Rudd was sixteen and bussing tables in a tony restaurant where even the dishwashers were Caucasian and the busboys were damn near transparent. So that was that place and it worked so sue him and fuck you if you don’t like it. Worked then and there, anyway.

Prince of that place, and fast, and everybody liked Rudd, especially this waitress. Gail, it was. Now Rudd’s good enough that he handles the whole place by himself and still has time to wolf down the occasional untouched order of scallops while washing it down with a stashed bottle of house wine rejected by some local goon who thought such a move might impress his date but didn’t know that you’ve lost your shot at impressing anybody the moment the phrase house wine crosses your lips. Well Rudd doesn’t mind one bit ‘cause that wine tastes just fine back there behind the biggest stainless-steel sink this rich boy ever wants to get next to. Now Gail’s digging him and likely nipping at whatever gets her through her own particular night, so she grabs his hand and takes him into dry-storage, which is the storeroom in the back of the place for canned goods, rice, flour … hence the name. Close the door and this woman who has probably eight years on him which may not sound like much but is half again his age gives him a tonsil licking that would make an oral surgeon blush. Yet Rudd is less than impressed, like that wine guy’s date, so much so that when poor old wrong-side-of-the-tracks Gail grabs what she expects to be his hard-on she finds only a great big piece of humble pie. That was Gail. And Rudd knew for a fact, his dad used to fuck waitresses, maids.

That story he remembered the first time he walked into Tony’s dry-storage, which was some time after first walking into Tony’s (which, it turns out, was something of a seminal event in its own right). Sitting at the top of the steps, deciding whom to take back down for a second awful look, Rudd remembered the irony, the utter lack of anything dry in Tony’s dry-storage, which of course was filled strictly with liquor. Tony’s, a damn fine restaurant, was still primarily a bar, and what was originally bona fide dry-storage soon, Rudd later learned, turned out to be a more appropriate space for the rather formidable back stock of liquor. By then though the room was dry-storage, at least to the staff. And now, what with the shutters bolted down and him inside more or less permanently, wasn’t Rudd once again on staff at a restaurant? The battle outside raging, one might say, the storage down here much further from dry than it was yesterday, or less so, one might say if one had the courage, what was Rudd if not a de facto employee of Tony’s? Or even the boss. Or manager, Rudd thought, that’s what I am, Dad, a restaurant manager. And he’d fucked a waitress too. Now didn’t that beat all?

Rudd felt the anticipatory withdrawals nipping from inside his abdomen. Also at the back of his neck. And his arms, the backs of his upper arms. This was the sort of thing that kept a less experienced man mired deep in a couch-ridden binge, he knew. He’d been that man-most of them had, certainly Langston-back before Tony’s and his second marriage, back before he got better. In those days he would mistake this stuff for Big Trouble and hit the vodka bottle prematurely. Now he knew better; he had some time, the condition of dry-storage notwithstanding. Langston was closer though, by at least a day, maybe two.

He felt the ridges in the piece of aluminum that covered the edge of this top step. It was worn less on the sides, the ridges still discernible by eye or by buttock, sobering buttock. Even a screw, unless it was a piece of pocket lint, made its presence known, and this was really going too far, feeling far more than a man in his condition ought to be feeling, a portentous sign. The black steps down to dry-storage each had a worn, bone-colored center from where countless Nikes and Red Wing work shoes had made their marks, or, more accurately, erased another’s. Only the top and bottom steps bore aluminum armor, like: you’re there, this is as high as it gets, low as it gets, so don’t fuck with me ‘cause I’ve seen it all. But Rudd once noticed the bottom piece of aluminum kicked out of place, exposing a bone-colored center like on all the rest of the steps, as if the bottom step had once seen service in the mediocracy, a more central location, the infantry above.

He rested his chin in his right hand, elbow to knee, and reached with his left hand for the handrail at his shoulder, not so much to give himself rise as to advance by just one frame, pause and examine the moment he was in.