Free One Good Dog by Susan Wilson Page A

relief from the released pressure.
    “No ideas necessary. You need to suit up and report to Rafe in the kitchen.”
    Adam straightens himself on the edge of the chair, realigns the slipping folders on his lap. He clears his throat, finding his executive voice. “I can be of much more use looking into finances, grants.”
    Big Bob stands up, shoving his desk chair back against the wall. “Let me walk you down.”
    “Mr. Carmondy, I’ve got an M.B.A. Surely you can use some help.”
    Big Bob sets one meaty hand on Adam’s shoulder, gives him a friendly squeeze that hurts like a Vulcan pinch. “I’m sure we do.” Bob lowers his mouth to Adam’s ear. “Judge Johnson is pretty clear about assignments. You will do what we need you to do. And what we need is kitchen help. Ideas are fine; actions are better. And, Adam, it’s Big Bob.”
    Adam March stands in his Hugo Boss trousers, his brand-new Calvin Klein T-shirt, purchased out of a sense that it was easierto buy new underwear than to go to the Laundromat once a week, and a white uniform jacket with a faint gravy stain emblazoning the left side. A paper hat completes his ensemble.
    He is humiliated. This is his community service, doling out hot lunch to indigents. Doing whatever the “boss” wants. The boss being Rafe, a wiry black man with a shiny shaven head, hands the size of palm fronds, and a drill sergeant’s refinement. Rafe points him to the rack of waiter wear and tells him not to wear good pants again. “Jeans’ll do, long as they’re clean and not ripped.”
    Ripped jeans. Just who does this guy think he’s speaking to?
    “We serve hot lunch from eleven to two. Give ’em as much as they want, but don’t get fooled by the greedy ones. Everbody gets enough, but not more than enough. We feed about thirty-five men here a day, sometimes more in winter, less in summer. It ain’t cordon bleu, but it ain’t junk food, neither.” Rafe says
cordon bleu
with a perfect French enunciation. Adam is still hung up on the perfectly pronounced
cordon bleu
linked to the grammatically suspect surrounding of the sentence. Rafe might talk street, but Adam suspects another influence.
    “An another thing.” Rafe places one of his alien hands on Adam’s shoulder. “You treat these men wi’ respect. You ain’t here ’cause you love ’em. You here ’cause you fucked up. So did they, so that’s something you all have in common. Got it?”
    Adam straightens his shoulder under Rafe’s hand and lifts his chin. He is eye-to-eye with his new boss, his brown eye holding the deeper brown eye of the man, taking the measure of an opponent. Rafe narrows his eyes, sure in his authority. Adam has seen eyes like that before in the boardrooms and back halls of business. Kings of their domains. Men certain of their power and their place in the world.
    Adam nods, a curt acquiescence.
    “Now I need you to go into the back room and bring out a case of niblets.”
    And thus Adam March begins his penance.
    Adam is put to work as runner, carrying steam trays filled with food from the kitchen into the dining room, then taking the empty bins back to wash them in the industrial sink. The old brownstone has suffered from its change in purpose from elegant home to abandoned crack house to its new life as a shelter. The interior walls have been cut away to open half of the first floor into a large room, filled now with long cafeteria tables no doubt donated from some refurbished high school, the benches fixed to them so that the men have to sling a leg over to get seated. The floor-to-ceiling windows are shrouded even on this warm fall day with industrial-strength curtains, pulled closed so that the men served are protected. No one can stand and stare at them, recognize an old friend or neighbor in straitened circumstances. No one can look out.
    Adam hasn’t bench-pressed this much since high school. The aluminum trays are filled with slices of meat floating in a thick brown gravy with