Part 23 (1/2)

I cried then, in front of that fool. I stopped talking to him after that. Before, I felt like maybe he was okay.

I was wrong.

Up until that moment, I didn't want to do cocaine again. I really was through with it.

Then the cravings started.

I knew she wasn't coming back, but that fiction kept me alive.

Kept me thinking it was the drug. The drug did me, and not me the drug.

He ruined that conceit, better than therapy ever could.

Trying to avoid contact with my fellow losers at the halfway house, I took to mincing garlic like garlic would keep everyone at bay, like they were all vampires. I guess we are, vampires that suck smoke instead of blood. It worked, everyone kept their distance, except for Asha. I was her reclamation project and she tried to draw me out. I accepted her good attentions, but I didn't want to be drawn out or in, or anywhere. I wanted to stay lost. Alone would be good, but I couldn't expect that. I had to get with the twelve-step program, show requisite progress to get these people out of my life. Still, Asha was pleasant and charming, with big luminous eyes that were easy to look into. Good thing she didn't go for men, because our friends.h.i.+p would have been much more complicated. Finally, I explained a little about myself, and so when she came into the kitchen with this look on her face, I knew I had probably said too much.

”What's wrong?”

”You. I read about you.”

”What? That I'm a f.u.c.k-up? You already knew that.”

She shook her head.

”Yeah, I made a mess of what most people think was a promising career.”

”Don't you miss that life? Running that restaurant, cooking?”

”I don't know. I guess I do.”

”My girlfriend works for this famous entertainer. She says he needs a chef.”

I raised an eyebrow, in spite of myself.

”I wouldn't get past the interview,” I said.

”She's crazy about me and listens to what I have to say. If you're interested, you'd have a shot.”

”I'll think about it,” I replied, without a hint of enthusiasm. I wondered why she wanted to go out of her way for me, she was smart enough to know I truly was a f.u.c.k-up. It had to be her nature, trusting and giving, and maybe a bit naive, coupled with being smart about people and hard-nosed about the everyday affairs of running the halfway house. I guess that's what you need in order to be in her line of work, skills that contradict each other. Strange how a woman, young and attractive, would choose social work; running a halfway house must be like hanging around unflushed toilets all day, when she could choose so many more attractive occupations. Maybe she wanted to be a Hindu Mother Teresa, and if she could drag me back to respectability, she'd be one giant step closer to sainthood.

Sometimes I think I hear him calling, a sibilant whisper from a satin-lined oak coffin hidden below the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt in a tomb so cold he'd be able to see his rancid breath if he actually had breath. ”Living food, that's what I'm feeling,” he says.

Because he's feeling it, I'm feeling it, and that's why I'm drinking that Santa Ynez red, and I'm liking it more than I should.

Backsliding.

No more of this drinking after work, getting silly, having flights of fancy that do me no good.

I've still got to deal with living food, no matter how silly it is to consider cooking without fire an earth-shaking invention. Really, you'd think most reasonable people would agree that cooking is a good thing, a good invention, and we should feel good about it. Maybe Monster remembered something about predigestion in high school biology and it confused and disgusted him. Probably, though, it's the influence of a gastronomic guru who put him on the road to bliss through the chewing of fresh bark. Who am I to stand in the way of his path to enlightenment?

Monster is a freak, a freakish freak, maybe a child-molesting freak, but he's not a creature-feature villain, no matter how much red wine might insinuate that.

No.

He's a self-invented American, freakishly fascinating in his attempt at reinvention, and because of it, his self-invention, his desire to live like something out of a cautionary tale of how outrageously famous people go wrong, makes him unique, unique as crazy wealth and an addiction to television can make you. I bet as a kid he rushed home to watch Dark Shadows Dark Shadowswith a chaser of TheBrady Bunch TheBrady Bunch, which explains some of it-the blond children running around like chickens shooed about by giddy parents. Really, it's not Monster or the kids I wonder about, it's the parents. What must they be like? What do they want for themselves, for their children?

Monster bait.

I'm sure they have lawyers on speed dial, ready and waiting for something actionable. Maybe that's Monster's real value: pulling back the curtain on the ba.n.a.lity of human perversity. Give somebody like him enough money and power and what gets revealed?

He's f.u.c.king crazy, but it's okay.

Everyone here knows it. It's common knowledge living up here on the mountain. When will the townspeople realize what's up and break out the torches and pitchforks and march on Monster's Lair Lair? Isn't it inevitable?

I have another gla.s.s of wine and try to return my attention to the task at hand-planning Monster's meals for the week. I figured when I first saw him that the last thing he would be concerned with is eating, figuring him as a man who lived on meth and Twinkies and maybe Diet c.o.ke, because these folks bathe themselves in Diet c.o.ke. For a man over six feet, he must weight 120 pounds, and that's if he hasn't evacuated his bowels.

Considering what he wants to eat, he'd be better served by hiring a botanist than a personal chef.

Living food isn't something a cook makes. No, give a kid mud, wheat, water, and whatever, and let him go at it.

But I'm a professional, and if that's want Monster is into this week, I'll give it to him straight, with a sprig of fresh rosemary on that sunbaked gluten ravioli.

Breakfast: Oatmeal with coconut milk and raisins.

Snack: Cracked-barley porridge with fresh strawberries.

Lunch: Vegan, sunbaked pizza with three kinds of tomato and Mexican salt from Oaxaca.

Snack: Fresh greens in a lemon sauce.

Dinner: Veggie sus.h.i.+.

Snack: Unsweetened cider.

That's what my life is now; feeding Monster s.h.i.+t he calls food.

If I had more integrity, if I had that kind of character, I'd get my a.s.s off of the mountain, face the consequences, and preserve my dignity.

f.u.c.k yes. The first step on the road to recovery is to know yourself. I'd best start whipping up some sun-baked potato pancakes for Monster's snack, or find a crack pipe; maybe both if I know me, and I do.

Mary Ann Heimann

GARY PHILLIPS writes in several mediums, including comic books, novels, and screenplays, seeking to tap the primal. His published works of fiction include writes in several mediums, including comic books, novels, and screenplays, seeking to tap the primal. His published works of fiction include Bangers, ThePerpetrators, Bangers, ThePerpetrators,and Monkology Monkology, a collection of stories featuring private investigator Ivan Monk. Phillips won the Chester Himes Mystery Award, was short-listed for a Shamus Award, and is on the national board of the Mystery Writers of America.