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MARCHING POWDER

But Mike had an answer for everything: ‘Well, they’re my fries while I’m cooking them. Now get out!’

Then I’d politely remind him that I was the owner of the restaurant and he was my employee.

‘OK, then, McFadden. You just sit there and keep out of the way. I’ll call you when I need you to serve up.’

I was supposed to be the boss, but somehow I ended up as waiter and drinks boy. I didn’t mind, though; Mike made me laugh. While Mike cooked, I sat in the corner and cut the onions or peeled potatoes and listened to him go on and on. He would talk the whole time and do at least four things at once, without ever losing his concentration. I never got bored listening to him, either. He fascinated me, even when I knew that he was lying. He had an entire imaginary world that he had created for himself and sometimes he lived in it, or reminisced about it, and he always added new details and elaborated his stories until they almost got to the point of being ridiculous, but not quite.

‘And I said to Pablo, I said, “Pablo, don’t be fucking with me. This is Canadian Mike you’re talking to here.” And you know what? He listened. Pablo actually listened, for a change. He never listened to anybody else, but he used to listen to me. You know why? I’ve got a theory I developed from when I was a psychologist in Montreal: I think it was because Pablo wasn’t used to anyone standing up to him. In fact, I’m convinced of it. He’d been surrounded by yes men his whole life, when all along he was just waiting for somebody to say no. And you want to know something else about Pablo? Listen to this . . .’

Mike was funny. He didn’t know it himself, but Mike was very funny. He took himself way too seriously, which is what made him so funny. His funniest obsession by far was hygiene. One time I bought a bucket and some special soap for rinsing his hands, but he said you could only use the water once before it got infected with bacteria. Between orders, he would run to the bathroom to wash his hands and change the water. He always came back even more energetic than before. That guy could sniff a lot. And he had been doing it for so long that it was his normal state of mind, so you hardly noticed. He never admitted to it and even if you had caught him in the act, he would have denied it, because Mike had convinced himself that he wasn’t doing coke anymore.

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