I inherited him much as I had inherited the store. I never had any designs on managing a pizzeria, or on food service itself. I just happened to be at the right place at the right time, twice over. I got the job as a food runner originally because I was right out of college, hard up, and looking for a way to get out of my mom’s house. A friend had assured me that the location she worked at was so desperate that they would hire me on sight.
They were, and they did.
My ascension up the ranks was as incidental as it was expedient. I was transferred to another location and made manager because the person in that position had been fired under mysterious circumstances, and I shortly got bumped up to General Manager when the man holding that title was let go. I was 26 years old, with no idea what I was doing, and suddenly in charge of operations for a whole pizzeria.
With the title came an increase in pay but also in responsibilities, which also meant more stress and the loss of weekends since I was expected to work every Friday and Saturday night, our busiest shifts. In addition to these duties I also inherited some of the regular customers and other affiliated personalities. There was the owner’s daughter for whom we were under strict instructions to provide everything free of cost to her and anyone she brought with under the assumed pain of immediate termination. There was an unhoused man of Hellenic descent who prowled our area of the street, offering unsolicited advice on everything from sales and marketing to automotive maintenance and who often punctuated conversations on topics he felt were beyond his ken by saying, “but what do I know? It’s all Greek to me.”
And there was Guajolote.
His actual name was Kevin, but that’s what the kitchen staff called him because he was short and stout, with a rounded bald head that bobbed vociferously whenever he stalked through the front doors and started genially barking commands to our pie cook. It was an appellation that they applied with equal parts bemusement, affection, and exasperation. He came in every Saturday night between 9 and 10 o’clock and made the same special order - every topping we had, meticulously cut before being applied to his pizza, which was then cooked extra, extra well-done. “Burn it,” he would insist with a playfully emphatic point of his finger at the oven, and it would usually get taken out once or twice for him to inspect before he would demand it be put back in.
While the pizza was cooking he would take the manager on duty outside to chat them up and smoke. Because I was that manager for a time, I would accompany him on these smoke breaks, which would usually start with him telling an elaborate (and perhaps mostly fabricated) story from his week while unwrapping a pack of imported cigarettes likely procured from his cigar and tobacco shop. He would hand me one and light it. I did not smoke, have never smoked, but through sheer force of his personality and weakness of my own, I would oblige and "fake” smoke. This mean I would take the occasional drag while trying not to inhale - both because I feared the long term ill-effects of even these occasional sessions (my lungs would not know that I had been faking and would likely fail to be convinced were the worst to happen) and because I frankly didn’t even know how to inhale. At least not without collapsing into a fit of hacking coughs.
Over the course of these visits I learned a lot about him. Or at least, I learned a lot about what he wanted people to know or think was true about him. Aside from being a tobacconist, he took regular international trips on a private jet that would sometimes come back loaded with Cuban cigars or gold bricks secreted within. Before the crash of 2008 he had been, on paper, a millionaire; he was very worried that the recent election of Barack Obama would inhibit his return to such liquidity. He had been a television producer in the 80s, his particular claim to fame being a television special he had produced investigating the existence of angels. I tracked down a copy of the special on eBay and confirmed that his name was indeed on it, but since it was a VHS and even at that point I no longer had a player, I never got to watch it.
He offered this last bit of biographical detail the night that I mentioned to him that I was quitting my job in order to go back to grad school for film and video production, warning me from experience of what a hard gig and a cruel, merciless world it was as he ripped the cellophane off of a pack of rare Turkish cigarettes and tossed it onto the pavement, were it blew off down the road.
He never paid for his pizzas, a custom that had carried over from the previous managers and which I saw no need to question, but he tipped very well. He would often tell me that I should come by his shop, and that if I did he would make sure to take care of me. And while in sense he did owe me, my staunch midwestern modesty forbade me from ever taking advantage of his offer.
It wasn’t until after I had been long gone from the job that I finally went. He was genial and friendly, and invited me to choose a cigar and smoke it in the company of some of his regulars. I wasn’t yet sure if he recognized me - no direct acknowledgement had been made, at least not one that would suffice for someone as insecure as me - and was so preoccupied with this question that I lit the wrong end of my cigar, which I only discovered after trying to take a couple of puffs through the sealed end. He did indeed recognize me, and asked if there was anything else he could get me, but I politely refused and proceeded to finish my cigar, now correctly lit, and reflect on the fact that sometimes things best remained where we left them.
-cs