My first cooking job was as a sandwich maker at a cafe-catering outfit down the street from where I was living at the time. They were that type of place with a large cold case where you could order all sorts of salads and a few entrees (and of course, sandwiches) either to go or to eat in at the little dining area across from the counter.
There were a lot of kooky characters working there, me and my sister included, although we like to think of ourselves as among the sanest employees. The first week I was there a guy named Juan trained me, and the second week he disappeared. One day he was showing me how to mix up the cranberry-mayonaise that was the key condiment on the turkey sandwich and scolding me for mincing garlic instead of using the garlic press, and the next, he was gone.
The owners of the business had the police on the case after he missed a couple days of work, and no one could talk of anything else: they told and retold what he had said when they last spoke to him, who he hung out with, what his frame of mind was. A few days after his disappearance he showed up to work like nothing ever happened. It turned out he was on a cocaine-fueled bender with an ex-boyfriend, a sailor who had recently returned to our port from a six-month deployment at sea.
He was fired, of course.
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