A muscular, dark-skinned man lay stretched out on my bed. I bet it was Thug, Monster’s assistant.
“Gibson,” he said without expression. “What’s up, dog?”
“I thought I had the only key to my bungalow.”
Thug nodded. “Don’t trip. Your door was unlocked and I thought I’d come in and kick it with you.”
I wasn’t interested in his explanation. He didn’t have a right to break into my room and I was righteously pissed and showed it, but Thug played like he didn’t notice.
“I thought we were cool, you and me. I’m the reason you got the job.”
“Really,” I said, with surprise. “You’re into this Living Food thing?”
“Naw, I hate that crap. You’d never see me put that bullshit in my mouth.”
“But you hired me, you must know about haute cuisine.”
“Hell, no. I could give a fuck about that. Shit, I wish they had an In-N-Out Burger around here.”
“You’d have to drive to Arroyo Grande,” I said, trying to be helpful.
“I told Monster you were cool because you knew what you were talking about on the phone and Bridget said you had a famous restaurant and all that until you had got into a little drug fiending. But that’s the past and I’m not hating. If you had problems, you ain’t the first and you won’t be the last. You feeling me?”
I shrugged.
“But this ain’t about that.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about us.”
My heart stopped beating for a second.
“See, I thought, you know, maybe we’d hook up,” he said, smoothly, almost in a whisper.
I was glad to hear that he was asking me to hook up and not telling me we were hooking up. I’d had some awful jobs in my life and paid my share of dues, but I didn’t plan to pay that kind of dues.
“Look, Thug, I’m not into hooking up and all. I’m a married man.”
He kept smiling as though he wasn’t listening to me. His hands were huge. I wouldn’t want to fight him without a bat in my hands, and even then I’m not sure it would be fair. I crossed the room to where the fireplace tools were. I didn’t reach for the poker, but it felt good to have it near at hand.
“I appreciate you doing all that for me. I’ll buy you a beer or something.”
Thug laughed boyishly and stretched out on the bed.
“Gibson, you and me, we need to talk.”
“Yeah, well, we’re talking now.”
“Yeah, you right. But we need to quit all this bullshit and really just kick back and talk.”
Thug wore this gigantic Joe Montana throwback jersey, as if Joe were big as Shaq. In one quick move he slipped the jersey over his head and tossed it to the floor. He had no flab beneath that jersey, nothing but black buffed muscle.
“Why you gonna be like that?”
Thug’s dark skin glistened against the white sheets as if he had oiled himself before this so-called chance encounter.
I panicked as his hands reached for the buttons of his ridiculous Sean John jeans. If he slid his pants down, I’d grab the poker, though grabbing the poker suddenly seemed very embarrassing.
“Don’t look so hard like you gonna try to beat me down.”
I nodded silently, praying he would leave.
“I know all about your thing with Rita. I got photographs.”
“Know what? There’s nothing to know.”
The big man sat up and leaned forward for a manila envelope and reached inside. In his hand he held grainy blowups of me and Rita.
“That’s a nice one of you two kissing. I haven’t shown that to Monster. I don’t think he needs to know.”
“That was my fault. She didn’t want to. I took advantage of her.”
Thug laughed. “What? You supposed to be a hero or something? All kind of shit goes on here. You think she ain’t getting paid? That’s why we’re all here, Monster pays from a big roll of bills and we’re all lined up with our hands out, even you, my brother. Rita’s getting paid, paid enough so she’ll never worry about money even if she lives to be one hundred and fifty.”
“Paid? Isn’t she supposed to be his wife?”
Thug laughed again, like he wanted the whole world to know he was amused.
“Do you really think Monster is into women? Shit, he’s about as interested in bitches as I am. But that’s not true. I’ve had my share, and I’ve got a couple kids to prove it, but I’d bet my life that Monster has never been with a woman.”
I sighed, thinking of Rita.
“So, what I’m saying is don’t be naive. We’re all in this for the same reason.” Then Thug’s seriousness faded and the smile returned. He was ready to get down to business.
“It’s too bad about you not having an open mind ’cause we could have had us a good time,” he said, with a big countrified grin.
“Sorry, Thug. Look, I’m not putting you down or anything.”
“Cool. Just keep grilling my steaks. Monster wants me to get into that Living Food bullshit. I’d starve first.”
He stood up to leave and laughed when he saw my hand on the poker.
“One thing I need to know before I bail up out of here.”
“Yeah,” I said, waiting for the question, but Thug took his time, crossing and uncrossing his arms.
“So what’s with you passing for white? First time I saw you I knew you was a nigga.”
“Who said I was passing?”
“You ain’t?”
“No, man. I am what I am.”
“What, you Popeye or something?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Thug shrugged and walked toward me. I stepped aside, and he turned and lingered in the doorway, eyeing me.
“First, Monster thought you were a Jew. He used to like Jews. Now, he has problems with them. I said you were cool, you weren’t a Jew. He looked right over the fact that you were black. I mean, you are light, lighter than a lot of white people with tans, but still Monster used to be up on that. He’d say, No way! Don’t be hiring black people, I don’t care if they look white.”
“Why?”
Thug laughed thunderously.
“Do I look like a psychiatrist? All I know is I’m the only real black man working for that crazy muthafucka. I thought I could slip you in since Monster didn’t notice you, or didn’t care.”
“Thanks, I guess.”
“I thought we had something big in common,” Thug said, and grabbed at his crotch. I took a step backward.
“I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m just average on a good day.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” he said.
I retreated another step. Thug finally gave up on his heavy-handed seduction and stepped outside into the brightly lit night of Monster’s Lair.
After Thug left, I put a chair beneath the doorknob and slept in the recliner near the fireplace, leaving pillows under the sheets for Thug to interfere with if he decided to bum-rush the show.
Morning came and I was out of the bungalow with a backpack stuffed with everything I could possibly need for a day away.
Manny blew the horn of his pickup and I hurried outside and hopped in.
“My friend, you stay away from this Thug. He is unnatural. A pato.”
“A duck?”
“Yes, a pato.”
He dropped me off at the beach and said he’d give me a ride back the next day when he returned from Lompoc. Lompoc was another strange California name that sounded like a disease, a rare form of smallpox or something. Anyway, it was a town I didn’t plan to visit, even if it was the Cut Flower Capital of the United States and the vast fields of flowers were supposed to be spectacular.
I arrived at the motel and immediately put on my trunks, grabbed a skinny towel, and ran straight for the ocean. I dived in without hesitation, though it was an overcast day.
Frigid!
I tried swimming out somewhere near the distant buoys, but I di
dn’t get close.
My stroke was fucked up and then the chill got to me, so cold my testicles headed north, lost in the maze of my lower intestines. I turned around and pounded the water until I dragged my sorry ass out of the surf and collapsed onto my towel.
Frigid fingers fumbled with the envelope, ripping the letter as it pulled free.
Gibson—
We need to talk, work through our issues. I’m ready for a face-to-face. Hope you are well.
Love,
Elena
A firebomb went off in my chest, air rushed from my lungs, gasping for breath on dry land.
Dazzling images of the perpetual happiness of marriage: sharing a bed, a shower, breakfast, a return to a life I had never expected to have again, a life with her. I was high on it, higher than I had ever been on the pipe.
Exile was over. Elena was calling me home.
It took a day for Asha to return my call; she had one emergency after another to handle back there at the halfway house. Meth freaks were in revolt. Mistake was that they sent her three, and in a program for ten, three tweakers were ten times too many. Crackheads and heroin addicts were more or less manageable, but not meth freaks, or so she told me. They were always irritable, belligerent, or withdrawn, and of course they regularly relapsed, which meant a hell of a lot of paperwork.
“I wish you were here,” she said, laughing. “At least I never had to worry about the kitchen.”
We laughed about that, the good old days of life in a halfway house, slinging gruel for the semi-institutionalized.
Then I told her about the letter.
“Oh, that’s great, that’s wonderful news.”
“I want to come back to New Jersey.”
Asha was quiet on the other end.
“Did you talk to your parole officer?”
“Not yet.”
Asha sighed.
“Bridget will kill me if you leave.”
“I thought she intended to quit.”
Asha sighed.
“She can’t find another position, and she can’t bring herself to walk out on her contract.”
“Everything is so fucking complicated,” I said.
“Let me talk to Bridget. Maybe we can work something out. What did you say to Elena?”
My heart sank. I imagined it would be difficult, but I didn’t want to face up to it. I wasn’t ready to talk to her. I wanted to be sure of how things were going to go with me before contacting her. I didn’t want to blow it, didn’t want her turning her back on me once again, because I was sure of one thing: that would beat me down and keep me down for good.
“I’m not ready to talk to her yet. I don’t want to say something stupid and ruin it.”
Asha laughed. “Gibson, don’t be so hard on yourself. Call her. Let her know what’s going on. It’ll change everything.”
“You really believe that?”
“As the patron saint of lost causes, I’ve got to believe.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot about that. You save souls and all that.”
“Like any good Hindu should.”
MY LIFE WAS STUCK between the pages of a book I couldn’t wait to be done with. Funny to be so unhappy in a place so fucking beautiful. From the mountain you could see the Pacific Ocean curving away, vanishing into the blue horizon and the grid-like vineyards on the hills below; or, in the afternoon sun, the undulations of hillsides resembling the contours of a body in repose. Sure, I wanted to wake up and breathe air so fresh it made my head hurt, taste water so fresh it was sweet, but not here, not doing this job, away from the woman I loved.
This was Monster’s heaven, but not just his, also those who shared his idea of heaven, a valley of vintners, cheese makers, developers, and cattle barons. It made me want to take a shit in somebody’s winding driveway.
Why couldn’t there be a smoke-filled bar that played something other than country music or the Eagles in this whole fucking county?
Once, on my way to the weekly farmer’s market in Solvang, I saw blond children biking alongside the road, cell phones clutched to their ears, and I began to understand this rarefied life. And even more so when I watched a ramshackle barn quickly converted into an understatedly charming home with the big satellite dish, for the thin but not anorexic mom canning homegrown preserves. Her children deserved the freshest bread, the best organic produce, while her husband tooled around in a gigantic SUV, examining his endless rows of grapevines. They lived in an alternative universe, another kind of American dream, outrageously expensive but a return to the heavily amended, composted earth. The charm of this upscale, gentlemanly farming was for folks who didn’t want to be too much with the land, wanted it on their terms, hands not too deep in the fecund earth, walking lightly upon the fields, breathing good air, alongside Mexican workers who might dream the same dreams but couldn’t afford them in this life, maybe not even the next.
Isolation made me judgmental in temperament when before I was wildly indifferent, ignoring everything that was outside of my concern: food preparation, presentation, and money.
Money like honey.
I wanted to be back East, for the good summer heat and humidity of New York. Seeing brown, black, and white skin sweating in the hot sun as people walked down teeming sidewalks. I wanted to smell the rankness of the discards from the fish market, the vegetables rotting in trash bins.
I wanted to be too much with the world, not living this life of seclusion among folks hiding in fortresses of wealth and abundance. I wanted the Manhattan version, where the wealth was vertical, not horizontal.
And I was horny, horny enough to gnaw through wood.
I wanted to be back with Elena, fucking like minks, making up for what we lost. For the first time in a long time I was content to be in my skin. Life was worth living, with the promise of a future I could believe in.
GRILLED LOWER EAST SIDE STRIP STEAK WITH SPUN HERBS
SERVES 4
SPUN HERB PUREE
½ bunch cilantro, rinsed
½ bunch parsley, rinsed
3 cloves garlic
Zest of 1 Meyer lemon
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
STEAKS
Four 8-ounce 1-inch-thick New York strips, at room temperature
Oil, for brushing the grill
Truffle salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 lemon
Make the spun herb puree: Combine all the ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. Set aside.
Make the steaks: To avoid sticking, clean the grill and brush it with oil. Heat the grill.
Season the steaks liberally. When the grill is smoking hot, place the steaks directly on it. After about 3 minutes, rotate each steak 45 degrees to the left, making grill diamonds. Then turn the steaks over and leave for another 4 to 5 minutes. Remove them from the grill and—this is mandatory—let them rest for 10 minutes.
Spread the spun herb puree over the steaks and squeeze fresh lemon juice on top. Steezapetit!
CHAPTER SIX
IT MUST HAVE BEEN ABOUT 6:00 A.M., when I started breakfast, when Manny appeared, knocking madly at the kitchen door. The rule was Monster liked to eat at 7:00 a.m., so I had more than enough time to prepare his diet of toast and jam and butter. Monster seemed to have loosened the grip of the Living Food manifesto, so Rita and the staff ate more balanced meals and breakfasts. The menu had expanded to omelets and potatoes and the like.
Manuel had dropped me off at my bungalow so I could change and shave, but less than five minutes later he returned, pounding on my door. I threw it open, and he stood there rattling off in rapid Spanish about a disaster. I could barely keep up with him as we hurried along the path to the main estate.
Ten yards away I saw a boy’s naked body sprawled like spilled paint on the brilliantly green expanse of lawn.
We stopped a good distance away. He looked to be about eighteen, with long blond hair framing his handsome face and blue unseeing eyes, and that was
enough for me. I glanced away, afraid and ashamed.
“Did you call somebody?”
“Yes,” Manuel said, his voice trembling.
“Security?”
“Sí.”
I looked around, feeling exposed. Security wasn’t to be seen, and those motherfuckers lurked about like flies on horseshit. Where were they?
“Manuel, do you have a lawyer?”
“No, what would I need with a lawyer?”
I shook my head. “Trust me, you are going to need one. We both will.”
In the distance I could see a pair of black-and-whites making the turn onto the road that wove up to Monster’s Lair.
I forced myself to look at him again; he looked so boyish. His face was bluish, but other than that he didn’t seem to have obvious injuries.
After I opened my eyes and forced myself to really look at him—his arms, then his feet, blood beaded between the toes of one foot—it was obvious: he had overdosed, or somebody had overdosed him.
The police drove across the lawn and stopped. As if on cue, Security appeared out of thin air, with their silly uniforms and blank faces of authority.
They converged on us as though a trap had sprung, a trap for really slow-witted fools who should have seen themselves getting set up.
Security watched as the police rushed over with drawn guns. We both held our hands high into the air and let the police roughly pull them down and behind our backs to handcuff us.
GRAVES WAS THE NAME of the big blond man who interrogated me in one of the many rooms of the Security bungalow. He seemed friendly enough, and took his time with his leading questions, some of which weren’t very leading.
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