer Is Always Right”. Hiroshima was neither as busy nor important as the Sauté or Dessert/Salad stations, which is why teenage busboys looking for more hours could end up there, making half what they would in tips on the floor while getting valuable insights on the different shades of blue collar. The only cumbersome task was preparing the occasional raw bar order, which involves prying open bivalves; the harder it is, the fresher they are, the more they’re fighting you not to die. It’s generally better not to contemplate this, focusing instead on matters of evolution, the fittest surviving, and the advantage of thumbs. Lobsters, the most intelligent—or at least anthropomorphic—items on the menu, present different challenges and are therefore dismissed with dark humor, hence Hiroshima. You hold your prize in one hand, having selected it from a cardboard box filled with sluggish specimens, all carefully weighed and covered with crushed ice, then drop it into the metal pot, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat in reverse. The thrashing begins even before you close the lid and flip the switch, and here it’s helpful to recall a chef who once explained these things are nothing more than cockroaches that live underwater, that they’d pinch us if they didn’t have rubber bands around their claws, that they attack each other in tanks, that if they had a chance they’d drag us to the bottom of the ocean where no one could hear us scream.
Lazarus
The first thing you notice about anyone is their face. But with some people it’s the first, second, and third thing—and you keep noticing it. My friend EQ was once a good-looking man; was once a young man; was once something that could be called a person. As opposed to what he’d become, which was like what a rocket ship must resemble after it’s come back from the darkest parts of outer space—only it’s a rocket ship made out of human flesh. He looked like he’d visited a movie set and had a make-up artist transform him into a monster with a hockey mask that stalks attractive teens. I looked at him and immediately understood three things: he had never stopped drinking and drugging, his previous circle of friends and family had tightened into a neck-sized noose, and he was a survivor. The ones not built to last simply perish, or recover, but the professionals—the ones we call lifers—are blessed with systems like cars that never stop running but look like tanks from the front lines of a desert war that never ends. He was, I knew, the kind of pro that measured bad nights not by the drink but by the bottle, no longer picky about particular spirits or even brands because what was the point. His lifestyle was the chicken, and he was the egg it hatched every morning, cracked and cooking itself slowly in the hot dirt, the cycle perpetuating until something finally got bored or gave up. And then his voice. It wasn’t rough from nicotine so much as it was nicotine, enough tar to pave a rain forest; the smoke from a cancer stick extinguished in an empty bottle, smoldering in its own juices. He said my name and I understood this wasn’t my old friend before me; it was Lazarus, dying to describe the horror of finally falling asleep every night only to be awakened by another rock rolling away, a hysterical light reminding him of the tortures to which he’d been returned.
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