by Haley Cohen

“Salud!” Rodolfo Cutufia proposed as we clinked water bottles while waiting at a red light. “To friendship and happiness!”

A Buenos Aires cab driver for the past 25 of his 62 years, Cutufia isn’t much of a tippler. Every once in a while he’ll indulge in a Quilmes, Argentina’s national beer, the taste of which resembles diluted Pabst Blue Ribbon. But he works during normal drinking hours and needs all of his wits to brave the inferno that is porteño traffic. …

Randy Fertel, 61 and sweater-clad, looks professorial, which shouldn’t be surprising: he’s a former academic who taught English at colleges and universities on the east coast and in his native New Orleans. But what he doesn’t look like is the product of a dysfunctional childhood, or a guy with an axe to grind, or a person who spills his guts to strangers. His recently published book, The Gorilla Man and the Empress of Steak: A New Orleans Family Memoir, is both soul-baring and grievance-airing. …