a hangover in the life

by Vincent Cellucci

I’m probably fired. But might as well try. Hanging my head in mock shame, I throw the silver handle and glide in the back door two hours late. Times like these it’s best to avoid eye contact. Clock in quick, without being seen. Adorn myself with apron and toque in the same motion, get to my station. Tonight, pastry. Any other station and I’d definitely be fired. One no call, no show is all it takes. Additionally defined as being over 15 minutes late. Grounds for permanent dismissal. The management passed on this mandate on the first day, inscribing it in a degenerate’s Genesis. Truthfully, this isn’t the first time. Nor the third. 

I’ve been on pastry for a few months now. Long enough it’s starting to feel punitive, so my rationale is: might as well make the crime fit the punishment. Speaking of punishment, I’m sure this little stunt has landed me a first-class ticket to participating in the banality that is brunch. “Clear your schedule tomorrow Shit Pants; Pope needs you.” Fuck. Heard. “And there’s garlic on the back table waiting for you to squeeze too.” Heard. 

I try to avoid poaching eggs for anyone that hasn’t spent the night under the same roof as me. If I can’t make it to work on time by 3 PM, how am I going to get there at 8 AM? See brunch is day crew territory. With a few technical exceptions, mainly runny yolks, brunch shifts are on par with prep cooking: lotta potato peeling and frying, pots of grits, and fruit and seafood salads. None of which I have an aversion to as much as peeling my eyes open, throwing on last night’s dirty checks and greasy, crumb-ridden clogs, and then pedaling my ass back to work on two to three hours of sleep. Still drunk with a guarantee of a hangover no matter how many bong rips I squeeze in before leaving for the shift. It also means working a double as sure as shit I’m scheduled for Sunday night too. Literature essays be damned. I’ll have to write them in my sleep or in the wee hours of Monday morning sustained by more marijuana and the tinge of whatever alcohol is left over after a slower-paced, night decompression at the bar. 

Even though day crew and night crew were all cooks at the same restaurant, there were two clear and obvious differences: race and age. The day shift was Black. And adults. Homegrown New Orleans. The night shift, white. Mostly transplants. And young. There were few exceptions. One was my friend, Dennis, tall, handsome, bespeckled, and always carrying a duffel bag. He was a no-nonsense cook, a New York City lifer, and now in his 40s, self-exiled to the land of swamps. Dove down here to avoid whoever wanted something from him. Whatever he was tangled up with, he carried his burden with him. Cooks usually carry knife rolls on their backs but Dennis perpetually lugged a small duffel. I was always curious about what was zipped away, yet perpetually near him—in the dark canvas confines—but I knew to never ask. 

One night, back when I was on fry—the only station I’d successfully graduated from—he was on pastry and I helped him plate up desserts for a big party. Being old for our night kitchen crew’s standards, he was probably the slowest member on the team, which was the only bad thing you could say about this particular cook. While chatting and wiping away the powdered sugar, caramel, chocolate, and berry confetti mess we had made all over, he discreetly unzipped just the corner to show me his baby: a small well-oiled Ruger he assured me he always carried with him. A strapped Black Sisyphus. Dennis was sharper, cleaner, more refined than all us twentysomethings and never stooped to our levels of foolishness or debauchery, rarely socializing with us for more than a quick illicit shift pull or smoke, stolen in between garbage bins or grease barrels.  

Dennis never divulged anything more than that glimpse. I certainly never asked what else was in the bag. There was a code of silent understanding between us that I found more meaningful than my curiosity. In his intuitive way, he delivered me a peek into my suspicion yet unequivocally told me: hey kid, some things are better left unsaid, so stay the fuck away. I kept my distance and he only worked in our kitchen a few months anyway. You could tell from the beginning, he had his reasons for being there and it wasn’t us. Our kitchen was just a port for his particular tempest.

Even so, I was enlightened to have met Dennis. We had a few laughs at his hilarious accounts of adjusting from New York rats to New Orleans ones, their relative sizes, and his amazement about how the ones down here are monster acrobats scurrying above on the telephone wires. That sight really freaked out this otherwise hard cook. He quivered just talking about vermin above him. I wouldn’t be surprised if I found out he shot one. I can picture him toying with the temptation on an abandoned street, aiming at the scurrying shadows teetering on the lines above in the night. 

That’s the thing about kitchens, they really are safe harbors. One hides in them. Rent a room, cook for a spell, then move on to the next city. I’ve always enjoyed wanderers and the wandering line cook is a special breed, one especially deserving of a patron saint, but as in the case of Dennis, these cooks know very well how to fend for themselves. When I imagine the patron saint of pilgrim line cooks, I’ll always think of mysterious Dennis, lugging his duffel of knives, utensils, and pistol at the ready, dodging shadows in an anonymous city’s rat-infested streets on his long walk home from another shift at another kitchen. St. Dennis of the wayward line cooks, protect us.  

*****

Once you face all the managers and the shame, earnestly pretending to feel as low about being late as you already feel physically from being hungover, you head back to your station and that’s when the sinkhole begins to open. Sweatily wiping things not knowing where to begin, even though there’s not much to ever do on pastry. Still 40 mins until service. Knowingly decide to save all things bread for the lull after you prep everything else. What’s of most immediate concern? Check the ovens—empty save some praline pies dayshift left finishing, you will have to pull later. You assess the station. Best to get on top of the ice cream and sorbet in your freezer boxes, looking for what you will run that will get you out tonight. Prying open the tops of the white paper cylinders, plenty of vanilla and chocolate ice cream. Boring but classics for a reason. Two sorbets. Don’t even have lids on. What shoemaker worked this station before me? Maybe lemon or lime. Taste and look at the board: lemon. Verified but not much left. Run over to the blast freezer. Three new pints of raspberry freshly made the day before.

“86 lemon sorbet tonight Chef. Rolling with Raspberry.” Heard. Easy as that. No sense waiting until two bowls are ordered and then switching after—as the pastry chefs would insist—you can trade that lemon to a cook for some food or to a waiter for some goodwill at the bar later. Too much wasted effort on communication for these mid-service switches to ensure absolute utilization. Waiters hate nothing more than having to grovel to their patrons, smarmy with apology, after false promise orders. 

What else takes the most time to prep, can tree me up? Go grab a whisk from above the back table. Come back to your table and begin nauseously whipping cream. Heavy fragments of the night before. Names. Of bars. Of liquors. Of cooks. Faces of names you can’t recall. Certain shots. Certain bathroom stalls. Uncertain alleys. Perilous activities. How did I get there? With who? What did I do? Who did I offend? Did I thicken bitter froths, make enemies? The answers are hollow as my hat. Soul? Stuffed up. Nasal passages, some kind of decommissioned recycling plant of boogers, blood, blow, and breath trying to resume standard operational activities. 

This is pastry’s beginning lull of service, where I wait for guests to dawdle towards dessert. Time to dream up pizzas and fiddle fuck around with whatever triviality or diversion I could find. Two hours late and there was still at least two hours before any dessert tickets were popping out of the station’s printer (yet another sign of pastry’s inferiority; it didn’t even require or deserve a chef expeditor). The poetic justice of this lag is at close when all the other cooks were finishing cleaning, goofing, texting their friends, dealers, and soon-to-be distractions for the evening, orders to pastry incessantly print. It was not uncommon to look at that little black box and see a projectile vomit of perforated tickets reaching the floor. Even though it’s probably the diners' indecisiveness, I blamed the waiters for sending things in one at a time. Their lack of consolidation evidenced their lethargy. Death by a thousand pastry tickets. Luckily breakdown and cleanup of this station could be accomplished in a flash, albeit a sticky one.  

Psssst, psssst one of my fellow cooks taking pity on the wretched shell of me. It’s Dopper, the youngest of the older cooks. You look. Like shit. What you eating tonight shoemaker? “I’m dying, man. Anything. Need something hearty that will stick. With a little spice.” Dopper, on grill tonight, responds: Yeah boy. Got you.  

A few hours later, after his last rush pickup (a climax of the symphony I only understood, at the time, by the screaming chants back and forth from Chef, grill, and sauté), Dopper passes me a sizzle tray with a clean towel draped over it on the sly. Underneath, two crispy grill-marked quail with a red-purple glaze over them. I rip off a leg, strip the meat and discreetly discard the thin bone in the trash below me. BBQ. Mmmm. Little sweet. Little salty. Punch of cayenne at the end. I rip off a wing with a big bit of breast. Savor. Devour the rest. Dopper just saved my life. I’ll pay for this later with shots. Gladly. As the warm nutrition begins to course through my body, I know I can easily knock out the rest of the night. I can almost taste the first pitcher of beer on the patio of Lucky’s. Where pouring drafts is the only thing that holds me up. Kicking back, dogs out of my clogs, collapsing in a wrought iron chair. I’ll slump and watch the termites swarm streetlights and streetcars clack by less and less frequently as the restaurant crowd dwindles. Nights like this start off fatigued and lackadaisical then climb and open up like jasmine. We’ll unwind about the pitfalls and melodrama of service, revealing and concealing our mistakes, complaining about this or that, giving each other shit. I was sure to get some for this stunt today. We’ll argue, sometimes bitterly, eventually apologizing, reflecting and perfecting for the next performance. Talk turns to promotions in stations, commiserating and calculating, while we wind the tops we call ourselves up for one more spin at the bar. Before too late we’ll be anew in intoxication, temporarily invincible, and looking for a livelier place to go.  

Photo of Vincent Cellucci

BIO: Vincent Cellucci wrote Absence Like Sun (Lavender Ink, 2019) and An Easy Place / To Die (CityLit Press, 2011), and co-authored the recently released ~getting away with everything (Unlikely Books, 2021). After 18 carnivals, he left Louisiana and moved to the Netherlands. He currently works at the TU Delft Library.