“Gotta get back to the kitchen and see what’s fucked up.” “Old habit from my restaurant days,” he said. He’d only ever smoke about half a cigarette before stamping it out. Tony always seemed in a hurry, like he might disappear at any second. Both old and young at the same time, full head of curly gray hair, cigarette in his mouth, standing tall at six-foot-four, sunbaked, half-hidden behind a pair of solid black Steve McQueen Persols.
For better or worse over the preceding decade and a half, I’d organized my life around Tony and the job.Īll I have to do is close my eyes, and there he is, looking every bit the globe-trotting TV star. I WAS THIRTY-EIGHT WHEN TONY DIED, but I felt like I’d already lived nine lives and had the premature gray hair to prove it.
