Cooking Dirty [antikvár]

ie had this superstition in the kitchen: On Fridays, no one 'counted heads. No one counted tables at the end of the night, no one counted covers. When the last table vsras cleared, the dupes were just left there, mounded up on the spike. You didn't look, not even in secret. No one even guessed. Bad things would happen if you did.And even though no one looked, bad things happened anyway. Lane died on a Friday night due to comphcations of lifestyle^which is to say, he was shot by an acquaintance in a squabble over twenty dollars' worth of shitty brown horse. He wasn't found until Saturday morning; no one thought to call the restaurant to let us know that he wouldn't be coming in to work that day. He was just considered AWOLa no-call/no-show that left the line a man short going into the early-bird rush.This was Tampa, Florida, in the middle ninetiesa bad time for cuisine, a worse place. It wasn't a great time for me, either. Worse for Lane, I guess, but everything is a matter of degrees. Of right and wrong places, right and wrong times.Eventually, Lane's name was found in a late edition of the Tampa paper. Or maybe someone saw it on TV. I don't remember. In any event, we all foimd out, precisely too fucking late, that Lane was now fry-cooking in the sweet hereafter. The first hit was due in soon. And while there is a lot of voodoo in the air down in Florida, no one