by Matt Wallace
But she couldn’t be happier if the girl had asked Nikki to teach her how to do victory rolls with her hair.
“Absolutely,” she tells Little Dove, sincerely.
“You know, nobody ever asked me what I wanted to do before,” Little Dove says.
She seems at once rueful and appreciative.
“Well, you’re one up on me,” Lena assures her. “Nobody has yet.”
“You figured it out, though,” Nikki reminds her.
Lena laughs, downing the rest of her wine and replacing the glass on the countertop a little too hard.
She stares up at the bright overhead kitchen lights.
“Have I?” she asks no one in particular. “Have I really?”
PRE-PRODUCTION
“Didn’t we option this one’s spec?” Producer One asks Producer Two, using his Italian-loafered foot to prod the eviscerated writer in question.
There’s a whole pile of them.
Dead writers, that is.
Most of their hearts have been ripped from their chests. Some of them are missing their brains. Several are still clutching screenplays in their arms.
“The only screenwriter whose name I remember is Chayefsky.”
“Because he’s the only writer to ever get the ‘film by’ credit?”
“No, because he skull-fucked that harpy in front of everyone at Nicholson’s party that time.”
“Oh yeah. The party where Nicholson passed out all that great old-school biker acid?”
“Yep.”
“Classic.”
The bodies are stacked high near the door of a windowless conference room. A long-deceased Warner brother is currently devouring the heart of the writer Producer Two can’t remember. He sits eternally at the head of a granite slab conference table surrounded by all the big old-time Hollywood moguls.
They’re not zombies, strictly speaking.
They don’t need to eat human organs to survive.
They just demand them.
In truth no one living knows what they are anymore, but since the 1950s they’ve sat here in their best funereal suits, eyeballs black and flesh necrotic but never rotting off. They don’t move from their chairs. They don’t speak.
They just eat.
All day.
Every day.
The major studios in town take turns supplying them daily with fresh writers, their overwhelming preference. No one in Hollywood knows what will happen if they stop feeding the moguls. But no one wants to find out. On the whole it’s become little more than a fad religion for the elite, not unlike Scientology, albeit far more secretive and exclusive. Feeding the moguls and paying them homage and seeking blessings for your film is the ultimate status symbol in the most private and powerful quarters of the industry.
Producer One and Producer Two wait patiently by the door as the head of a studio currently scoring big adapting dystopian novels for “young adults” (code around town for books written by middle-aged authors who’ve failed at every other genre writing for adults, all of whom have nothing but contempt for teenagers) into big-budget movies makes an offering to the moguls for the success of his newest franchise.
He places the brain of the author upon whose dystopian YA books the franchise will be based.
Producer One recalls reading that the third book has yet to be written.
He idly muses whether the lack of a brain will make a difference in the quality of the writing.
“Did you hear that shit about the ACLU coming to town to ‘investigate’ the industry’s hiring practices?” Producer One asks while they wait.
“No,” Producer Two says. “What about them?”
“They’re ‘gendered’ or whatever the bleeding-heart word is. Apparently less than ten percent of all writers and directors are women.”
“We can’t get it any lower than that,” Producer Two complains. “A few are bound to slip through now and then. It’s not a foolproof system.”
“No, they’re saying it should be more.”
“Oh.” It still takes a moment for the realization to fully sink in. “Oh! Fuck them.”
“I know, right? It’s exhausting enough spending all day pretending to care about gays and minorities, now I have to fire some idiot I know we can control with some bitch who won’t listen to us?”
He’s quiet a moment, then: “ACLU. Investigation. My bleached asshole. Who do they think they are, Philip Marlowe? What’re they gonna do, send me a sternly worded email? Write an op-ed in LA Magazine? Fuck ’em.”
Producer Two flicks her chin at the conference table. “Makes you long for their day,” she says.
Producer One frowns. “These fossils?” he says in the most hushed of voices. “Please. We’re answering to a higher power now.”
“No joke,” she agrees.
They both duck as necrotic Irving Thalberg, the original “Boy Wonder” Hollywood mogul, angrily hurls the brain offered by the studio head across the room. It hits the wall behind them with a sickening “splat.”
Producer One shakes his head as the studio boss scurries past, disappearing through the doors leading out of the conference room in shame and fear.
“Never bring them book authors.”
“Let alone a ‘sci-fi’ author,” Producer Two says, flabbergasted. “What was he thinking?”
“Fuck him. We’re up.”
A ghoulish attendant beckons them both to the vacant end of the conference table.
The producers approach it with what they hope looks like reverence.
Producer Two raises her arms ceremonially. “Our film is Authority over Unclean Spirits.”
Producer One holds aloft a small ornate box as an offering.
“The ashes of a thousand film and television bloggers!” he announces grandly.
A murmured wave of interest and approval passes around the table of undead moguls.
Producer One places the box on the tabletop.
Producer Two hands him a decades-old, out-of-circulation thousand-dollar bill rolled into a tight cylinder.
He places it gingerly atop the box and slides it down the long length of the table.
Jack Warner stops it with a slap of his gray-black, craggy hand. He pinches the G-note awkwardly between two dead fingertips and gruffly flips open the lid of the box.
The mogul snorts half a gram of the mixed ashes inside through the rolled-up bill and then his left nostril. His black pool eyes roll back in his rotted head, which tilts into the plush leather of his chair’s headrest as euphoria rushes through his decaying form.
The producers smile at each other.
“Jackpot,” Producer One silently mouths.
A few minutes later they’re trekking down the stairs of the famous landmark studio water tower inside which the mogul’s conference room temple is hidden.
“So we’re all set for the premiere party, yes?” Producer One asks. “We’ve got a helluva lot more riding on it than on that bullshit back in there.”
“We’re locked and loaded,” she assures him. “Their party planner used to be hot shit out here years back, I guess. Before a half-dozen guests died at one of her events. She couldn’t get arrested after that. Anyway, she’s frothing at the mouth to do an industry party again. I couldn’t shut her up.”
“Sweet. That should make things easier.”
“Did you ever eat at any of Luck’s restaurants back in the day?” Producer Two asks.
“Nope. Met him a couple times when he was out here, saw that show he had. His food any good?”
“Oh, epic. I’m stoked we’re not killing them all till after dinner.”
THE BEST TACO TRUCK IN LA
There’s no truck, to begin with.
Bronko instructed them all not to eat on the plane (that wasn’t much of a chore). He also told them to skip dinner at the downtown Roosevelt Hotel, where the studio is housing them, because he’d be taking them all out for the best late supper in the city of Los Angeles.
Conside
ring the food city LA has become, and the hook-ups Bronko has reportedly retained from the height of his celebrity chef stardom, it filled them all with a sense of wonder and anticipation that’s become a real physical acid bubbling in their stomachs as the hour approaches.
Lena, Darren, and Nikki traded many guesses about which five-star restaurant in whose kitchen Bronko had no doubt secured them all a chef’s table and special tasting menu. Would it be a classic Hollywood standard like Wolfgang Puck’s Spago in Beverly Hills? Or would it be a newer fine-dining institution like Mélisse or Chef Michael Cimarusti’s Michelin star–winning Providence?
A little after nine o’clock in the evening Bronko drives them south on the 101 from their hotel in a rented SUV. Jett was forced to abstain (too much to do, she insisted with the fervency of a hamster on meth), but Lena, Darren, Nikki, Pacific, and Mr. Mirabel weren’t about to miss the festivities.
They exit on Caesar Chavez Avenue, and it isn’t five minutes before he pulls over and parks at the curb.
Their minds cloud with confusion and their hearts and stomachs drop.
It looks like a good place to buy heroin and the worst place to look for a good meal.
Running up against the end of a chain-link fence in an empty blacktop lot, the taco “stand” looks more like a taco truck was turned upside-down and its contents shaken loose. There’s no signage of any kind. In fact, there’s no construction of any kind. Several folding plastic tables of assorted sizes are jammed up against each other to form the prep, cooking, and serving counters. String lights from a hardware store woven in the fence and hung overhead light the corner. There are a dozen large plastic coolers visible under the folding tables.
An eclectic crowd has gathered near the otherwise barren-looking street corner. There are several Harley-Davidson motorcycles leaning to one side at the curb next to the newest-model Porsche upon which several of the hipster elite are lounging with their tacos. Late-night workers in coveralls stand about grabbing a quick, cherished bite before their shifts begin. A few neighborhood kids chase a ball through the scene, being yelled at by diners in mismatched lawn chairs sitting on the sidewalk.
“Everybody queue up,” Bronko instructs them as they file out of the rental car. “You’re all getting one of everything, and I don’t want to see any returns.”
The cooks look at each other, unsure.
“Have they been inspected, Chef?” Nikki asks, suspicious.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” Bronko replies simply. “Line up! It’s all on me!”
The five of them comply, stepping up onto the sidewalk and lining up in front of the makeshift stand.
A cauldron-sized pot is simmering at the end of the folding table facing the street, being stirred diligently by a twentysomething Mexican woman in a stained apron.
When the smell of the conjoining spices and cooking meat hits their nostrils there isn’t a one of them who retains a single doubt something special is about to happen.
“Christ, look at that,” Lena marvels, pointing.
Half a dozen kinds of maddeningly aromatic taco fillings are being scooped from as many small serving dishes arranged on the table near the large pot.
There’s carne asada, carnitas, al pastor, cabeza (delicious shredded beef cheek), and even tripe and crispy white fish.
“I take it back,” Nikki says readily, suddenly starving and eager to satiate herself.
For a scant one dollar apiece an older woman who may be the pot-stirrer’s mother or grandmother places ready-made tortillas the size of saucers on a paper plate and covers each with a different filling, serving them all one of each kind, then directing them to another table alongside their modular empire upon which all manner of communal condiments are waiting, along with napkins and an ice chest filled with cans of soda and bottles of water.
They all ladle their preferred levels of homemade salsa verde and fresh-cut jalapeños onto their tacos and start eating.
The experience is more transcendent than anything you’ll find in a Michelin-starred kitchen.
Anything.
“Don’t get me wrong, you can still find damn good taco trucks all around LA,” Bronko explains around a mouthful of succulent carnitas. “But a few years back the city legislated a lot of the independents out of business. And with the food truck boom a lot of corporate outfits and high-end start-ups moved in. Now it’s easier to find lobster and truffle-oil popcorn out of a truck than a damn taco, let alone a good one.”
Bronko, with nothing resembling grace or self-consciousness, jams the rest of the heaven-filled tortilla in his mouth, chews with relish, and gulps it down.
“If you want the legit shit,” he pronounces in its wake, “this is where you go.”
“It’s amazing,” Nikki says.
“I couldn’t make these,” Lena admits, genuinely in awe. “I can’t even—”
Whatever she was about to say becomes a deep belch.
She doesn’t seem to care, and it does not impede her next bite in any way.
“What about the Kogi truck?” Darren asks. “They’re pretty good.”
Bronko’s eyes seem to have forgotten the question before Darren is done asking it, their attention returning to the counter, but his right hand responds by simulating masturbation.
Darren flusters.
“Who’s ready for a second round?” Bronko asks the chefs, the servers, as well as everyone else milling about the open-air taco restaurant.
Lena, Darren, and Nikki all exchange cautious smiles. It’s the happiest they’ve seen Bronko in weeks, but more than that, it’s the first time in those weeks he’s behaved more like the chef they’ve come to know, trust, and follow.
Bronko buys every patron waiting several more tacos.
The Sin du Jour crew spends another hour devouring the handheld treats, discussing and arguing which ones are their personal favorites and why.
Not a single one of them gives another thought to fine-dining restaurants or haute cuisine.
When their bellies are bulging and their eyes can barely stay open under the influence of a threatening food coma, Bronko leads them back to the rented SUV.
Before he does, he leans over the main table of the open-air kitchen and slips the older woman several hundred-dollar bills with his whispered compliments.
They all climb back inside the rental car with great effort, Lena sitting in the front seat beside Bronko.
“If you should ever find yourself in charge of a kitchen like ours, Tarr,” he says to her quite sagely, “I want you to take a lesson from this.”
“Which is what, Chef?” she asks, her guard brought all the way down by food overload.
“When you’re in the weeds and staring down the barrel of a teeming mama-jama of a gig”—he jerks a thumb at the window, in the direction of the taco stand—“that there is how you pre-game.”
Lena smiles openly at him, and for perhaps only the second time she’s truly glad she’s part of Bronko’s crew.
“Who wants dessert?” Bronko asks the rest of them. “I know a place.”
The chorus of groans and protests from the back of the SUV is deafening.
WEARY STRANGERS IN A SAVAGE LAND
Lena finds herself feeling oddly exposed by cooking in a kitchen that’s not nestled in the brick fortress of Sin du Jour. She realizes she’s come to view what they do with a deep, foreboding secrecy, and violating that secrecy actually filled her with a quiet panic for the first few hours in their temporary workspace.
The morning after their truckless taco excursion and the inevitable ensuing epic bathroom-sitting session that followed (Lena had time to read an entire Kameron Hurley essay), they were shuttled to an entirely different hotel to begin working on the premiere party menu. The hotel that the movie studio has booked for the party is much larger and newer than the Roosevelt, where the Sin du Jour crew is holed up.
Bronko, Lena, and Darren spent yesterday shopping and prepping what ingredients they could without
sacrificing the quality and freshness of the dishes they have planned. Today they’re bunkered in one of the hotel’s kitchens, cooking.
Lena hasn’t seen Nikki since the night they arrived. Nikki and Jett are sequestered in another wing of the hotel, presumably preparing whatever dessert showpiece Jett needs Nikki to execute.
Neither of them would tell the others what they had in mind.
Pacific and Mr. Mirabel are supposedly interviewing temporary servers, and no doubt smoking a large amount of weed in between or possibly during that process.
Lena is sautéing piles of expertly broken-down Belgian endive in several large pans while Darren dices fresh ingredients for the smoothie bar they have planned for the premiere party.
They’re making it a point to ignore each other.
Every now and then Lena glances over at Bronko, towering over his own station as he forms a mixture of squash, quinoa, and spices into perfectly uniform patties, frying them into fritters.
She can’t help watching his impossibly large hands perform delicate cooking tasks.
He still seems to her like a contradiction, almost a figure from another age, as if he should be in some secluded forest that time and civilization has forgotten, cutting down trees with an axe.
“You two’re awful quiet,” Bronko suddenly informs them, although his tone doesn’t say he feels one way or another about this fact.
Neither Lena nor Darren answers at first.
Instead they glance at each other and back to their stations at different times.
Lena finally says, “No offense, Chef, but you’re not exactly doing stand-up either.”
“Yeah, but I know why I’m being quiet. I want to know what’s up with the two of you. You on the outs or something? I thought you weren’t a couple?”
“We’re not,” Lena reiterates.
Darren remains silent.
“So? What, then? Roommate thing? One of you leaves dishes in the sink, the other’s a clean freak? What?”
“It’s not kitchen business, Chef,” Lena says.
Bronko nods. “You know, that’s fair enough. Ordinarily I’d agree with you. When I ran the kitchens in my restaurants back in the day, I didn’t never want to hear anyone’s personal business. No room for it on my line, I thought.”
