by Jeff Oliver
The boy folded his journal and breathed deeply. He looked up. Tanya lay on her side before him, lit by the brilliant moonlight. She snored peacefully, eyes closed and mouth slightly open.
Ramin sighed. He removed the bottle from Tanya’s hands and covered her with his blanket.
“Goodnight, my Mermaid,” he said, and walked off.
CHAPTER 4
The morning sun rose gently above the hills of the cast mansion, revealing a true natural “dish-aster”—empty tequila bottles piled in fallen pyramids, shards of broken glass swimming in puddles of dirty bong water, vomit speckling the bushes, and half-clothed bodies strewn all over the place, either curled up on couches, or splayed out on the billiards table, or face down on the floor.
Every kind of sin-tinged odor assaulted Sara’s olfactory glands as she cracked open the mansion’s control room door. Cigarettes, booze, and sex dominated the bouquet, though there were more sinister undertones. The terrorists, to their credit, had mostly crashed out in their Pee Wee Herman quarters, sleeping off the most confusing night of their lives. Several of them had peeled off their masks, and one was completely naked.
Sara tiptoed past the snoozing cast and crept into the kitchen. She brewed herself some Nescafe and flipped on the TV to local Israeli news. Her first treasured sip reminded her of the sensation she felt after completing night watch at base camp in Syria many years before—a sweet release after hours of tension and boredom.
On the TV, the newscaster switched from weather to local news. Mal-Malaika was still on the run from authorities, the newscaster said. A black and white surveillance photo came up on-screen—masked men in a getaway truck. A man with rimmed glasses and a graying moustache sat in the passenger’s seat. His hand bore a big bandage speckled with blood. The newscaster said that this group was behind a terror attack that had killed seven, including two children. Sara took a long sip of her coffee.
“They always catch my ugly side,” Al-Asari said, his voice breaking Sara’s solitude. He pulled a mug off the shelf and poured himself a coffee. “To every face there is ugliness and beauty, just as to every story there is truth and lies. But every time I see a photo of myself, they only catch the ugly.”
“And what about truth and lies? Which is it in this case?” said Sara.
“Complicated,” said Al-Asari.
“Not for the seven dead,” said Sara.
“True,” said Al-Asari. He took a long sip of coffee and exhaled pleasure. “There is no gray area for the dead. Only blackness. But we are part of the living, aren’t we, Ms. Sinek? Or forgive me, should I call you by your company name, Sergeant Sinek of IDF’s One Hundred Seventy-Third Battalion? Tell me about the women and children you killed when you raided Jabalia all those years ago. Was that complicated as well?”
Sara stiffened at the mention of her IDF battalion and that fatal day in Jabalia. She gripped her mug tightly.
“Yes, yes, I know of you, Sergeant,” Al-Asari smiled. “I know all about what your battalion did. We have more in common than you may think.”
“We have nothing in common,” Sara said through gritted teeth.
“Oh but we do. Because I do not know of Jabalia by chance. You see, it was my hometown. That fateful day your tanks rolled in changed my life too.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Sara.
“Before that, I was something of a firebrand,” Al-Asari said. “Living in Gaza was impossible for my family—there were curfews, aggression from the police, midnight interrogations where my brothers would come back beaten to a pulp. I wanted revolution, and I had a chip on my shoulder. And yes, there was a girl I wanted to impress. What can I say? I was young—still stupid in many ways. So I joined a group of bad men one day. They told me we were going to steal computers in Tel Aviv and sell them for money to rebuild the town hospital.
“I was so naïve I didn’t even know what I’d gotten myself into until the bomb went off. It was at the university. In the smoke and rubble and amidst all the screaming students, I swore I would dedicate myself to peace from that moment on, no matter what,” said Al-Asari. “When I returned home weeks later, Jabalia was in ruins—the work of your battalion. A horrible mess of blood, broken glass, and homes razed to the ground. I found the girl I was trying to impress clinging to her dead brother. She had come unwired and I could no longer reach her.
“But he was not the only one killed. Your battalion hadn’t counted on an Israeli being there, had you? A visitor from right here in Eilat—a hotel manager looking to hire Palestinian staff? You didn’t count on him being in the apartment you shelled. Isn’t that right, Sergeant Sinek?”
Sara glared at Al-Asari, her mouth tense and frowning.
Al-Asari grinned. “While my brothers plotted revenge, I kept my word to Allah. I turned to books, taught literature—went straight. And you … you turned to reality TV production. Both of us found solace in stories. Far better than our truth. Our guilt. And how ironic that we end up here, the two of us.” Al-Asari moved closer to Sara. Inches separated their faces. “Tell me, Ms. Sinek, while you were playing lover girl with Ruti, did you mention to her that your tank was the one that shelled the apartment where her father was killed? That you were directly responsible for his death? Or did you leave that little tidbit out?”
Sara grabbed Al-Asari’s throat and raised her fist to strike him.
“What is it, Ms. Sinek?” strained Al-Asari. “Does it hurt to have someone know who you really are? The horrors you are responsible for? That can never go away…”
Sara tightened her grip. She aimed her fist to kill, to squash Al-Asari, to kill the memory and the pain.
“Now, children,” Ruti said. She walked casually into the kitchen, yawning. “Enough with the posturing. It’s much too early for that.”
Sara released Al-Asari’s neck. He fell into a chair, coughing violently and gasping for breath.
“We were just… talking,” said Sara, tightly.
“Yes,” Al-Asari wheezed. “A couple of old friends sipping coffee and planning their day.”
“Glad to hear it,” said Ruti, pouring herself a coffee. “Because we’ve got a production schedule to keep. And I am severely under-caffeinated.”
CHAPTER 5
Twenty-four hours of uninterrupted silence in a supply closet? Lopez couldn’t recall if he’d ever spent even a handful of uninterrupted hours alone with his wife without at least the distraction of a glowing screen or cell phone calls. Regardless, he hadn’t said a word since Sharon revealed to him that she was pregnant with Ryan Riffstein’s dork sperm.
The news had stunned him and, as the waking hours passed, Lopez simply couldn’t think of anything to say. He had immersed himself in his special place, and when that wore off, he thought about Kale. When they first adopted him, it was unadulterated joy. They drove to Griffith Park, laid out a blanket under the sun, ate cold grapes from a wooden bowl, and got used to the quaint horror of diaper changing.
Sharon was then so happy obsessing over the baby’s every move. She slathered him with expensive sun block, tousled his surprisingly thick black hair, and sniffed the top of his head, calling it “hits off the butterscotch.”
Warren and Sharon held hands and just stared at this little miracle from the Silverlake Interfaith Adoption Agency as he sucked on a non-toxic pacifier and played with a monkey doll that cackled when its belly was touched. And when Kale smiled his sly, crooked, knowing smile, Lopez and his wife toppled over in bliss. It was the start of something wonderful.
And it wasn’t about them. It was about Kale, loving Kale, building his confidence, his intelligence so that the world would be anything he wanted. “The kid’s insatiable,” Lopez said, mixing another bottle of formula. “He comes from good, solid stock. Isn’t that right, Mr. Kooky?”
“I love him so much,” Sharon said. Then she smiled, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. “Hey, you,” she said. “Let’s give him a sibling, okay? Tonight?” Sharon leaned in an
d joyfully kissed Lopez on the lips, her eyes shut in bliss.
But for Lopez, the kiss stung. All he could think was, Why ruin a perfect moment? Why ask for more? And it was then that Lopez understood his fate. He should have known ages ago. Due to his emasculatingly low sperm count, Lopez could never give his wife what she really wanted: a baby growing in her own belly. There would always be something missing in their marriage, even on a perfect sunny day in the park like this. Kale would feel it later in life, be hurt by it, and turn out just like all the other people Lopez knew—slightly sad and somewhat lonely but with no idea as to where those feelings came from.
Lopez awoke from his bittersweet reverie and shifted his aching foot. He looked at his wife, who was applying toenail polish.
“So how’s the boy?” he said, finally breaking the silence. Sharon looked up from her toes. She knew to tread lightly.
“Good,” she said. “He wakes me up every morning at 6:16 to the minute. I searched his room for an alarm clock since it’s so precise. Other than that, he’s terrific.”
“Takes after his mother on that. For years, you woke at 7:06. Like clockwork.”
“You noticed that?”
“One morning you stayed asleep until nine. I thought you were dead. So I nudged you,” Lopez said.
“I remember that,” she said, “Oh, to sleep til nine again. I would saw off an arm.”
“You worry too much. Kale’s three and you still fear crib death.”
“I’m neurotic. It’s part of why you married me,” she said. Lopez neither agreed nor disagreed. “Last week I was at Pam’s house and Kale was playing in the basement with some of the older kids,” Sharon continued. “I left them alone for a few minutes to make drinks and I just got this bad feeling in my stomach. Pam’s in the middle of this really heavy conversation about her mother’s cervical cancer and I just run out of the room. She thought I was crazy.
“But I go downstairs and the two older kids have Kale under a blanket, sitting on him so he can’t breathe. I pull up the blanket and he’s purple and gasping for breath. He clings to me so tight, like he hasn’t since he was an infant. Call me a helicopter parent, but I know my son and I know what he needs.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that alone,” Lopez said. “Sorry I wasn’t there.”
Sharon pulled a long plastic pill case out of her purse and placed it on the floor. “This is for my anxiety,” she said, pointing to a small blue pill. “This one’s to sleep, this one’s to wake up. These are Vitamin D.”
“Don’t you get Vitamin D from sunlight?” Lopez said.
“This is Celexa—I take a placebo dose. When I told the doctor I was taking five milligrams, he laughed. But look at this, Warren. I have to take all these just to make it through the day. This is who you married. I’m not an easy woman to live with. You knew that.”
“I guess I did,” said Lopez.
Sharon looked over at her husband and saw him grin.
“Remember when you used to give me half a Vicodin in exchange for watching Twilight?” Lopez said. “And the sequel was so bad I asked for the other half? The sex scene where the vampire’s crying like, ‘I wasn’t gentle enough when we had sex. Oh boo-hoo…’”
“You were in hell,” said Sharon.
“You were in heaven.”
“I have some, you know,” she said.
Lopez scoffed. “Wait, I’m here with a gunshot wound and you’ve been hoarding vicodin?”
“You’ve been such a dick since I got here, you haven’t deserved it,” she said, tossing him three halves.
Twelve minutes later, Lopez lay with his head on Sharon’s lap whistling Blurred Lines. Sharon gently stroked his balding head. “How’d we get this way, Sharon?” Lopez asked. “We used to have fun. Remember when we worked on that Elliot Smith documentary, and those yuppies were like, ‘Who’s Elliot Smith’? And we egged them?”
“You always bring that up when you’re high,” Sharon said.
“It was a classic. You were like, ‘Explain that at the geezer home!’ They were probably younger than we are now.” Lopez laughed. “We really liked each other then, didn’t we? We even worked well together as a team. All I ever wanted was to shoot documentaries, live in a little apartment in Los Feliz, and hang out with our friends. What happened?”
“You tried to get us things,” Sharon said. “Nice things. Health insurance, the house, Kale.”
“The years passed. And now this. My twenty-year-old self would hate me.”
Sharon kissed her husband’s forehead. Lopez felt a tear fall onto him.
“I wanted to tell you about the baby, Warren,” Sharon said, her voice quavering. “I was just afraid.”
“I knew it’s what you wanted,” Lopez said. “You left the signs everywhere.”
“I’m sorry, Warren,” Sharon sobbed.
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I’ve been a miserable, horrible, demanding nag. You must hate me.”
“You’ve been an amazing wife,” said Lopez. “A real partner. You always gave me what I needed. And now you’ll have what you need.”
There was a pause as Sharon wiped her nose. “It’s a girl,” she said.
“Wow. I’m happy,” Lopez said. “Did you tell Riffstein? I mean, he must be happy too.”
“That jackass?” Sharon said. “Haven’t seen him since. He moved to Connecticut for some new urology clinic. Half the reason I recruited him.”
“Did you fall for him, Sharon? Just a little bit?” asked Lopez.
“Are you on crack?” Sharon said. “The guy’s a slob. Dick’s as small as an acorn. If the baby was a boy, I would have had it aborted to spare it from a life of disappointing women.”
Lopez laughed until his foot throbbed. “Hey,” Lopez said. “Let’s do talk-talk.”
“Talk-talk, now?” Sharon said.
“C’mon.”
“Seriously, now?”
“Please?” Lopez said.
Sharon sighed, then looked up to the ceiling, thinking hard. “Okay, where to begin?” she said. “Okay, um, so I was thinking of getting blonde highlights in my hair…”
“I have to remember to Tivo the NBA finals,” Lopez cut in.
“…Because my streaks are coming out and I’m starting to look like Katherine Beinstock,” said Sharon.
“Spurs versus the Heat—not a great narrative, with two villains, but it’s the beauty of the game, right?” Lopez said.
“…I wonder if Joanna can babysit if you’re not back from work? Should only take two hours…”
“I wonder if Kale will watch the game with me? Eventually, I’ll teach him to play. The key is to dribble with both hands. Did I ever tell you that?”
“…She’s outrageously expensive,” Sharon said. “What teenager charges twenty dollars an hour for babysitting? I guess she’s CPR certified…”
“He’ll probably be tall,” said Lopez. “Lots of people from the Ukraine are tall. You know I had a great uncle who was 6’6”?”
“…I should have been an interior designer,” Sharon said.
Lopez burst out laughing, unable to continue, and gave his wife a high-five. Sharon laughed too, mostly out of relief. Their little joke about marital miscommunication never failed to connect them.
“I’m gonna get us out of here, babe,” Lopez said, sitting up.
“You always get crazy ideas after we do talk-talk,” said Sharon.
“I said, ‘I’m gonna get us out of here.’”
“Warren, you’re high. There’s an armed terrorist outside the door. You’ve been shot once already. What are you going to do, teleport us?”
“Just hear me out,” he said. His eyes shined. “We have to survive this. For Kale. For us. And for our little baby girl.”
CHAPTER 6
It took some prodding to get the terrorists out of bed, and even after showers, they looked like death. Al-Asari was furious at his men’s poor form, and as punishment made them
wear their masks in the van even though the AC was busted.
TERRORIST #4 (INT.): “It was so hot that my balls were sweating balls… *what can this even mean??” (*trimmed in post).
As for the cast of Natural Dish-aster: Season Five, they, like so many young chefs, had a superpower: the ability to recover quickly from a debilitating hangover using sunglasses and pills. It took them less than an hour to get into crisp chef whites and loaded into the van. T-Pain blasted out of their van’s windows and everyone rapped along to the nasty bits.
Etienne sat in the back of the van next to LizZ. He unfolded a napkin to reveal two bird-shaped pastries that were flaky and buttery, topped with black sesame seeds. He handed one to LizZ. She took a bite and contemplated it for a moment, and Etienne bit into his. They searched each other’s eyes for that glazed look they saw in fellow junkies right when the stuff hits the bloodstream.
“It’s good. Really good,” LizZ said. “But it’s not…”
“It’s not it,” Etienne sighed.
“We don’t need to start over. It just needs…”
“Pistachios,” said Etienne.
“Heavy cream,” added Liz.
“Cardamom,” said Etienne.
“Persimmon jelly.”
Etienne grinned. “You are so bad…” He scribbled the additional ingredients on the napkin and tucked it away.
Across the van, Ghana eyed them suspiciously.
CHEF GHANA (INT.): “Now I know they’re not having sex. That’s for certain. But there’s something fishy going on between those two, and I don’t like it.”
The drive along the Red Sea’s hilly shoreline lasted well over an hour. Dirt roads led to rocky roads up windy hills with jagged cliffs. Waves crashed against the shore and booted eagles soared above, then dove down into the water for prey. The cast gazed out the window in utter wonder, but without the ability to remain silent even in the presence of jaw-dropping beauty—they continued to talk a hella o’shit.