by Matt Wallace
“I want his voice to fuck me,” Darren whispers back.
“Will you two shut up!” Lena snaps at them. “What is wrong with you?”
She can see by their expressions that they either can’t hear her or aren’t listening.
Lena looks around at the elementals. Each group has fallen silent and still. Even the sylphs, contained in the bodies of their gorging homeless hosts, have stopped endlessly consuming fast food to watch the candidate.
Consoné rises, slowly pacing the front of the stage, each movement deliberate and purposeful.
“Every four years a new hopeful stands here before you, offering platitudes, offering respect for your past, honoring what you once were. I would never profane your might with such insults, such empty, meaningless lip service. No, I am here to honor and pay homage to the gods that you are as I have knelt before you today!”
A chorus of gnomish voices cheers him then. In the tanks of their Segways, the undines loudly thrash their tails in the river water, making what noise they can with their thin lips. The salamanders swing their broad snouts back and forth and roar, their nostrils belching smoke and flame.
Consoné leaps from the stage then, landing gracefully beside the grease-soiled, wrapper-covered table occupied by the sylphs’ indigent hosts. Casting his microphone aside, the candidate reaches out and grasps the nearest one, a bearded middle-aged man, by his matted and mangy head. Consoné crushes his mouth over the crumb-covered hole in the man’s bushy beard, breathing into it as if attempting to resuscitate him.
“My Christ,” Lena practically gags.
“This should not be hot, and yet—” Darren begins.
“Totally is,” Nikki finishes for him.
Consoné repeats the action with each host around the table, breathing the air of his own lungs into whatever essence the sylphs consist of that has taken control of these people.
When he’s finished, each food-covered face is staring wide-eyed and adoringly after him.
The rest of the elements roar, cheer, and splash their approval.
Consoné picks up the microphone and leaps back onto the stage in one catlike bound.
“When I’m confirmed as president of the Sceadu, you will not be forgotten as you are after every one of these elections! You are owed fealty from the humans you protected in the infancy of their race! You are owed reverence for the power over their world you hold within you! Above all, you are owed domain! I say to the salamanders, no longer will you be the tools of coal barons! I say to the Gnomi, all that exists below the surfaces of this Earth is yours! I say to the undines, your waters shall be purified and borders preserved and respected by every great government of the human world! I am your servant, and my task is not done until I realize each and every one of these vows!”
With that thunderous conclusion, Consoné literally drops the mic. He spreads his arms wide and throws his head back as the room explodes into exaltation. The gnomes pound the tabletops and floor with any object they can seize. The bodies of the salamanders become infernos, blasting flame high enough to reach the open skylight of the hall. The sylphs flee their human hosts, swirling their illusory forms into one great midair tornado that sends gales slamming every corner of the room.
Lena, Darren, and Nikki are actually forced to take cover behind one of their own buffet tables, crouching low and holding it in place.
“This is fucking crazy!” Lena yells over the chaos and commotion of it all.
“I know!” Nikki shouts back with genuine enthusiasm. “I would so vote for this guy!”
Lena stares deadpan at the grin plastered sappily on Nikki’s face.
When Lena manages to peer over the refuge of the buffet table, Enzo Consoné has left the stage. She only catches a glimpse of his bodyguard’s broad shoulders as they disappear into some sequestered antechamber of the building, away from the rest of the banquet hall.
The elementals are still clamoring as if calling Elvis back onstage for an encore.
In the midst of it all, Lena has the most absurd thought, yet with a clarity she can’t deny: even for a world as screwed up as the one in which she’s found herself, what just happened is not normal.
THE GRIND
“What the fuck do you mean I’m not allowed in the kitchen?”
Lena is standing in the lobby corridor outside of what used to be the large open archway leading into Sin du Jour’s main kitchen. That empty space is now suddenly and inexplicably filled with an ornate locked security gate. Thick wrought-iron bars forged into the twisting shape of barbed vines are welded into two frames.
Luciana just smiles what Lena perceives as that patronizing smile, hands clasped in front of her around the handle of her attaché as if the case is a shield bearing her standard.
“You’re not disallowed from the kitchen,” she assures Lena. “That’s ridiculous. You’ve been reassigned. You’re going to assist Miss Glowin in the pastry kitchen.”
Lena is ready to implode like a neutron star and swallow Luciana in her wake. “‘Assist?’”
“In addition, access to sensitive areas in Sin du Jour is now restricted to staff specifically assigned to those areas. The personnel in the main kitchen no longer have access to the pastry kitchen, either.”
“What is this, the Pentagon?”
Luciana ignores the sarcastic question. “You seem to enjoy spending most of your time here in Miss Glowin’s pastry kitchen. I thought you’d be happiest there.”
“I don’t bake,” Lena says through teeth grinding hard enough to raise sparks.
“Then this should be a stunning apprenticeship opportunity for you.”
Lena takes two steps toward Luciana, close enough to feel the crimson leather of the woman’s attaché case against her smock.
“Look, I know everything with a dick in this place has been treating you like the Sexy Pope, but that’s no reason to exile the only woman on the goddamn line.”
“Miss Tarr, this tone of yours—”
“Then fire me!” Lena shouts only inches from her face. “Oh wait, I forgot, I can’t leave or the forces of Hell will hunt me down and tie me to a fucking stake!”
“Which is precisely why these increased security measures and streamlining are necessary,” Luciana patiently explains.
Lena is practically shaking in frustration. She turns back toward the gate, through which she can see the rest of the line working on prep for the next Consoné event.
“Are you all enjoying this?” she shouts through the bars. “Is this entertaining enough for you?”
Most of them don’t even acknowledge her, including Dorsky, who is attending mechanically to breaking down crates of purple potatoes. He doesn’t even seem to hear her.
Darren and James, at least, look up from their tasks. James seems particularly sympathetic. He smiles meekly and offers her a silent but animated “I’m sorry” with his lips.
Darren stares back at her openly, slightly wide-eyed. He spreads his arms out toward the rest of them as if to say, “I don’t know what’s going on either.”
Lena turns back to Luciana. “Yeah, you’re doing a bang-up job of keeping us safe. Has Boosha woken up from her coma yet?”
“The state in which that poor elderly woman kept that ramshackle work area of hers and the resulting accident are exactly the types of safety concerns I’m trying to address here.”
“What are you really doing?” Lena demands of her.
Before Luciana can answer, Moon rounds the corner from the lobby and approaches the kitchen, oblivious to their presence. His attention is glued to the screen of the Nintendo 3DS in his hands. He almost impales himself on the wrought-iron barbs of the new barrier before he notices it.
“What the hell, man?” he squawks, finally taking notice of the two women. He reaches out and futilely yanks at the locked gate. “I want some of that leftover Henley’s from the elementary gig.”
“We threw that shit out,” Lena snaps at him. “What’s wrong with yo
u?”
“Mr. Swarthout!” Luciana greets Moon, happily.
Lena silently mouths the name in shock, looking at Moon and momentarily forgetting her righteous anger.
“Would you mind guiding me to the Stocking & Receiving Department?” Luciana asks him. “I’d like to have a few words with you and your coworkers.”
Moon blinks up at her, the usual giddy deference the men of Sin du Jour show Luciana absent from his face.
“Uh . . . yeah, I guess. I’m still hungry, though.”
“I’m sure we can remedy that. Please . . .”
Luciana motions him up the corridor, and Moon slowly begins walking in that direction, eyeing the woman with a mixture of confusion and suspicion.
Lena watches them go off together, the wellspring of her rage bubbling anew. She goes bombing through the winding corridors and sudden staircases of the building that used to confuse and frustrate her, but now seem second nature. Sixty seconds later she finds the door to Bronko’s office closed, but not locked. She turns the knob without knocking and flings open the door, storming into the room.
Bronko is reclining in the leather chair behind his desk, booted feet propped up on a purchase order on the desktop.
“What is this shit?” she demands. “You drag my ass back here and now you’re banishing me from the line?”
Despite the brashness, Lena isn’t out of control. In point of fact, on the short walk to his office she was consciously expecting, and even hoping for, the rain of verbal fire that will no doubt meet her show of abject defiance and lack of respect.
Instead, Bronko lolls to one side so he can wearily regard her sudden presence.
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, Tarr, and I am thoroughly uninterested in finding out.”
His voice sounds like the creaking of a coffin, only with even less energy. Lena actually looks at him, really sees him for the first time since entering the room, and realizes she’s seeing a man on the brink of exhaustive shutdown. The bags under Bronko’s eyes could fit all the world’s problems, and his expression says that’s exactly what they’re carrying.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, suddenly losing the iron grip on that fiery rod of her anger. “Are you sleeping at all? Ever?
“I must be,” Bronko muses. “I distinctly remember dreamin’.”
Lena finds herself at a loss. The preevolutionary reptile portion of her brain just wants to scream and fight and seek bloody satisfaction. The rational portion of her brain sees a beaten-down man she knows to be good, to care deeply for his people, and it sympathizes.
“Listen, Chef,” she begins, more earnestly and with far less vitriol, “this Luciana chick—”
“Is the cost,” Bronko finishes for her.
Lena just stares and blinks at him for several moments.
Bronko returns to staring at the wall. “Allensworth is all that’s keeping this place bricked together. He knows it. He’s using it as an excuse to put tighter reins on Sin du Jour. She’s the reins.”
“But, Chef—”
“Just do what she says, Tarr. What’s the difference? You don’t want to be here either way, right?”
That question cuts her more deeply than Lena would’ve ever thought after the way she returned to Sin du Jour.
“If I’m here, I’m here to cook,” she says, her voice much quieter than it’s been at any point in the last fifteen minutes.
Bronko looks back at her again, just for a moment, as if summing her up.
“Then you should decide if you’re here or not. Shut the door on your way out.”
It’s obvious he’ll have no more to say on the matter, or any matter. Lena stares at the side of his head defiantly for a while longer, but she knows the conversation is over, and whether it’s true or not, she feels like she lost.
EXILE ON PASTRY STREET
Her third spumoni cupcake does nothing to salve Lena’s rubbed-raw nerves.
She sits atop a stainless-steel counter behind Nikki in the small pastry kitchen wedged far into the east corner of the buildings where Lena’s been exiled.
“So, really you’re upset because she thinks you’re a pastry puff,” Nikki says, minding a pot of sugar and water she’s bringing to a boil.
Lena frowns at her back. “I didn’t say any stupid shit like that, did I? You know I respect what you do. It’s just not what I do. Besides, you don’t need me back here. You’re the . . . whatever . . . Iggy Azalea of dessert.”
Nikki looks at her, nose scrunched up in repulsion. “Um. Ew?”
“I don’t know celebrities. Nik, she put a friggin’ pair of gothic Dracula gates on the kitchen. Does that seem normal to you? Even for this place? And half the line is standing in there like robots. I yelled at Dorsky and he didn’t even throw that shit-eating grin at me. I didn’t even hear him make a dumbass joke about it.”
Nikki, who had been stirring the contents of the near-boiling pot, stops. “That is weird, yeah.”
“I know, right? It’s more than just a corporate overlord cracking the whip. That chick is doing . . . something. I don’t know.”
As if on cue, Cindy’s voice precedes her sudden entrance into the pastry kitchen: “Can y’all believe that cot-damned Becky Kardashian hipster bitch? I mean, really? Really?”
Lena and Nikki turn to see Cindy carrying a cardboard filing box, looking as aggravated as either of them have ever seen her, although they’ve rarely ever seen her visit the pastry kitchen.
“What happened?” Nikki asks.
Cindy slams the box down atop one of the prep stations and takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly.
“Italian CEO Barbie just shuttered Stocking & Receiving,” she informs them both.
Nikki gasps. “Oh my god!”
Lena, on the other hand, just starts cursing.
“She said we don’t need to be ‘centralized on-site’ or some such shit. She said we’re a satellite operation, freelancers technically. Told us to pack up what crap we wanted to take from the hole and go home. We’re to consider ourselves ‘on-call.’ I mean, she did give us new company Samsung Galaxys, but damn.”
“Not to sound cold, but why are you telling us?” Lena asks. “We don’t really . . . hang.”
“That is extremely cold,” Nikki chastises her.
“I mean, where are Ritter and the others!” Lena shouts back at her.
“No, she’s right,” Cindy says, seeming genuinely undisturbed. “We all got our own cliques. But that’s the thing, though. Ever since this bitch came to town, the boys aren’t the same. I mean, Moon is, but that’s no damn help. Ritter and Hara didn’t even give a shit when she axed our space just now. They just shrugged and packed up and left. No argument, no . . . nothing.”
“I mean, they’re not expressive guys—” Nikki begins.
“I am aware of that,” Cindy snaps back at her, annoyed. “At first I thought it was just whatever shit happened between you two”—she nods at Lena—“which is none of my damn business, but Ritter isn’t even feeling that anymore.”
“Neither is Dorsky,” Lena mutters more to herself than them.
Cindy’s right eyebrow shoots up. “You fuckin’ Dorsky, too?”
Lena narrows her eyes at her. “Stick with ‘none of your damn business.’”
“Ladies,” Nikki interjects, firmly. “Let’s stay on target here.”
“The ‘target’ is this Growing Up Gotti reject cousin ensnaring everything with a Y chromosome up in here and fucking with our world.”
“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Lena reiterates. “She’s supposed to be here to keep us safer, but all she’s doing is dividing us. She got rid of Ryland. Your team. She kicked me out of the kitchen. She’s been pushing Jett out of the picture since day one. And Boosha—”
Lena pauses then, thinking.
“What is it?” Nikki asks.
Lena eyes darken. She frowns.
“I don’t believe in coincidence,” she says. “I need to g
o. I’ll be back.”
Lena pushes herself off the counter and walks out of the kitchen without another word, or waiting for one from them.
Nikki watches her go, confused and troubled.
“That girl has a restlessness, you know?” Cindy observes.
“Yeah,” is all Nikki offers on the subject. “Hey, you want a cupcake?”
Cindy looks at her, almost startled, for a moment. Then she slowly grins.
“Yes. Yes, I really would like a cupcake.”
As Nikki retrieves a spumoni cupcake from a nearby freezer, Cindy looks at the box containing her few possessions from Stocking & Receiving’s hole downstairs.
“What is up with Jett?” she asks Nikki. “I haven’t seen a Chanel suit in days.”
FAMOUS RED RAINCOAT
The horrifying and unspeakable truth is Jett hasn’t worn a suit in well over a week. There’s been no point. She hasn’t been meeting with clients, the rest of the staff, or even Bronko. Her role at Sin du Jour has been reduced to almost nothing, and for no actionable cause by her reckoning. Chef Luck has never once expressed dissatisfaction with her work, as an event planner or coordinator, and a perfectly acceptable percentage aside neither have their clientele.
The only reason she even takes the E train to the office anymore is to feed her undead staff, the raised deceased who also haven’t been contributing to Sin du Jour’s events as of late. The saddest part is, Jett spends more time with them these days than anyone else in her life.
She strides purposefully through the corridors of the building, purse strap cradled in the crook of one arm while the other supports a pickle tub filled with fresh yak brains.
The door is a thick steel plate on sliding rails, covering a hole in the concrete wall. On the door, sloppily painted: “Alright Shamblers Lets Get Shamblin” (Moon did it, but Jett has long given up on wringing a confession from him).
Jett retrieves a large key from her weathered Coach bag only to find the lock it fits is open and dangling from the loose chain that usually tethers the slab to the wall. She frowns, returning the key to her bag. Tagging the door is one thing, but no one in the company is foolish enough to enter her employees’ lounge without her, let alone leave it unlocked.
