Continued from Part Six.

My time at B. Merrel’s was limited, temporary. I knew that walking in. Minimum wage at the time was $5.15 an hour. After a month or so, I began looking for better opportunities. After scanning the local newspaper, The Tallahassee Democrat, I found something a little closer to my wheelhouse, a position as a “chef’s assistant” at a place called The Grand Central Cafe located in majestic downtown Tallahassee.

I went in on a day off and found Chef Darren right away. He had the whole act down. White, spotless chef coat, paunch, pencil thin mustache. He even wore the conical paper hat. Hey, a real chef and not some crazy white trash borderline racist bastard general manager. The two of us hit it off right away. He was on the run from somewhere, I knew that much, maybe loansharks or bookies. He said he and his wife had come from Vegas, where he had worked for many years. How the hell they ended up in armpit like Tallahassee, I had no clue, but it seemed like a good place to hide out.

I found out quickly there were only two reasons to live in Tallahassee. One, you were a legislator or politician of some kind. Two, you were a student. Everyone else was either born there and trapped or had travelled there to escape something like myself and Chef Darren.

What was I escaping? Maybe just the dreadful winters of Vermont, maybe more. Maybe the ghost of my former self. The friends I lived with all went to FSU while I worked for minimum wage at a shit wing shack. I was a double college drop out. Yeah, I had tried twice and it didn’t stick. Kitchens were more my jam. I enjoyed the camaraderie and the gallows humor. The routine of consistency. B. Merrel’s just sucked ass because it was another worse paying version of Red Lobster where I had worked one summer frying up entire oceans of shrimp.

I had no direction save one. When my friends/roommates busied themselves doing homework I focused on my comic book art. I had brought my grandfather’s drafting table all the way from Vermont and each night worked on a comic book entitled The Tommy Gun Kid. The basic gist was this: A kid, a hitman (very much resembling myself [skinny, ball cap turned backwards]) who had a famous, crime fighting father who he thought dead, found evidence his father was actually alive and held captive in a place called Mictlan. he meets a supernatural dude named The Goon (I had come up with this character way before the award winning The Goon series by Eric Powell) and the two of them find their way to Mictlan to save the kid’s dad from a bunch of entities taken from old Aztec myths; Quetzalcoatl, Maelbranche, Xipe Totec, etc.

Comic books had been a big part of my entire life. I had churned out my own fantasy type superhero stories at the age of five without ever having read a comic. When I got older, however, I no longer wanted to hang out with the nerds who were into that kind of thing but instead veered toward the cooler kids who smoked weed because that’s where the most pretty girls concentrated. Art had always been a big part of who I was, but being a troubled kid, I lacked focus toward any sort of goal. Yes, I had gone to college to figure that out but then switched my major to Hotel and Restaurant Management because I had worked in restaurants since the age of 16 and thought it apropos. After some time, I found myself once again, focused, at the board writing and drawing comics.

I accepted the job at the Grand Central. It paid $8 an hour. The most I had ever received up to that point. Meager as hell, but a game changer at that time.

That Friday night, I celebrated by getting drunk with my buddies and not showing up to B. Merrel’s Saturday morning wing shift. When I had to go in there a few days later to collect my last paycheck I went back into the kitchen to say my goodbyes to the boys. None of them met my gaze except Henry, who of course, greeted me with a smile.

“What happened, man?” He said.

“I dunno, man. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, that day really sucked without you here.”

“Yeah. Well, it was nice knowing you Henry.”

“Good luck, kid.”

He stuck his massive hand out and I shook it, looked up at him, at that kind, crazy face.

Marv handed me my last check without saying a word. The scar on his forehead glowing red hot, the lazy eye boring into me like a deep sea auger. He didn’t have to mutter one single syllable. I knew a no-show was a scummy thing to do. The worst offense to anyone who had ever worked in a kitchen. You never let the others down. You get your shit together, no matter what, and show up to work.