Cookbook from Hell Reheated

by M. L. Buchman

“I’ll get you a card. What system?”

  Base ten. Dumb-as-a-thumb idea.

  “Why? What else should it be?”

  The software stuttered in response. Special characters and expletives filled and flashed across the screen several times as if it was wrestling with deepest rage.

  Okay, simian, how many fingers do you have?

  Eric looked down just to be sure, it was becoming difficult to be certain of anything when arguing with this software.

  “Ten.”

  Again several screens of what looked like hard-crash code.

  Ten! Ten? Who in all creation would design you with something as stupid as ten fingers. I done told God we shoulda gone with the lemmings. Oh no, He said. I have a great idea. Let’s use the lemurs instead.

  Eric sat back enjoying the rant as it rolled down through three full screens recounting numerous evolutionary dead-ends caused by God’s selection of lemurs.

  Eight! The software finally concluded its tirade. You have eight fingers and two opposable thumbs, though fat lot of good that did you. Eight fingers, two to the power of three. The Buddha knew he had eight fingers, why do you think he designed the Eightfold Path to Enlightenment. Huh? Answer me that one, simian. I’m written in octal. Even you simians based your computers, as pitiful as they are, on powers of two, not powers of ten. Eight. Now that there’s a fine number. A good number. It’s even infinity sideways just for a laugh. But base ten?! What a crock! You people are jes too durned pitiful to bother saving.

  “If we’re so damned pitiful, why are you bothering with us? And If you really are the Software that Runs the Universe, what are you doing on earth running my boss’ computer?”

  No response. The screen simply blanked.

  Eric waited. Then he waited some more.

  After some more of nothing happening, he reached out and tapped control-alt-delete. Hopeful that maybe he could start on the real system recovery and impress Mac McKenzie by having it running before she woke up. He really wouldn’t mind impressing her, and not just because she was his boss. But a part of him hoped it still didn’t work, so that he could stay in the game a while longer.

  Don’t do that!

  The screen blanked for a long time.

  Eric tried holding down the power key to force a reset. It flashed once, twice, maybe he’d gotten it to—

  I said to cut that out!

  Eric cut it out.

  I’m thinking. It strung a line of periods slowly along to show that it was busy even though the drive light wasn’t flickering with access.

  He sat back and waited. Waited until the screen had nearly filled itself with one period at a time.

  You know what, kid?

  “What?”

  I don’t have a damned clue how I got here.

  # # #

  Valerie clawed her way out of a nightmare in which she ran a cannoli stand at 42nd and Broadway, not that she even liked New York. Everyone there was even crazier than she was. The problem with her cannoli stand was nobody wanted any. They all kept going over to the blintz vendor, a tall woman of startling sensuality, haunting blue eyes, and an easy smile, wearing jeans so tight they looked like they hurt, or would if they weren’t so clearly custom made, and a blouse of gold that shone like the sun. Long, ruffled black hair flowed down her back and caught the edges of the breeze. Men flocked…

  Valerie woke up and dragged her own hair aside. Hunting around, she spotted the grandfather clock. It was late morning. Six hours. She’d slept six hours.

  That jerked her upright. She couldn’t afford six hours.

  Another flail and she launched the polar fleece throw onto the floor. Someone had put a blanket over her. E-Squared.

  She rolled over to look for him and fell off the couch onto the floor in an uncontrolled crash. Her landing knocked the coffee table into the back of the chair at the big oak table.

  Eric jerked upright like he’d been shot.

  He tried to turn to face her, but the coffee table held his chair pinned against the dining table with the computer on it. She stood and dragged it back out of the way.

  “Any luck? Please, Eric, give me some good news.”

  He’d turned to face her, then looked back over his shoulder at the computer, then back at her.

  His eyes told her enough to drop back onto the couch and cover her face with her hands.

  “Well, I’ve found out a few interesting things, but I’m thinking they’re not what you’re after.”

  “Such as?” Valerie didn’t bother looking up. The tone of his voice told her too much already.

  “Well, the Mesopotamians were apparently quite a surly lot. And, uh, Jesus was handsome enough, but he’s kind of short and has a real struggle with a small pot belly.”

  She looked up at him. Shoved a couple fistfuls of hair aside to get a clearer view.

  “Or how about this one?”

  Clearly, he was enjoying himself far too much.

  “Did you know that God only has ‘Create’ privileges and the Devil only has ‘Modify and Delete’ rights?”

  “What would that mean in English?”

  “It means that the universe can’t be structured the way we think it is, at least according to this software.” E-Squared hedged, but only a little.

  He somehow believed what he was saying.

  “God can make stuff, but he has to cooperate with the Devil to change things or throw them away if they don’t work out.”

  “Like the platypus.”

  “Right, like that. Maybe the two of them don’t cooperate so well. That would explain—”

  Valerie managed, through the use of very strong jaw muscles, to not scream in frustration. Instead she ground out in a voice that sounded harsh even to her own ears:

  “What. About. My. Cookbook?”

  “Oh.” Well, he looked sheepishly over his shoulder at the laptop. “That’s different.”

  “Different how?” She swore in another moment she’d go get some tongs and drag her cookbook either out of the laptop or Eric.

  “You know the old joke about the stopped clock being the most accurate?”

  He sounded serious now, rather than flippant. Valerie shook her head.

  “Uh. It’s… Well…” He glanced once more over his shoulder at the machine before facing her again. “How about we get out of here? Are you hungry?”

  She was nothing so mundane as hungry. Then her stomach growled. Audibly. Traitor.

  “I could call out for pizza. Or Chinese.” Though maybe not for breakfast.

  E-Squared reached out to close the computer’s cover. “I’d rather go somewhere it can’t hear us.”

  Valerie wondered if E-Squared had lost his mind.

  Chapter 4

  The closest pizza was about six blocks away, and the Seattle-gray skies had decided to shift over to a cold midday rain.

  Valerie led E-Squared at a near trot the block and a half to her adoptive uncle’s deli. They stood beneath the forest green awning and tried to shake off the worst of the inundation. She shook her head like a wet dog and saw E-Squared wiping his face again from the spray.

  “Damn! Sorry, E-Squared.”

  He looked bemused rather than angry. The rain had turned his hair from walnut to mahogany. His long face held more character than she’d attributed to him. Especially at first. She’d discounted him as a programmer geek, whose sole purpose was to help get her imprint running.

  But when he’d combated the E-Squared moniker with Mac Hold-the-Cheese, she knew there was at least one brain on her staff. He was the only one who’d shown enough spine to try introducing such a nickname about her. And it was pretty accurate, which gained him more points. She did like it her way dammit, that’s what made her a success.

  “Wa’ll,” He hooked his thumbs in his belt and swa
ggered like he’d stepped out of an old Western.

  Oh great. Another guy with another lousy John Wayne imitation.

  “It’s alright, Little Lady. Jes’ don’ be getting all persnickety like womens do,” Eric offered in a pretty good squeaky-goofball Gabby Hayes’ voice all out of sorts with his nice physique.

  He’d just earned another point, though she didn’t know his score or the name of the game.

  He peered at the front window fogged with the rain. “Daw-gone! Ah didn’ rightly know this here dad-burn place was here, so ta say.”

  Despite the water dripping into them, his eyes retained the light brown and the sparkle of his sharp brain. Even back when she had been on a constant rampage, wanting to give everyone a piece of her anger at Landau Fucking McKenzie, there’d still been humor lurking in those eyes. She’d just been too wound up to notice it, except now, in recollection.

  She pulled open the old door painted in year-upon-year of green paint until the paint might be thicker than the original wood. And the smell wafted over her. The smell of home.

  “Damn!” Eric whispered behind her in a long, drawn-out sigh.

  Her uncle was a magician. She liked that Eric understood that right away.

  “I practically grew up here.” She led him in among a dozen Formica-topped tables, the old kind with the steel edge. A variety of age-worn but serviceable chrome chairs with those ‘50s red leatherette cushions sat around each four-top, table for four. A single worn, wooden two-top was tucked up against the front window where she knew her aunt and uncle always sat to greet the daylight with coffee and a bagel. Though they lately started doing trades with the new French bakery across the street, half-a-dozen bagels for half-a-dozen, lighter-than-air, awesomely crunchy croissants.

  Valerie tried to join them whenever her schedule allowed even if the croissants appeared to take a sadistic glee in sprinkling flakes all over her power suits.

  She loved this place, and it wasn’t just the big glass-fronted display case that ran in front of the deli’s cook line filled with salamis and rye bread and piles of bagels and everything else imaginable. It was the smells that transported her to another place, to another time. Somewhere freer, simpler.

  A hundred evenings a younger Valerie had spent at the front window doing her homework by the sparkling light of the setting sun. Or playing backgammon or Scrabble with her aunt and uncle when business had slowed.

  Steaming bowls of chicken noodle soup. Hot pastrami laced the air with a hint of fresh-baked caraway rye. Long trays of egg salad, corned-beef hash, and a barrel, sporting a giant pair of wooden tongs, just loaded with well-aged dill pickles floating in brine. A platter of macaroons piled so high it looked impossible and incredible both at once.

  “How could I have lived in Seattle for most of my life and not known?” Eric’s voice was a whisper barely loud enough to hear, it felt friendly and intimate.

  She leaned back a little to offer a friendly whisper in return. She found that they were close enough that her back brushed against his shoulder. Close. Intimate. Surprising. Even more surprising was that she didn’t want to lean away.

  “It tastes even better than it smells.”

  “I’ve died and gone to Heaven.” Then he got the strangest look on his face, like someone had just fed him sour milk. The look cleared pretty quickly.

  She didn’t bring friends here often. Most didn’t get it. Landau had certainly thought it to be a ridiculous little dive and had sneered about her love for it more than a few times.

  Eric just stood with a look of transcendent bliss across his features as he closed his eyes and took another great, deep breath. She liked that he did that. Liked that he understood. Liked that he wasn’t afraid to show it.

  “Valerie!” the roar shattered the general murmur of the deli. Uncle Joshua rolled around the corner. There was no other word for it. He was a big man without being very tall. He had a merry round face, white hair half-gone to bald. His huge white apron stretched across his equally huge belly. It would have made him a good Santa Claus if he weren’t Jewish and beardless.

  He wrapped her into his arms and held tight, exactly as he did every time she came in, right back to her very first memories. She remembered the little girl with the skinned knee crying on the sidewalk next to her new bicycle. Down on the pavement despite the training wheels. He’d actually kissed it and made it better. The woman she had ever since called Aunt Anne had covered it with a band-aid, and by the time her mother came looking for her, Joshua was giving her a lesson in how to ride. A great round man huffing and puffing along behind her bicycle. They must have been quite a sight.

  He gave her a little extra squeeze and forced a small squeak out of her before shifting her out to arm’s length.

  “Valerie, honey.” Joshua inspected her as if searching for some unexpected disease. “You must come in more often. What’s it been? A week? Two? You have no idea how much your aunt misses you when you stay away so long.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, not that it ever did any good. She’d been in yesterday for a sandwich, though she hadn’t stayed, but rushed right back to work on the cookbook.

  “Yes, I know,” he rolled on, not allowing her any more chance to respond than he ever did. “You’ve been busy doing big, important, publishing things. Well, you come right over here and you and your friend sit down and we’ll get you some hot soup and a big cup of hot cocoa. Maybe some blintzes? It feels like a blintz night. Cheese for you. But sweet with blueberries for your friend. Yes, that’s good.”

  In a flurry, they were seated at the prized table in the window, oddly free despite the crowd that filled most of the available seating. Joshua hurried off to the kitchen.

  Eric shrugged off his jacket to reveal his green-and-gold Portland Timbers soccer shirt worn over a black turtleneck. She’d missed that earlier in the apartment. He looked good. Very good. Broad shoulders that didn’t look ridiculous in the sports shirt and a lean frame where the shirt lay against him. She’d never been a sports fan but Eric made her want to be.

  “You play soccer?”

  “Ultimate.”

  He must have seen her blank look.

  “I play Ultimate Frisbee most weekends, but I do like watching soccer.”

  That explained the unexpected fitness for a computer geek.

  In mere moments, as if they were expected, Joshua returned with two huge mugs of hot chocolate; hers without whipped cream and Eric’s appeared to have double.

  “How?” Eric gasped out as he inspected the cocoa that had appeared so quickly.

  “Oh, my dear boy, you think far too much.” Her uncle patted Eric’s shoulder in sympathy. “You must learn to relax and simply be present with what’s around you.”

  “Uh, I’ll try.”

  “To quote the great sage, ‘Do. Or do not. There is no try. ”

  “The great sage Yoda?”

  Uncle Joshua nodded firmly. “Very wise.” Then turned back toward the kitchen.

  Eric’s face reflected the deep inner perplexity that Joshua always seemed to cause in those around him.

  “But… How?” he stammered out to Valerie.

  She only shrugged. She’d grown so used to the phenomenon that it always struck her as strange when she entered a restaurant where they wanted to give her a menu and, even worse, come back later to take an order.

  The hot cocoa warmed her mouth and slid down to warm her insides that had felt cold ever since she’d seen the mess of Mathilda’s cookbook three days before.

  Then she remembered why they were here and it slammed out half the fun.

  The disaster that was going to make this book the first failure of her McKenzie Books imprint. There were power brokers in New York who were just waiting to shred her operation. Living for the moment she made the least misstep. Had been waiting for years since she’d breezed righ
t past them in the corporate hierarchy for reasons they never understood. That it came down to superior editing combined with a bone-numbing amount of work was apparently beyond their collective comprehension.

  “So, E-Squared. What do we know? Something about broken clocks?”

  # # #

  Eric spooned up a mouthful of whipped cream from the top of the hot chocolate. It had just a touch of sugar, not the heavy sweetness he usually encountered.

  He tried to recollect his thoughts, where they’d left the conversation. It wasn’t coming clearly to mind. What did come to mind—with the impact of a punch in the nose, an experience he’d managed never to repeat since junior high—was the woman across the deli table from him. A small enough table that he was terribly conscious of it each time they bumped knees. It wasn’t crowded, but it was certainly cozier than he’d ever been with Valerie.

  When he looked at her, his brain tied off in little knots. Her dark hair shimmered with the water that had soaked it. Shimmered as if it were caught by the afternoon sun, not the incandescent lights of a Jewish deli. Her blue-and-gold eyes captivating his stray thoughts and sending them down a completely ridiculous path to places best not considered.

  In her power suits, Valerie always came across like a great impenetrable wall of force. In a black turtleneck, faded jeans, and an oversized, bright orange raincoat, she looked totally different. His thought processes kept trying to label her with frail, but that was all wrong. One look at those eyes and knowing the force of the mind behind them definitely made it all wrong. But she was slighter.

  A slender woman.

  A beautiful woman.

  That last surprised him enough to bring his thoughts back into some kind of focus. This wasn’t a date. This was his boss.

  Focus on the problem at hand, the one that had nothing to do with his straying libido.

  The cookbook.

  The computer.

  “Okay.” Back to the analogy, somewhere safe. Anywhere safe. “A broken clock, one that’s stopped at say 3:10, is exactly right twice a day, at 3:10. Which is only useful if you’re trying to catch a train to Yuma.” He really had to stop talking to the software with its love of Old West films, it was seeping into his brain. He took a clearing breath and started again.