Here's the deal, I'd like the text from this article. Can anyone do me a solid?
Bob Bozic, Bartender at Fanelli Café : The New Yorker
I really, REALLY like this guy. Pretty sure he still wants to kill me.
Backstory:
This would've been 2009 I think. I'm deeply embedded in the service of the Saudi royal family at the Plaza Hotel; close to a year in at that point, and no signs of them leaving. I'm seeing a waitress. Gorgeous. She wants me to come to pick her up at the bar one night. I hate being the boyfriend who hangs around, but I agree. I walk in and sit at the bar. The bartender, Bob, strikes up a conversation with a guy sitting next to me, who just so happens works at the hotel across the street. Bob says "You hear about that horrible fire today? Plaza Hotel? All those dead people?" I shit a golden brick sideways and get on the phone. In a panic, I thoroughly embarrass myself both in the bar and with my coworkers. I've been set up. Bob is grinning ear to ear.
Occassionally, I'd stop in. No matter how crowded, Bob would make the entire bar stop what they were doing to say "hello" or goodbye" to me. He never let me pay, no matter how much I insisted. Tips I insisted on leaving found their way into my girlfriend's pocket, and eventually back into mine.
One night, the three of us go to dinner. He suggests a mediterranean place. A year in with the Saudis and its the last thing I want to eat. Bob doesn't care. I'm in no physical or mental condition to put up a fight. I already knew he was a quick wit, but the motherfucker absolutely talked cirlces around me in politics. Well read, he is easily one of the smartest people I've ever met.
I learn a bit about his life, his time as a boxer and mob enforcer, his daughter (devastatingly beautiful, but I wouldn't if I were you). We head back to the bar. We pass a building and he points up at the window.
"See that window? I threw a guy out of that window once."
"Why'd you do that?"
"Well, I wasn't very happy with him."
I notice the points on the wrought iron fence below.
"But you could have killed him."
"Haha. Yeah, I could have killed him."
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