Cookbook from Hell Reheated

by M. L. Buchman

  “That must be it.” Peter flipped the diagrams over, they’d appropriated a couple dozen sheets of paper from the various printouts scattered about the table.

  “What’s this?” Peter started inspecting the loose pages, turning them into OCD-neat little piles. It made an odd sort of sense that the guy who ran Heaven’s software would be a bit obsessive compulsive. Did that make it a disorder or a requirement of the job?

  “That stuff is all nonsense,” Eric had been so excited when he’d first coaxed the software into printing out this copy of the cookbook. He’d almost woken Valerie. He was glad he’d hesitated. By the time the printout was done, he’d flipped through enough to know it was garbage and had tossed it aside.

  But the more Peter looked at it, the quieter he became. Which was saying something, because he’d managed barely ten words since arriving. At first he’d appeared overshadowed by the woman, by the Devil. Eric’s mind couldn’t quite stay wrapped around that one, though he had to at least count it as plausible if not verifiable. Her being the Devil really would explain a lot if the software came from another plane of existence.

  But Peter, St. Peter wasn’t cowed by the Devil. He was simply a quieter, more thoughtful person.

  Peter noticed Eric’s attention and asked where he’d found these recipes.

  “I beat the software over the head about what had happened to Valerie’s cookbook, she was editing a cookbook file that was corrupted by your software’s arrival, and it finally spit out that mess of drivel to shut me up. Didn’t look like much of anything. The correct table of contents, sort of, but none of the recipes make sense.”

  “How about this?” Peter handed him a page.

  TRANSCENDENCE

  -a true Buddhist dish of doubted efficacy-

  1. Be reborn.

  2. A lot.

  3. Keep count.

  4. After 4th, 27th or 43rd life as a mongoose, or 1,537th as a human, place the thumb of right hand on left side nostril and press hard enough to turn head to the right.

  5. Keep pushing.

  6. If head comes off, you’ve pushed too far, start over at first life. Don’t forget to restart counting.

  7. If head doesn’t come off, transcend.

  Note 1: Post-transcendence gloating is considered poor form especially if lorded over life forms still treading the Wheel of Life.

  Note 2: Especially avoid gloating in front of life forms still retaining lethal capabilities.

  “Like I said. A mess of drivel.”

  Peter took the page back quietly and slipped it back into place, squaring up the edges without comment.

  “No way!”

  Peter shrugged. “I’ve seen worse. The Buddha always struck me as having a decent sense of humor. Maybe he programmed that option in.”

  Eric glanced about the apartment, as if seeking Valerie to agree with him that it was ridiculous. But he was alone, alone with St. Peter. Who ran Heaven.

  “Uh, what else have you got there?”

  St. Peter handed him another page.

  TIDE

  1.Two orbs.

  2.Make one rotate around the other.

  3.Make sure one has a great deal of water or other life-supporting fluid. (Tides are no fun if they aren’t messing with somebody’s head.)

  Note: Next time, no landmasses. Terrestrial life forms not worth the bother. Find new venue for trees.

  Eric handed that one back a bit more slowly. That one actually made a frightening amount of sense.

  “Uh, what happens if someone decides landmasses really are a mistake and, I dunno, deletes them.”

  Peter shrugged. “Better learn to swim. Really fast. Gills might help. Though it would be hard to grow those back when you left them behind half a billion years ago.”

  “But, weren’t you a person? Aren’t you still?”

  “Sure I am.”

  “Then how can you say it like that?”

  “Sixty-eight years on earth, another twenty kicking around Limbo, skip that if you can, by the way, not a lot of fun. You might want to take up Latin, just a tip.” Then he looked sad for a moment. “No, maybe you shouldn’t bother with that anymore either.”

  “I’ve been running Heaven for just over two millennia now. My time on earth was a blip on the chart. Can’t say as I miss it all that much either. Galilee wasn’t a lark, but crucifixion...” He shuddered. “Must be an easier way to go.”

  “You’ve been running Heaven?”

  “Sure. God was never that interested, and now with him dead—” He stopped, looking infinitely sad.

  “God? Is? Dead?” Eric could feel each word stumble out on its own to lie on the hardwood floor like a dead fish.

  Peter nodded.

  “You’re sure?” he whispered it. He didn’t know why, but he did.

  “Pretty sure.”

  “Pretty sure.” Eric blinked. Maybe Valerie was right. These two were nutcases escaped from the local loony bin. And now she’d gone off with one of them. He hoped she was safe.

  “You’re saying that you’re St. Peter, and you’re ‘pretty sure’ God is dead?”

  “I’m not a mental case, Mr. Erikson. God rested after Newton created the Third Law of Thermodynamics.”

  “Objects at rest remain at rest unless acted on by an outside force.”

  “Right. Except what kind of force gets God moving again?”

  Eric sat up and scratched at his head a bit. “He became the proverbial immovable object?”

  The man calling himself St. Peter merely nodded.

  “So, what’s the proverbial unstoppable force?”

  Even before Peter could speak, he answered it himself. “The Software that Runs the Universe.”

  “Right,” Peter nodded. “Only I didn’t think of it until too late, there were no remnants left in which to initiate movement. At least none that I could find. And that’s when the software slipped out of my fingers, two hundred years ago.”

  “But I was just talking to it a couple hours ago.”

  “Michelle had it in Hell until this morning.”

  Michelle. In Hell. Why did that sound so real?

  He shifted in his chair but couldn’t find a comfortable spot.

  “So, your God is dead or gone seriously missing.”

  “He’s your God too.”

  Eric ignored him. “The software is now gone.”

  Peter nodded.

  “Where?”

  Peter shrugged.

  “How did you find it here?”

  “I ran a tracer.”

  “So let’s do that again.”

  Peter pointed to the dead computer.

  “Why do you think he formatted the drive? It’s all erased. If he’s an incarnation of me, he’d know how to stymie the software.”

  “Valerie has a desktop in…”

  “No, it needs to be the same hardware. Or maybe at least hardware the software has previously been on.” For the first time, Peter seemed to shake off his despondency and be focusing on the problem. “If we could figure out how to get back to Hell…”

  Eric didn’t like the way that sounded at all.

  # # #

  “Okay, let’s assume for a second, a second, that you are who you say you are.”

  Valerie and Michelle climbed into her metallic-gold colored BMW Roadster.

  “Nice ride.” Michelle commented as she settled into the leather bucket seat, then slid it all the way back for her long legs.

  “A high-school graduation guilt-gift from my dad. He ran off with his secretary and Mom’s inheritance when I was six.”

  Michelle stroked the dashboard appreciatively. “Sometimes guilt pays.”

  “That’s the way I figured it. Mom wasn’t happy about it, but then she was never happy abou
t much. Last I heard she was in Italy, living with some dog of a Hollywood producer, but he apparently keeps her in a style of exceptional comfort.” She shrugged. “We don’t talk much.”

  “Back to the assumption that I am who I say I am?” Michelle buckled in as Valerie pulled onto Ravenna and wound her way up the hill and along the park-like street over toward Green Lake.

  “Right. You said that guy who took the software was a Hungry Ghost. What’s that?”

  “Well, the Buddha was a pretty slick programmer.” Michelle…The Devil…whatever she was, rolled down the window letting in the cool, moist air that smelled of rotting leaves and wet pavement. “He wrote the Buddhist Wheel of Life as a training ground. There are six primary modes of reincarnation until you figure out how to transcend. Most of them suck. Being a Hungry Ghost really sucks.”

  Despite the chilly day, the late afternoon cyclists were gathering along the Ravenna bike path, headed to Green Lake for their workouts and after-work lattes. Every single one of them probably hoping to meet Mr. Perfect as they bicycled, jogged, or walked around the lake’s path.

  “Eternally hungry,” Michelle continued. “Far beyond the point of gluttony and right off the high dive of avarice. The Catch 22 is that while you’re always hungry to the point of starving need, your throat is too tiny to allow anything in.”

  “That explains what happened to my kitchen. This Ron guy wanted everything but couldn’t consume it.” She shuddered at the memory of his moaning. She was starting to believe this woman’s cockamamie story of being the Devil. The guy posing as St. Peter in a stained toga? Not so much.

  “So, can’t you just, I don’t know, use the Buddhist software instead?”

  “We’ve tried interfacing our systems once, ours and the Buddha’s, but it doesn’t work particularly well. Imagine hooking NORAD up to an art-gallery program. They both talk about peace, but that’s like saying the Dante’s Inferno is the moral equivalent of Hatha Yoga.”

  Valerie waited while three cyclists totally ignored the light and zipped across in front of her bumper.

  “I always wanted to be Beatrice, ever since I was little girl.”

  “Beatrice?” Michelle actually turned to look at her for the first time. “The true love that sent Dante’s hero on a tour of Hell? The nine circles of Hell are pretty heavy reading for a little girl.”

  “I always wanted to be loved as she was loved. Dante worshipped the very ground she walked on.”

  “When did you outgrow that?”

  Valerie grinned at her. “Who says I have?” She put the car back into first gear and pulled through the intersection.

  The woman groaned and started to roll her eyes. Then she glanced back at Valerie’s face and finally smiled.

  “Been a long time since someone, other than a really sneaky messenger, caught me off guard. You’re okay, for one of the living.”

  “Thanks.” Valerie wasn’t quite sure what to do with the compliment. “Now I’m more likely to read Lee Child or Jane Austen.”

  “Firth or Macfayden?” Michelle looked over at her.

  “Firth, though I’ll gladly take either one. The Devil watches Jane Austen?”

  “Every version. I agree, by the way. Colin better not go straight to Heaven when he dies. I want a chance to play with him first. No, I haven’t read her books, which Jane is always griping at me about. She insists the films left out most of the good bits.”

  Michelle then looked out the window as they rolled around Green Lake, past all the shops and ice cream stores that were still doing decent business despite the cold. Prime hipster pickup spots.

  “Of course, Jane was a fussy girl always worried about the propriety of every deed or action, at least when she first arrived.”

  “And now?” Valerie couldn’t help asking. Of course, Jane Austen would be fussy.

  “Well, first she went to the far extreme. Let me tell you that girl rules a pool table. She’s just wicked. Now she’s settled down a bit, writing science fiction last I checked. It’s been a while. Too long, I guess. Need to invite her over soon, get drunk together, go scare some men. She’s good at that, disarms them with demure then wipes the floor with her seriously mean pool skills.”

  # # #

  “What about this one?”

  Eric and Peter had split the printout and were sitting side by side at Valerie’s dining table, reading through.

  Eric kept finding strange recipes that he wanted to show to Valerie. Wanted to share the joke that he knew she, and few others he’d ever met, would appreciate. Shrimp fra Diavolo, Devil’s Shrimp. Normally a hot dish, it was a whole list of seriously funny short-people jokes. Eric’s adult growth spurt had come much later than most of his friends, and still he could appreciate these. Angels and Devils on Horseback, rather than being bacon-wrapped spicy oysters and scallops, was a detailed set of instructions for the souls of horses to avoid being reborn as human. The chef’s tip was, “Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”

  Eric started reading A Recipe from Travel Far and Wide. No, he had to reread it, Valerie had been teaching him to watch out for reading what you expected to see. It actually said, A Recipe for Travel Far and Wide.

  It felt wrong to be sitting in Valerie’s apartment, wearing her clothes, with a dead saint. It was her he wanted to be here. He liked her apartment, better than his. She’d surrounded herself with books and art and comfortable chairs.

  He tried to focus on the recipe Peter had given him, seeing if he could puzzle out its purpose.

  What would she think when she reached his place?

  # # #

  Valerie’s cell phone rang just as she was trying to work up the nerve to reach for Eric’s underwear drawer. She snatched her hand back and answered the phone.

  “Hi Mac.”

  Of course it was Eric, at the very moment she was trying not to feel excessively voyeuristic in his bedroom.

  “Could you also pick up a roll of blue masking tape, the kind painters use?”

  “Uh, sure. What width?”

  “Half or three-quarter inch. It doesn’t really matter. And maybe some food for dinner? Great thanks.” And he was gone.

  Michelle stuck her head in from the living room, which had looked largely unused except for the sofa and a smaller than expected television. She’d expected Eric to own a massive entertainment system with a wall-sized screen and surround-sound speakers. It was in the bedroom that she found out his true vice.

  “They need some blue masking tape.”

  “Oh,” Michelle leaned against the door jamb and waited.

  Valerie had already set two full sets of slacks, shirt, and jacket on the polar fleece bedspread, one for Peter and one to replace Eric’s still wet clothes.

  He was surprisingly neat, neater than she was, way neater than when she was stressed. The only mess in the whole apartment was the coffee cup and half-empty Fritos bag sitting beside the totally daunting, multi-screened computer station that occupied a whole bedroom corner and part of the wall of the rental-white room. Clearly this is where he lived.

  “So,” Michelle watched her without comment. “You don’t live together?”

  “He works for me. Just came over to help.” She sneaked open a drawer of the oak dresser and found some socks. Almost all white. She knew from the office he wore white socks even when he was wearing sandals. He was such a nerd.

  “You have a handsome, decent guy, who at this very moment is hanging around your apartment, wearing your clothes, and smelling of your soap, and you’re gonna tell me nothing’s going on?”

  “Nothing.”

  Valerie considered that the next drawer must be underwear.

  “Well there damn well should be, shouldn’t there? What is wrong with you?”

  With her hand on the drawer handle, Valerie decided the guys
could just go commando and gathered up the clothes. Then she had to deal with that image in her brain. She made a quick estimate of which was worse.

  She dropped the clothes back on the bed, then covered her eyes with one hand. With the other she pulled open the most likely drawer, snatched whatever her fingers encountered, and shoved her gleanings between the folded-over pant legs of the slacks before uncovering her eyes.

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.” She stole a pillowcase from his bed and did her best to ignore the fact that it smelled like him. She stuffed the clothes inside and turned to leave the room.

  Michelle remained where she was, arms crossed, leaning against the door jamb, blocking Valerie from leaving.

  “Okay,” Valerie had no idea why she’d tell this woman what she was really feeling. “I am a goddamned train wreck as a woman. Eric is half the reason I finally left my dweeb of a husband. Not for Eric, nothing that sad. But just by being there around the office, he showed me precisely how badly I had compromised herself by marrying Landau Fucking McKenzie. Landau was my record, I survived him for over a year. That’s part of why I married him, once we crossed six months, I figured he was going to be my best bet ever. Why would I wish me on a nice guy like Eric?”

  She’d never said all that aloud and now sort of feared the reaction. Was she really that bad? Evidence pointed to an affirmative.

  Michelle studied her for a long time. Finally, a slow, if not happy, smile slid onto her face.

  “I’ll admit to sort of knowing that feeling myself.”

  The pain was so familiar, as if Valerie was looking into a mirror, that she rested her hand on the woman’s arm. Valerie didn’t know what she’d expected, but it hadn’t been that the Devil would feel so real.

  Chapter 18

  “It’s barely mizzling.” Valerie didn’t bother to open her umbrella, though she did pull up her hood to wait for the light as they crossed from the hardware store to the deli.

  “Mizzling?” Michelle followed her down the steps and onto the sidewalk.

  “I live in a city with far more types of rain than the country’s typical mist-drizzle-rain-downpour hierarchy. So, I’ve been filling in the blanks. Mizzle, halfway between a mist and a drizzle.”