Paradime Read Free

I’d been a line cook for nearly two years, that’s what, fully confident that they’d rehire me, but I turned the corner at Hudson and there was the place all boarded up, paint peeling off the sign, zombie-apocalypse style.
    I’d only been away four months.
    ‘It’s this economy,’ the guy who owned the place told me later when I called him. ‘I don’t know, the customer base just isn’t there any more.’
    So I’m not exactly psyched about hustling for work. And the problem isn’t the work itself, I could do that all day, set me up at a station and I’ll zen out, but really, do I have to deal with other people?
    ‘Well,’ she says, ‘at least you’re putting yourself out there, right?’
    ‘Yeah.’ I slow down, stop at a store window, and study the busy display of cameras, tripods, and binoculars. ‘Something’ll turn up.’
    ‘I know, but for your sake, Danny, pray it doesn’t involve writing code. Anyway, listen, I just picked up the mail and there’s a letter for you, it’s from Gideon.’
    I freeze. ‘What does it say?’
    ‘I don’t know. It’s addressed to you.’
    ‘Well, go ahead,’ I say, pressing the phone against my ear, ‘open it.’
    I hear her tearing the envelope, pulling out the letter, silence for a moment, then a barely audible intake of breath.
    I close my eyes. ‘What?’
    ‘Fuck.’
    ‘ What? ’
    ‘They’re . . . they’re withholding your last cheque.’
    ‘Jesus.’ I open my eyes. ‘On what grounds?’
    She doesn’t answer.
    ‘Kate, on what grounds?’
    ‘Wait a sec, I’m trying to read it. Uh . . . suspected violation of . . . GO-1C? Does that make any sense?’
    ‘General order number one, yeah it makes sense, except that it fucking doesn’t.’ I turn from the window display and gaze out across Sixth. My final pay cheque from Gideon Logistics is due next week and I need it. We need it. What are these pricks up to? ‘Does it say anything else?’
    ‘There’s a long bit about . . . termination of contract, stipulations, regulatory something, pursuant to . . . I don’t know, it’s all legalese, I’d need to read it closely. But Jesus, can they really do this?’
    I swallow hard, the ground beneath my feet beginning to melt, the avenue itself beginning to spin. I lean back against the window.
    ‘Look,’ I say, almost in a whisper – and conscious that I’m speaking to a person who believes in the legal system, who actually wants to some day be a lawyer – ‘the truth is, these people can do whatever the fuck they want.’
    *
    Once she’s established that I don’t have any other ‘appointments’ set up for the rest of the day, Kate insists that I come back to the apartment.
    I get an F train to 14th Street, an L over to Third Avenue, and walk the remaining few blocks to our building, slowing down the closer I get.
    I’ve never been good at looking for work, but in a weird way that’s never mattered because work has always found me. After the old man died, and the place closed, plenty of other kitchen opportunities opened up for me in Asheville – which was maybe why it took me three more years to get the fuck out of there, and why my route out was the recruiting station.
    After Iraq – two fifteen-month tours with six months in between – I spent a whole year doing nothing, living in a cousin’s house, smoking weed, going through a box of old paperbacks that I found in the basement, and trying to figure out who or what I was. Then one day a guy from my old company called up and said, if memory served, I was a kitchen guy, right, and did I want a job in New York, that he and his brother were opening a place and needed to build a crew. So I figured that’s what I was, a kitchen guy, and why fight it? Anyway, that particular venture didn’t work out, but it did lead, in turn, to the Mouzon gig and two years of steady employment. The money was lousy, though, so when I saw an ad for the position with Gideon, I jumped at it.
    I