He hacked and out came green-black phlegm; huge wads of it flipped from his mouth as he spat, cracking through the air, announcing their substantial weight and heft in the subtle way it changed the exhalation breath.
And splat. It hit the pavement with that same wet solid heft. Spat. No bounce, no splatter, no elegant crown of droplets like spilled milk. Just a sticky pool of green and white sputum mixed with rotten globules of blood and pus.
“It’s hard for me to talk sometimes,” he said. “I get these horrible things in my lungs.” He hacked and coughed again, holding this time, a substantial mass in his lower jaw. His mouth hung open and he tipped his face forward as so to not accidentally swallow. He held up one finger, as if to say, “One second, please,” and leaned over and dropped the loogie slowly out of his mouth. A long stringy clear sputum dribbled down from his pursed lips and as the long string reached to the ground, a giant green phlegm, almost appeared spun onto the string like a cocoon, slid down the length of the string, like some kind of disgusting cable car.  “I think I peed a little bit when I hacked that one up,” he croaked as he turned back to me. “What did you want to talk about now?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure anymore. Delicacies, I think. Foodstuffs.
“You used to be a famous chef,” I said. 
He croaked a response between panting breaths, worn out now from his retching and vomiting. “I still am,” he said with more than a hint of hurt in his tone. “Just can’t go into the kitchen,” he said. “Still as famous as ever, though.”
That was true. Not a concession to admit it. He was still famous.
Fame is a funny thing, that way. It sticks to some, it sluffs off others. However, how famous is someone who has to go to great lengths to define the scope and caliber of his fame? Not very, is my guess. Still, the Chef had been on Daytime Public TV for years— granted the last several years most of the cooking duties had been handled by his expertly cast protege. In fact, in the final seasons of “Home Cooking,” directors had been explicitly told to avoid cutting to the chef for almost any reason. He was already having trouble with the drooling and slobbering.