The Eldorado Network Read Online Free Page B

these extras went to waste; too few foreigners used the restaurant. Luis ignored this. Just serving people from the menu was boring; he wanted to surprise them, to bring them the impossible.
    One evening the kitchen was going full blast  -- the chef cooking with one hand and slicing with the other, worrying over what his girlfriend might be doing at that moment, sweat stinging his eyes -- when Luis breezed in.
    'My friend the rich American wants cherry ice-cream,' he announced.
    'He's out of luck,' the chef growled. He began cooking an omelette while he sautéed some kidneys and tried to work out where the fish soup had gone wrong.
    'Come on, chef, I promised him,' Luis urged. 'He's home-sick, he said he bet we didn't have cherry ice-cream.'
    'He's right. Hot plates\' the chef bawled.
    Luis stood and stared. He hated to go back to the American and lose face. On the other hand the chef was obviously choosing to be completely unhelpful. He saw him wince as he slid the omelette onto a plate which was so hot it made the food sizzle.
    'You've got cherries, haven't you?' Luis asked.
    'Yes.' Kidneys came off, veal went on, another waiter claimed the omelette.
    'And you've got ice-cream.'
    The chef nodded and basted a chicken.
    'Well then, make me some cherry ice-cream.'
    'Sweetbreads, the chef shouted. 'Piss off,' he told Luis evenly.
    Still Luis hesitated. He had thought the chef liked him, responded to his charm, was amused by his eccentric demands. How to overcome this new indifference? Be even more outrageous? 'What's the problem?' he asked, half-grinning. 'Even a tenth-rate dump like this can afford a spare mixing-bowl, can't it?'
    For an instant the chef was motionless, frozen in time. Then he turned with the tray of sweetbreads in his hands and hurled it at Luis. Lumps of bleeding meat rained against his face and splattered the kitchen. The tray just missed his right ear and smashed into a stack of serving-dishes. Luis gaped in astonishment while cold blood ran from his chin to his collar. 'Piss off\' the chef howled, and flung a chopping-block at him. Luis fended it off with his hands and the bruising pain aroused him. He backed away, dodging a small loaf, a half-cabbage, a coffee-pot, a ladle, not dodging a nearly-full tin of English mustard. The uproar brought the proprietor at a run. He hustled Luis out by a back door and kicked him  -- literally kicked him  -- into the street. 'Imbecile!' he shouted. 'Maniac! Cretin!'
    'But you don't know what happened,' Luis protested. An old man, picking through a bin of kitchen waste, paused to listen.
    'You have enraged my chef! What else is there to know?' The door slammed. Luis stood trembling with shock, pain, anger, shame.
    'You shouldn't have done that,' the old man reproached. 'Good chef, he is.' He held up the retrains of half a roast chicken. 'Have a taste of this, friend Exquisite flavour. Out of this world.'
    This time Luis said nothing to his parents. It was the beginning of his true growing-up: from now on he would make his own decisions without informing or consulting anyone. Luis had made the great adolescent discovery -- not only do parents not know everything: if you don't tell them, they never get a chance to find out.
    During the next year he had seventeen jobs and was fired from all except three, which he quit.
    He walked the streets, selling peanuts. Fired because he got into a fight with a rival peanut-vendor and lost. Worked as a window-cleaner for a few days until the paralysing boredom made him quit. Sacked for incompetence or insubordination as a stable-lad, bookshop assistant, roadmender, bellhop and delivery boy. Got a job gutting fish and rapidly came to hate the smell so much that he quit and went to work as a florist's assistant, until one day a rich and elderly customer came in and ordered a dozen red roses for her dog.
    'When did he die?' Luis asked as he wrapped them.
    'He isn't dead,' the customer said stiffly. 'These flowers are for his