But this is neither here nor there, nor anywhere else at the present.

Twenty minutes passed in the Golden Chicken Diner and when these twenty minutes were done, certain things had occurred.

Dorothy now stood behind counter till number three, all dolled up in a golden outfit. And Jack stood somewhere else.

Jack stood in the kitchen washing dishes.

Jack had his arms in suds up to the elbows.

Jack had a right old grumpy look on his face.

“Back in the bloody kitchen again!” swore Jack, frightening Joe-Bob, who was drying dishes. “A couple of days ago I was washing dishes in a Nadine’s Diner, and now I’m back at it again. Is this to be my lot in life? What is going on?”

“You ain’t from around these parts, aintcha, mister?” asked Joe-Bob, spitting little corncob nibblets through his big buck teeth. “You a wetback, aintcha?”

“I don’t know what one of those is,” said Jack, “but whatever it is, I’m not one.”

“You must be from England, then.”

“If this is some kind of running gag,” said Jack, really wishing that he’d rolled up his shirt sleeves before he began the washing up, “then it stinks.”

“Not as bad as that trenchcoat of yours,” said Joe-Bob.

“No,” said Jack, “but it’s washing up nicely.” And he scrubbed at the trenchcoat’s hem.

“I don’t figure the manager’d like you washing your laundry in his kitchen sink,” said Joe-Bob. “But I guess I’d keep my mouth shut and not tell him if you’d do a favour for me.”

“Listen,” said Jack, “I can’t lose this job. It’s really important to me. But then so is a smart turn-out. I’ll soon be done washing the trenchcoat. Then we can dry it in the chicken rotisserie.”

Joe-Bob shook his head and did that manic cackling laughter that backwoods fellows are so noted for. “That’s even worse,” said he. “I’ll want a big favour.”

Jack sighed deeply and wrung out his trenchcoat. “You won’t get it,” said Jack.

“Then I’ll just mosey off and speak with the manager.”

“All right,” said Jack. And he sighed once more. “Tell me what favour you want.”

“Well,” said Joe-Bob, “you’ve got a real perty mouth and –”

Joe-Bob’s head went into the washing-up water and then Joe-Bob, held by the scruff of the neck by Jack, was soundly thrashed and flung through the rear kitchen door into the alleyway beyond.

“And don’t come back!” called Jack.

The head chef, who had been in the toilet doing whatever it is that head chefs do in the toilet – going to the toilet, probably, but neglecting to wash their hands afterwards – returned from the toilet. He was a big, fat, rosy-faced man who hailed from Oregon (where the vortex is)[26] and walked with a pronounced limp due to an encounter in Korea with a sleeping policeman.

“Where is Joe-Bob?” asked the head chef.

“He quit,” said Jack. “Walked off the job. I tried to stop him.”

The head chef nodded thoughtfully. “Tried to stop him, eh? Well, young fella, I like the way you think. You have the right stuff – you’ll go far in this organisation.”

Jack did further trenchcoat wringings, but behind his back.

“I’m going to promote you,” said the head chef, “to head dryer-up.”

“Well,” said Jack, “thank you very much.”

“Not a bit of it,” said the head chef. “Loyalty is always rewarded. It’s the American Dream.”

By lunchtime Jack had gained the post of assistant to the head chef. He had risen rapidly through the ranks, from dishwasher to dryer-up to plate stacker to kitchen porter (general) to kitchen porter (specific) to head kitchen porter to rotisserie loader to supervising rotisserie loader to assistant to the head chef.

There had been some unpleasantness involved.

There had in fact been considerable unpleasantness involved and no small degree of violence, threats and menace. And a few knocks to himself. Jack sported a shiner in the right-eye department; the kitchen porter (general) was beginning a course of Dimac.

Jack’s role as assistant to the head chef gave him a degree of authority over the lower orders of kitchen staff. Who were now a group of boisterous Puerto Ricans whom Jack had seen dealing in certain restricted substances outside the kitchen in the alleyway and asked in with the promise of cash in hand and free chicken for lunch.

Jack stood next to the head chef, decapitating chickens.

The chickens, all plucked and pink and all but ready, barring the decerebration, came out of a little hatch in the wall, plopped onto a conveyor belt and were delivered at regulated intervals to the chopping table for head-removal and skewering for the rotisserie.

Jack put a certain vigour into his work.

“You go at those chickens as one possessed,” the head chef observed after lunch (of chicken).

“What do you do with all the heads?” Jack asked as he tossed yet another into a swelling bin.

“They go back to the chicken factory,” said the head chef. “They get ground up and fed to more chickens.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Jack, parting another head from its scrawny neck.

“It’s called recycling,” said the head chef. “It’s ecologically sound. I’d liken it to the nearest thing to perpetual motion that you can imagine.”

“Chickens fed on chicken heads,” said Jack, shaking his.

“Well, think about it,” said the head chef. “If you want a chicken to taste really chickeny, then the best thing to feed that chicken on would have to be another chicken. It makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?”

Jack looked up from his chopping and said, “I can’t argue with that.”

“Mind you,” said the head chef as he drizzled a little oil of chicken over a headless chicken and poked a rotisserie skewer up its backside, “chickens are a bit of a mystery to me.”

“Really?” Jack nodded and chopped.

“I don’t know where they all come from,” said the head chef.

“They come out of eggs,” said Jack. “Of this I am reasonably sure.”

“Do they?” said the head chef. “Of that I’m not too sure.”

“I think it’s an established fact,” said Jack.

“Oh really?” said the head chef. “Well, then you explain this to me. Every day, in Los Angeles alone, in the Golden Chicken Diners, we sell about ten thousand chickens.”

“Ten thousand?” said Jack.

“Easily,” said the head chef. “We’ll do five hundred here every day and there’s twenty Golden Chicken Diners in Los Angeles.”

Jack whistled.

“And well may you whistle,” said the head chef. “That’s ten thousand, but that’s only the tip of the chicken-berg. Every restaurant sells chicken, every supermarket sells chicken, every sandwich stall sells chicken, every hotel sells chicken. Do I need to continue?”

“Can you?” asked Jack.

“Very much so,” said the head chef. “It’s millions of chickens every day. And that’s only in Los Angeles. Not the rest of the USA. Not the rest of the whole wide world.”

“That must add up to an awful lot of chickens,” said Jack, shuddering at the thought.

“I think it’s beyond counting,” said the head chef. “I don’t think they have a name for such a number.”

“It’s possibly a google,” said Jack.

The head chef looked at Jack and coughed. “Possibly,” he said. “But where do they all come from?”

“Out of eggs,” said Jack. “That’s where.”

“But the eggs are for sale,” said the head chef. “We do eggs here. Again, at least five hundred a day. And that’s just here, there’s –”

“I see where you’re heading,” said Jack. “Googles of eggs everyday.”

“Exactly,” said the head chef.

“Well, the way I see it,” said Jack, “or at least what I’ve always been led to believe, is that fertilised eggs, that is those that come from a chicken that has been shagged by a cockerel, become chickens. Unfertilised eggs, which won’t hatch, are sold as eggs.”