Anchovies: Kitchen Anecdote

   Two cooks were bent over a worn butcher block. The block over the years had developed some character. It had accumulated blood, perspiration, and assorted ingredients so much so that it could and ought by rights be called a familial relation. The lunch rush was encroaching. The line between solitude and chaos was rapidly fading. This transpires every time the hour and the minute hand strike twelve o'clock on a hot and lucrative day in a kitchen.
   The restaurant was soon inundated with expectant customers. One after the other jostled through a door no wider than five feet. Espon printers, those universal and ubiquitous to these parts,
began to spit out unwieldy sheets of tickets, marked in red ink, so long they could
be rapped around one's head like a bandanna before a war cry. The cooks, who were poised and focused before the rritating clamor of the machines, were feverish and bolstered into overdrive.
   The counter was beginning to pile up with all-purpose flour, superlative flour, and all the contents of third pans, shallow third pans, hotel pans, and whathaveyou. Pizza was the order of the day. Not hard, but not particularly easy when accommodating tickets marked 295, 395, and 400 in an inclement procession of famished bodies in what could easily be considered  at the least a three-thousand-to-four-thousand dollar lunch hour. This is considered good business in the kitchen firmament.
   The focus on the two cooks came into play. They are not friends. They are a team where shouting in such environs is considered synonymous with talking. It is their own song, their own dance, their own conversation unique unto themselves. It's a trivial cant similar to that of sailors. They stare at the crowd intermittently,sizing up many ilks of persons standing impatiently, twitching, waiting for their orders with the physiognomy of where-is-my-food and I-want-give-me-now.
   There were lawyers - not so good -bankers, clerks, other cooks, and all manner of people standing in line. Eye candy is always good for morale. The conversation explodes into "Damn, easy", "Sheeit, Sista girl", "Damn, he's hot", "I'd tare that up," and so on and so on. Beautiful people inspire brisk business. Then there are the dregs, the sticklers, the whiners, the exhibitionists, the undesirables who always manage to paralyze the better part of the employee's psyche, rapidly deconstructing first-standard customer service. The two cooks are fine. They felt enlivened and puissant with the stirring and gesturing of female eye candy. Danger, they called him, stood on one end of the butcher block, a large and impressive fellow, a brick wall not crushed immediately upon impact. Frenchie the Frog, a dainty dandy, was on the other, trying desperately to keep a lid on his mouth which ran away with him to the dismay of Danger.
   After all the beautiful bodies are accounted for by the affections of male observers, disconcertedly a female of strange proportions accosted the expo. She was an ebony mess, pouring out of herself in a sleazy purple dress with straps covering her elongated tribal orbs with the greater part of them hanging out in horrid display. Everything but the tit as it were. To Frog Danger is seemingly placid but liable to change like a weight hanging from a tenuous thread. Danger took a whif of the sneaky malodor obviated by the expanding ebony disaster from whom it was emanating throughout the entire restaurant. It registered quickly to all occupants. Danger gasped  crying out, "Oh-oh....oh my god, what's that sssmeeell?!" Frog looked up at Danger expecting the worst, but he notices the stench, much like that of a crack-smoking session with her ebonic-yours-truly in a bad part of town. She must've poured a vat of patchouli over herself before making appearances. The stench of her vice was no better, but exacerbated like sweetened crap. Danger disarmed Frog with, "Hey, Frog, I think Barnie wants to hug you." Frog tried to diminish a disruptive guffaw but was failing. Incontrovertibly a few or more people could distinguish his cackling. Every body was suffocating, the whole place astir with apprehended quips, gibes, and laughter that was bound to reveal its self sooner rather than later.
  Another character came into play. Jose, a shit-talking, easily-excitable Puerto Rican, was beginning to choke and collapse on the smell. Frog having affections for Jose could scarcely contain his glee. Danger was eyeing Frog askance, smiling in semi approval. Frog gave in, laughing like a child to a fart joke. He ran to the back in an attempt to salvage courtesy.
   Danger, now laughing himself, shouted, "Frah-Frooog, hehehehe, cah...come back -hahahaha!" Frog stumbled back clutching his gut. "Cuh-could, hahahaha - coud you hand me that ticket?'' Everything stopped aprubtly in a time spasm. The guise of business shifted to the circus when every one surrendered to the goings-on, the unstoppable hilarity. However, the ebony disaster some how maintained fortitude throughout. Resolute trash - something to be said for it really.
   "No,"danger blurted out. "Reach under the line and hand me the anchovies." Frog did so rising to a tentative occasion that was gaining clarity by the second. He threw the anchovies on the butcher block. Danger, pausing to look at Jose, grinning from ear to ear, realized the unanimity from all his peerage. He pulled the lid off and dove into the pungent, salty grease with his pinky. He smeared it under his nose with an exhale of relief. Frog made his way to the back again, but was quickly summoned by Danger who concluded with, "Hmmmm, ahhhh - anything smells better than that bitch."