“Howard Hughes complex.”
The plumber laughed and asked for another sandwich.
“My ex-wife was into that,” he said between bites of his sandwich. “Back in the eighties in Santa Barbara people did a lot of weird shit. I think it was all that cocaine going around.”
I offered him lemonade, and he revealed more intriguing information.
“I thought it was the biggest pool we’ve ever dug. It was in the shape of an O, and it ran all around the mansion. The contractor said it was the first fucking moat he had ever built. A month after we first filled it with water, a truck arrived, tipped backward, and toothy fish tumbled out,” the plumber said with a shrug.
“I guess he’s got security concerns.”
Monster had a moat, and I know we were all expected to be overwhelmed and maybe intimidated; why would you pay for a moat if not to impress the world with it? Impressed or not, you get over that sort of thing pretty quickly, though it was more irritating than impressive to cross a moat to go to the mansion kitchen, having to wait for Security to check their stupid clipboard before lowering the drawbridge. I guess they had to do that, though I had been running the kitchen for months. I’d heard the rumors that the stalker was still at it, trying to find a way into Monster’s Lair.
Yeah, I suppose there was some truth to it, just as I suspected there was some truth to the rumor I made up that Monster has a dungeon with chains hanging from the walls, an iron maiden, and all the other tools of the trade. Say that to a hungry plumber and you know that story will accelerate until it achieves enough escape velocity to take off and maybe make the pages of the National Enquirer or Fox News. What else are you gonna do if rumors are thick as pea soup around you but be a rumormonger?
THE RED FLAG STOOD AT ATTENTION on the old-fashioned mailbox in front of my bungalow. Can’t say I didn’t feel mild dread. I guess it was better than having to meet with whoever it was who ran the day-to-day business of Monster’s Lair. I don’t know why disembodied directives make me so nervous. I guess it’s better than having someone disagreeable in my face, giving me shit, but the notes were always in an envelope and on expensive paper and handwritten, and they got to the point with few words. Turns out I had good reason to be afraid; this letter was on the subject of a party for Monster’s birthday involving two hundred very important guests who would be expecting to enjoy a meal of the healthiest and most invigorating food direct from my kitchen.
I imagined myself going slowly nuts trying to develop a menu based on uncooked vegetables, without sugar, milk, butter, cheese, meat, just about everything. Then and there I was of the mind to quit, go back to the halfway house and return to long hours of labor in the kitchen. I had no choice but to educate myself in this food and the idea behind it. Research would save me.
I looked up everything I could on the subject and, after hours of reading, decided what these super-vegans wanted was a good, quick, cleansing fast. They wanted the discipline of monks, denying themselves, mortifying the flesh, forgoing the temptations of this life.
Taste equals illusion.
They wanted something real, realer than real, blander than bland, and, consequently, healthy. I wondered what Monster wanted. Did he want to achieve higher consciousness? It had to be that because he certainly couldn’t want to lose weight unless he wanted to be a hunger artist and fade away into a disembodied voice, rocking to broad daylight. I decided to make mixed salad with lots of olives. Thank God for the wonderful local olives.
Notes on dinner menu: Monster will not eat peanuts or olives, and he doesn’t care for tomatoes or lemons or lemon juice.
Fuck the local olives, they weren’t that good anyway.
JUST A DAY BEFORE Monster’s birthday party an incredibly expensive events catering company arrived in convoys of semis that polluted the air so thoroughly with dust and diesel that I thought the festivities would be disastrous. But like clockwork they assembled a Disneyfied bedouin camp with elegant tents arranged along the extensive grounds outside of the Lair proper. My job was to oversee the caterers, but there was no need; the hospitality crew, the food and liquor, the entertainment were all top flight, seemingly superhuman, and as far as I could see weren’t doing speed or coke. My menu wasn’t discarded; worse, it had been improved on. I milled around pretending to be busy while they slaved to make everything work seamlessly with skill and determined purpose.
How much did these people get paid? I thought as I tried to stay out of the way and tried not to look totally useless. Finally I gave in and watched the stars arrive—the Saudi royalty, and the Eurotrash, and the handsome quarterback who had a triumphant Super Bowl two years ago, but more recent play had resulted in his being traded to the dregs of the league where he became ensnared in a scandal involving an Instagram indiscretion. The woman he had with him, a blonde who had to be at least five foot seven but still wore six-inch heels, stood nearly at his height but rail thin with such a ridiculous purchased rack that she looked as though she might pitch over at any moment. Always, these couples were the most likely to be the unhappiest diners at my restaurant. The men were always uninterested in the women and the women either hung on to the men as if they might get away or were like this one, trying to get as much juice out of a temporary situation as possible. She stood at the bar and immediately began throwing back martinis and when sufficiently sauced tottered over, with the grim-faced quarterback lagging behind, to the burning-hot new singer with the dangling earrings and Yakuza-like tattoos who had the habit of beating up his boyfriends in public. The tattooed singer–bad boy ignored them and rushed away to witness the arrival of the Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi of hip-hop with his cruel empress wife whose assistants elbowed clear a space near the pool and maneuvered them to where their best angles were the only angles available. They posed like glamorous store mannequins for the official paparazzi to immortalize them, but they were lost in the typhoon of Monster’s arrival. Not just wearing a tight black suit, he wore the blackness of the abyss, a glittering light-eating material of a suit. The power couple of the moment tried to approach Monster as equals, joking and back slapping, with the assembled luminaries reduced to witnesses to the spectacle of their celestial brilliance, but Monster’s aspect was rising; he wasn’t just a star, he was transcendent.
I wanted to hit up tattooed singer–bad boy to share some of the cocaine he was snorting openly, but I decided against it, thinking that detached amusement was the way to go. The JBG of hip-hop and his empress gestured for one of their assistants to hand Monster a box that shook as though something was alive inside of it. Monster’s assistant took the box away and I hoped that whatever was in there didn’t need to breathe much. Monster swept them both up in his thin arms and kissed them like long-lost children. Everyone was delighted.
I thought I saw David Bowie—he came to the opening of my restaurant years ago and had many kind words—but it wasn’t him, probably just a rail-thin white man appropriating his image. My energy started to flag as I watched the luminaries arrive and frolic, as if frolicking was texting and shaping photos as they halfheartedly chatted. A gong rang, loud and sharp, and Monster suddenly was on a stage, illuminated in such harsh white light that it was almost impossible to look at him. A tsunami of techno dub enveloped us in bone-rattling bass and Monster exploded in twirling movement faster than I thought possible. His limbs multiplied Kali-like, writhing, elongating, pulsating in the firing of syncopated strobe lights. The black that he wore made his white translucent skin more ghostly and ethereal, even angelic. My hard-fought detachment bled away and my heart pounded, giddy with the sheer excitement of being in his presence; the special effects that embodied his every move were proof that he was the end-all, the be-all, and I was lucky to be in his presence, to serve him. The performance didn’t last long, like the jolt of the first hit off of a crack pipe after hard-earned sobriety.
“Thank you so very much for coming and sharing my birthday!” Monster said, his voice like ice shards. Then from his
hands came smoke, and it all seemed magical, more magical than I could have believed, and the smoke snaking from his hands began to sparkle like stars in a black Texas night so subtly that if you weren’t concentrating you’d miss it. Soon the entire vastness of the bedouin tent was filled with the twinkling smoke that smelled slightly of jasmine. It was delightful. Another gong rang and the smoke and Monster disappeared. Bright lights broke the spell and the catering crew got to serving my modified vegan menu. I felt happy and content as I watched the clockwork precision of the servers, and the food even seemed tempting if I’d had any appetite.
Happy. I was fucking happy . . . I can’t be happy, I thought, then it occurred to me that my happiness corresponded with the smoke, and as the smoke dissipated so did my unearned happiness. The gathering began to break up almost before the mountainous vegan birthday cake was served. Monster never returned; instead tattooed singer–bad boy led the luminaries in a spirited happy birthday sing-along to a three-dimensional projection of Monster standing like a colossus above Monster’s Lair, waving good-bye. Oh, yes, if only I were blunted . . . maybe then I could laugh.
THE MANSION HAD INNER GROUNDS; the kitchen faced the vegetable garden, and beyond the vegetable garden was the most elaborate playland I had ever seen. It was as if the carnival had come to town. Security made sure I didn’t get too close to the carousel and its intricately carved unicorns and flying horses, or the incongruous Ferris wheel standing tall among the oaks and eucalyptus, or the miniature train at rest, large enough to transport a dozen kids around the grounds under the elms and oaks and around the acres and acres of Monster’s Lair. But nothing surprised me more than the Middle-earth model/diorama near the eastern wall of the playground. Mount Doom stood five feet high with some kind of volcano action churning and frothing from within. Everything from the Shire to Gondor was represented, and everywhere were lifelike figures occupying the land, all the Orcs, Elves, and Hobbits you could expect to see in the Middle-earth of Monster’s imagination.
I have to admit that I wanted to get a closer look, to examine Gandalf and the rest of them, but the moment I crossed the invisible line, Security appeared to shoo me away with a curt “This isn’t for the public.”
I wanted to say that I wasn’t the public, that I needed some diversion from doing the nothing I had been doing since I was hired.
Monster was out of the country, on tour, and his traveling chef went with him, so my cooking for him was up until this point mostly theoretical. As his personal chef who stayed home at the Lair, I was supposed to “get the lay of the land” while he was gone. To this day I wonder why that expression meant so much to Monster. It was used repeatedly in the directives I received in the tastefully weathered mailbox in front of my bungalow. I quickly came to hate the constant memos about the importance of keeping silent about life at the Lair because that’s the “lay of the land.” Did that phrase convey the seriousness and weight that Monster wanted but couldn’t secure because, well, he was a freak?
I didn’t have a damn thing to do but tend the herb garden that was essential to Living Food cuisine and prepare menus and wonder what I had got myself into, being paid decently for nothing more than waking up and wondering about my ability to make life decisions; should I do push-ups, have scrambled eggs for breakfast, call Elena and beg forgiveness, or sit on the toilet for an hour, reading culinary magazines? I hated wasting time as much as I hated having none of it back when I had the restaurant, none of it for myself when I had a life. This half life gave me time enough to drown in memories of Elena from when I had a full life that wasn’t enough for me, though it was everything I could ever want or need. I’d see her lying twisted in white sheets in the morning, making eggs for breakfast with her short nightgown on, her hair messy about her head, her face still swollen from sleep like a child. I’d see her reaching for my hand as we walked through Central Park, searching for a breeze on a hot day. Maybe most men aren’t monogamous, and one woman is interchangeable with another, but that’s not me. I’m like a fucking wolf or swan. I wanted Elena. The only other loves I had were work and coke, equal addictions; wanting Elena was everlasting. She defined my life and I killed my life, but my love for her wouldn’t die. I could taste her lips against mine and spin into the history of our relationship, the first time I thrust inside of her, the first time I heard her gasp as she came. All that mattered to me . . . gone, and what was left was the bitter taste of Living Food.
It was a little unnerving how quiet the grounds of the Lair were; the birds sang muted songs, and I never heard crickets or bees.
Unnaturally silent.
I had far too much time to mull over everything, until mulling became so unappealingly tedious that I couldn’t mull if I wanted to.
Turned down the volume and slipped into a state of stultifying boredom. I never suspected spending the foreseeable future in beautiful seclusion would drive me fucking nuts. Maybe I should have had an idea that this wasn’t a life for me. Bridget might be a bitch, but she was right about this soul-poisoning Lair; it made you want to drown in a river of fine Santa Ynez wine.
I WOKE UP DREAMING of Elena again, remembering cyberstalking her back when I could use the computer at the halfway house. I prowled through her Facebook page, seeing the man she was with, a buffoonish, long-haired idiot some years younger than me, with a ridiculous shit-eating grin. My heart ached as I saw them together, arm in arm, a fucking couple. Seeing the photo of her making gumbo, in the kitchen I used to cook in, probably using my Sriracha sauce, photo shot by him. I imagined pounding him into the ground, repeatedly, endlessly. I couldn’t hate her, but I certainly could hate him. I researched this loser and discovered he was some sort of homeopath, a healer, which made me hate him even more. I wanted my wife, my life back. I wanted to forget all of it. Get a do-over, that’s all I wanted. But what I got were lucid dreams of holding the woman I loved and left for a crack pipe.
ON THE BACK STEP of the kitchen, with a big metal bowl between my legs, I was absentmindedly shelling peas while listening to Rastaman Vibration, fantasizing that I was trapped in a beautiful Babylon, when I saw her by the pineapple sage, sniffing at red blossoms, shooing away bees: a very pregnant blonde who looked almost comic, that thin with such a belly! I waved to her and she glanced up. She looked alarmed and hurried to the private entrance of the mansion that the hired help could not, under any circumstances, use. As soon as she disappeared a powerfully built black man appeared. He wore baggy linen pants and a white shirt so tight that if he flexed his muscles it would burst. He turned and looked at me; his face expressed nothing.
But I got it, another indication of this “lay of the land” warning: Don’t even look in the direction of Monster’s wife.
Or you might have a brother man come calling.
I WANTED TO TELL MANNY the groundskeeper what had happened, but I didn’t know if I could trust him, or anyone at Monster’s Lair.
Once or twice a week Manny came by the kitchen for fruit juice. I enjoyed his visits, and the distraction from the monotony of doing very little. He watched happily as I cut watermelon and put it into the processor with sugar and a little lemon.
I served it to him in a frosted glass, and he seemed to be genuinely impressed.
“It’s good,” he said, “almost like what you would get in Mexico.”
I had returned to chopping carrots when I saw him glance at me.
“You like working here?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I can’t say I like it, but I’m almost used to it. This place . . . I don’t know what to say about this place. It’s so quiet; sometimes I go a whole day and not say a word to anyone. I’m not sure why Monster needs a personal chef. He hardly spends any time here. Hear he’s in Poland trying to get an amusement park built. There’s really nothing much for me to do. Sometimes I get stir-crazy with hardly anyone to talk to. It’s like I’m serving a prison sentence in solitary confinement.”
Manny nodded.
“Yes. They paid f
or us to come to work, but there isn’t much work. But for me it’s good. I’ve worked hard all my life and now I get paid well to not work too hard. The drive home, it’s hard, the drive to Lompoc, but I don’t mind. I don’t like to stay here nights. My wife doesn’t like to be alone, so I only stay when the weather is bad and I don’t trust the road,” Manny said, and looked nervous for a second and then continued in a barely audible voice, “I try not to stay here after dark.”
“Why?”
Manny didn’t answer and refused to meet my eyes.
“But as long as you’re not here at night, you’re okay with the job?”
“I make good money. I’m able to put aside money for retiring. I’ve already had a home built in Baja for when I retire. I can’t complain about this job. It’s been good to me.”
“You work over there in the forbidden courtyard?”
“Forbidden courtyard, that’s what you call it?”
“Yeah, it’s a joke to myself. What goes on over there, what do you see?”
Manny smiled broadly. “You signed that paper. We’re not supposed to talk about what we see.”
“But I’ve yet to actually see anything. Other than a couple of quick stops, Monster has been gone for most of the time I’ve worked here.”
“Good for you. It’s nice when he’s not here. When he is, Security is too bravo. You don’t need these to work here,” Manny said, pointing to his eyes, then to his ears.
“Ears either,” I said.
We laughed, and then I stared at him for a minute, hoping that maybe he’d let something slip.
“Those young boys are everywhere. They uproot plantings and break things, but you can’t talk to them. No, Security won’t let you stop them from doing a thing. He wants them to do what they do, and make the mess they make.”
“Me, I don’t see much. I stay in the kitchen. I’ve never seen Monster anywhere near the kitchen. Security comes for his meals and that’s that. They give me a list of things for the week he might be interested in, and I try to figure out how to make it palatable.”
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