The Bobby Gold stories

Author:Anthony Bourdain
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Mystery & Detective, Women cooks, Fiction, Gangsters, Short Stories (single author), General, Short Stories, Restaurants
ISBN: 9781582342337
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Published: 2003-04-28T21:22:19.341967+00:00

BOBBY GETS BLUE

Bobby Gold, in a blue funk, sat slouched back deep in the stained couch, one leg slung over a torn armrest, drinking vodka. Timmy Moon, behind the stick, washed glasses and hummed along to Junior Walker on the jukebox, ignoring the sole customer at the bar — a fastidiously dressed old man in an ancient suit, currently snoring into a puddle of beer. There were two gum-ball machines in the corner, leased, Bobby knew, from Metro Vending — Eddie's company. A joker-poker machine blipped and clicked and beeped against the far wall under the chain-link-fenced piece of glass that had once been a picture window. No one had been able to see through the grime-encrusted square for decades. The poker machine, occupied at this moment by a pencil-necked building super named George, was also Eddie's (Magic Carpet Entertainment Inc.) as was the cigarette machine near Bobby, and the condom machine in the bathroom. Bobby had once joked with Eddie about the condom machine, pointing out that "no one at Timmy's has had an erection for years." The beer in the taps was from a distrubutor associated with Tommy Victory (dba Zenith Distributors), and the vodka Bobby was drinking — what was it — his sixth, seventh? — was from Xanadu Beverage Inc. — also Eddie's - in partnership with Tommy, of course.

Timmy, now lighting another Parliament from the end of its predecessor, did the occasional work for Tommy V — as he had for Tommy's father before him. Part of a long and glorious tradition of murder-for-hire going back three generations of Moons. Timmy's son, James, Bobby had recently heard, had been arrested for menacing and possession of a handgun. Bobby remembered seeing James, only a few years earlier, hanging out with his friends on the corner, skateboards and baggy pants and new, white sneakers, wool caps pulled down low over their eyes, in conscious emulation of Latino prison gangs Bobby knew only too well.

The music changed to U2, a development as predictable as the over-aerated Guinness in Timmy's taps, or the wet mass of toilet paper clogging Timmy's toilets, or the inescapable outcome of an evening spent drinking at Timmy's: a hangover, a nose clogged with undissolved mannitol and unexplained cuts and bruises. The place smelled of vomit and Lysol, something one got used to after a while, and the sweat of the old men who drank up their social security checks there in the afternoons. It was nighttime now, late night, the high-end crowd. Soon, the place would be crowded with bartenders and waiters and cooks, come over after last-call had been announced at more legitimate establishments.

Bobby was punishing himself. He was feeling bad — angry that he'd allowed his hopes to rise, something he'd been very careful not to do since being upstate. This was the price, he thought glumly, of allowing yourself to believe in other people. This is what happens.

All day and into the evening, he'd tried, really tried, not to look in the kitchen — or anywhere in the direction of the kitchen.

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