Monster's Chef (11 page)

Frigid fingers fumbled with the envelope, ripping the letter as it pulled free.

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 They were always irritable, belligerent, or withdrawn, and of course they regularly relapsed, which meant a hell of a lot of paperwork.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.

“Did you know the boy?”

I shook my head.

“Do you like boys?”

I wanted to laugh, but I knew better.

“No, I don't like boys. I don't like children in general. I don't have much to do with children and I don't go out of my way to associate with them.”

“Witnesses place you with the boy.”

“I never saw him before.”

He looked as though he couldn't decide if I was smart enough to lie intelligently.

“How about I search your bungalow? Do you have a problem with that, or do I need to get a search warrant?”

What did I have in that apartment other than a couple of cookbooks I'd picked up used at the Solvang swap meet and my collection of
Penthouse
s and
Playboy
s?

“I don't care.”

“What do you think was done to the boy?” he asked me with one eyebrow cocked.

I shrugged, but then I guess my experience as a former junkie and graduate of a diversion program came into play. I itched to talk when I knew I should keep my mouth shut.

“I think somebody overdosed him.”

Graves cocked an eyebrow.

“Why?”

“His feet. Check out his toes. Someone shot him up there. Maybe he did it himself, but you'd have to wonder.”

Now, the sheriff looked uncomfortable. My having a brain and a potentially useful observation changed the dynamic between us.

“Security here showed me your file. You're on probation?”

I nodded and told him the name of my probation officer.

“I had a problem, but I've been clean for over a year.”

Sheriff Graves closed his notebook and stood up and extended his hand.

“Mr. Gibson, you'll have to stay in the area if we need to contact you for further interviews.”

“Sure. I'm not going anywhere.”

“Good,” he said, and walked me to the door.

MONSTER'S LAIR IS A VAST PIECE
of property. Monster is the master of all he surveys, and anything else of interest, he'll get around to owning that too. If you examine his property holdings on a map, you might suspect he was buying concentric circles of privacy, ending in that moat that isolated the inner mansion, the castle keep of Monster's Lair. I had to take my hat off to his foresight. His world was besieged with swarming media drones doing their best to break on through, but they couldn't. He had them beat. Two hours hadn't passed since we'd discovered the body and they were everywhere; newscasters and cameramen clustered near the guard shack, cut off by gates, fences, and distance, and the narrow road that presented the only access to the main property, a road that seemed to have been chosen with military considerations, was closed. From Monster's Lair you could see everything approaching, exposed on that three-mile drive straight up. We were unassailable by land.

It was as if he'd known something would happen: A boy's body would be found in broad daylight on his property, and a media feeding frenzy would commence. And, as Monster intended, those media assholes would splat like bugs against the great windshield of Security.

But the police couldn't be denied, and more and more of them arrived. That was the first time I saw anyone enter the inner lair of Monster's Lair through the main entrance. Sheriff Graves, a broad-stepping man in cowboy boots, unintimidated by Monster's celebrity, strode up to the door and didn't bother to ring but used a beefy hand to pound a few times before Security opened it. He disappeared inside, and soon the sight of anyone but Monster's most trusted staff in the inner sanctum of the Lair became less interesting. Within an hour, Graves and his men passed in and out at least a half dozen times.

He was the ranking officer as far as I could see; clutches of officers circled about him, discussing the game plan of the investigation.

I was relieved to seclude myself in the kitchen, but returned outside when I heard the thumping of a helicopter circling relentlessly overhead. In response, powerful hoses appeared, manned by Security and aimed at the low-flying media helicopter, until it retreated to a safer and drier altitude.

The disconcerting thing about living at Monster's Lair was how quiet it was. At times when I sat outside in the herb garden, catching the afternoon breeze, I could hear blood droning through my head, my heart tapping out a rhythm. I worried that it wasn't normal, that maybe I was never really relaxed, though I thought I was. Life at Monster's Lair had me grinding my teeth, waking myself in the middle of the night. Hearing the blood pumping in your head didn't seem normal or healthy. Then I realized it was the quiet, quiet like somebody killed it. I could hear my pulse anytime I sat down and listened for it. That was just the way it was.