Lizz Lund - Mina Kitchen 01 - Kitchen Addiction!

by Lizz Lund

Miraculously, instead of scuttling off or biting me, it buzzed.

  “Hell-ooooooooo!” a cheery man’s voice answered.

  K. yodeled back, “Hel-loooooooo!”

  “So glad you have joined us! Password please!” the gatekeeper answered.

  “Oh, piss,” K. muttered, furiously flipping the pages of his disheveled clipboard. “Oh, alright! Here we go!” he exclaimed.

  “Ready?” the disembodied voice requested.

  “Quite!” K. chimed happily. He removed the password text page and began to sing.

  “Sorry, but we really can’t hear you, dearie,” the disembodied voice transmitted.

  Armand sighed, got out and exchanged seats with K., lit a cigarette and stood outside the car. He had to. If he had a lit cigarette in the backseat, with Walter’s gas and Ida’s antique fluttery garb, someone would have been set on fire.

  K. hopped in next to me and leaned across me – literally – and began to sing the first phrase of ‘New York, New York’ across my boobs and into the not-roach coat button.

  The gatekeeper responded with a final, “Neee-wwww Yo-ooork!” and buzzed the gate open to the garage.

  Armand stomped out his smoke, and climbed in next to Walter. I sighed and gunned it, glad to be through, but wondered what four-part harmony they’d make us yodel to get ourselves out of here at the end of the night.

  “Well, where to from here?” Ida Rose muffled from underneath Walter’s armpit.

  “Yeah, I mean, you got an address and all, right?” Walter asked.

  K. spit forth placating statements like a deranged Pez dispenser. “Yes, yes, yes! No, no, no! Of course! Absolutely!”

  Once K. was through, he registered my stare. And he noted that I noted his cold sweat.

  “Wazzup?” I asked.

  He leaned forward into my lap in order to whisper to me while pretending he was examining at my S&M shoes. “I forgot to write the stupid address down,” he confided.

  Shit.

  “Okay, it’s not so bad,” I said. He looked at me. “You’ve got the phone number, right?”

  K. shook his head. I sighed.

  Armand cleared his throat. “Simple, stoopid sheet,” he said.

  “Huh?” K. asked brightly.

  “Jez go and prezz de button,” Armand instructed.

  “Of course!!” And off he skipped.

  Armand reclaimed his gun seat. I looked at him. “How’d you know?” I asked.

  “I read laps,” he said.

  “I think you mean lips.”

  He shrugged. “Whatever.”

  K. came back happier and sweatier and invited us to join him outside of the car. Which we did. Which was why I understood why Armand was smoking incessantly when he stood outside of the car, even more than his usual addictive self. Summer in New York. The distinct smell of urine, combined with a hint of sweat and decaying attitudes, was steeped into every available concrete surface. While the Doo-doo had experienced some recent issues, these were nothing to the well-spring of historic stench coming from the parking garage. Ick. Ick. Ick. How do people live with this smell? In Lancaster, there are newly fertilized pastures I ride through in the springtime that are less offensive than this. But we ride along holding our noses, safe in the knowledge that fertilizer tilling lasts for only three weeks. This? I was pretty sure the urine I smelled dated all the way back to Fiorella LaGuardia.

  “Hey, guys, are we here? Are we going?” Walter called.

  “Yes, if this is the correct place of destination, I suggest we put forth,” Ida Rose chimed.

  Armand nodded. “Yes, ve are cooking,” he assured through his cigarette plumes.

  Armand opened the back door of Vito’s Towncar on Ida’s side, and we pulled Ida out from underneath Walter, her antique attire a bit the worse for the wear. She looked like a rumpled moth.

  Then came time to extricate Walter, which was the hardest part of the whole process. Armand smoked. He stubbed his butt out beneath his left shoe. He surveyed me, K. and Ida. He sighed.

  “Ve needs lev-er-aggghe,” he instructed.

  “Huh?” we all asked.

  He sighed again and explained and re-explained a few hundred times. Finally we got it.

  Armand would push Walter out of the back seat, while we pulled him out. A lot like Winnie the Pooh and the honey pot story. With Armand having cast himself as Rabbit. Poor Pooh. I mean, Walter.

  We pushed and we pulled and finally all the King’s men pulled Walter out of Vito’s backseat. Where he’d been sitting remained a seriously sweaty puddle. Which, it being a Towncar, was leather. I fretted. Armand shrugged and wiped the backseat with an exceedingly crisp looking handkerchief which was clearly for showing, not for blowing. Armand rung out the handkerchief. It dripped red.

  “OH MY GOD! Walter! You are bleeding!” K. screamed and flailed about with a series of motions that looked like he was on fire.

  “LOOK! LOOK!” Ida joined in, now as Lady Macbeth, and pointed dramatically toward Armand’s handkerchief.

  “Walter, are you alright?” I asked.

  Walter’s ears began a crescendo that came close to matching his red pizza outfit.

  “No, I’m not bleeding; just stupid,” he began. “I wanted to look extra spiffy tonight. So I dyed my white pants to match the red of my new shirt my mom got me… but I forgot to wash them first before wearing them, like the dye directions said. Sorry about your seat…”

  I felt awful. We all did. Especially Lady Macbeth. I mean Ophelia. That is, Ida. We were all obviously trying very hard to impress, especially poor Walter.

  After several choruses of my mistake, sorry, nothing to worry about, just over-dramatic that’s me, we continued our pilgrimage. I spluttered and limped as I went: the sandals were truly taking their toll.

  “Okay, where to now, chief? Are we blindfolded and led to this place?”

  “You know that really would be wonderfully dramatic but probably cause a lot of undue attention… and cost a lot more,” K. replied thoughtfully. “Walking directions are right here,” he added, waving his clipboard and some notes he must have jotted down while he confirmed our reservations in the parking garage. He might have confirmed reservations. I knew I had many.

  I’ve heard about the death marches in Japan during WWII. Luckily their marches ended in death. We marched two-by-two up and around the various passageways of the parking garage’s ramps, toward the street. With no respite in sight, we passed out of the stinky garage and onto city sidewalks hot enough to fry eggs. Literally. A pigeon’s egg had plummeted onto the pavement moments earlier and lay sizzling. (Flung by a pro-choice apartment dwelling tenant? The choice being theirs?) A small, sad, scrambled (non-embryo thank-you-Lord) egg in a cracked half shell lay sizzling on the pavement. I stared and wondered how I could achieve that presentation – sans pavement, of course – with a normal egg for a normal person. Presentation-wise, it would be very dramatic, with the half shell and all. Like oysters.

  Anyway, apparently the main entrance to the building was around the corner, the distance of about two city blocks. Given my screaming feet, this was equivalent to walking to Kuwait.

  K. and Armand, being the professionals of the evening, led the charge while Ida fluttered along helping Walter, and I brought up the rear reviving my Quasimodo impersonation.

  After the twelfth pause to allow Walter to intake his albuterol inhaler – for which my feet throbbed gratefully – K. perceived Mecca. “There it is! The Front Door!” he rejoiced.

  We stared blankly at him. K. slapped himself repeatedly in the forehead with his clipboard. People walked by ignoring him. He acted like every other New Yorker. He then stepped furtively toward our pack, glancing about to ensure privacy amongst the several hundred passersby, and explained, “Our Supper Club is in this building!”

  We collectively perked up. OMG – soon food, chairs, beverages and honest-to-gosh-air-conditioning would be ours, just a few paces
away. And maybe it even had fancy restrooms where they give you mouthwash and perfume and Band-Aids. Especially the Band-Aids.

  As we rounded the corner, we saw what seemed to be an exceedingly reputable apartment building, and well-paid professional residents entering and exiting. We smiled.

  In the vestibule K. rang the buzzer for apartment #1A. The buzzer answered cheerfully and we were admitted into a spacious and newly updated lobby. There was a glorious blast of cool air, and the heavenly fumes of basil and garlic and a myriad of other spices teased us toward the elevators.

  We advanced, but K. stopped us.

  “Oh, no, we don’t take the elevators up: we take just one shortsy-wortsy flight of stairs down,” he said, and motioned to the other side of the lobby, toward what looked very much indeed like a service door.

  We made Walter descend first lest he tumble and kill us all. Then the rest of us followed down some very ordinary cement steps and even more ordinary cinder block walls. At the bottom we amassed as a small congregation, and collectively stared at the single door ahead of us.

  K. skipped forward, smiled happily at us and said, “Here goes!” and knocked on the door.

  From the other side of the door came the clicking of high heels, then the unlocking of what appeared to be a great many dead-bolts and chain locks.

  The door opened and we were greeted by a large round elf. Or at least she appeared to be a large, round elf – middle-age-ish, round, bleach blonde hair in a whispy pixie bob, wearing a lime green chiffon kaftan and matching day-glo green drop earrings. I looked down and saw she was wearing very sleek, stunning heeled sandals, which I admired. Then I realized the fat cow was wearing the same sandals as mine, but in lime green. And worse, apparently her brutes hadn’t gnawed her feet as their shiny black cousins had mine. The blues of my toes whined in agreement, pulsing angrily at the elf’s unscathed hooves.

  A small, skinny male elf, wearing all black with a large gold peace-sign necklace leaped out sideways from behind the large, round green elf.

  “Greetings, and welcome, one and all! Welcome to our little Supper Club!” the male elf sang. “I am called Groggin,” he said, with a hand on his chest to indicate himself.

  “And I am Perpetua,” the green elf said, following suit identically.

  “And we are delighted to have you here!” they said in unison, with arms outstretched.

  I was unsure about whether or not they meant the Royal We or the Plural We but that would have to wait.

  Perpetua said, “Besides having a wonderful supper planned for you, we’ll all learn a little bit about each other. We might even enjoy a virtual ‘6 degrees of separation’ experience! It’s possible that by the end of this evening we’ll discover we are all connected! Now then – do please come in.”

  Her unmauled feet clicked happily down the hallway as she led us inside.

  “Now that you’ve arrived, our party can begin!” Perpetua waxed hostess-like.

  “But first let’s dispense with the formalities,” Groggin added.

  So we did the obligatory round-robin introductions and obligatory writing of checks to ‘cash’. I noted Ida’s confusion at not knowing who Mr. Cash was while she was writing and made a mental note to advise her much, much later.

  The other parties in the room consisted of a middle-aged gay couple, an elderly woman and her retro-punk granddaughter, what appeared to be a streakily ‘tanned’ used car salesman type grinning wildly like the recipient of too many facelifts, and newlyweds from Nebraska.

  As we shuffled into the main room, I tried to take heart that perhaps this might not be so grim after all. This studio/condo/thingy was like a loft, but underground and shorter. The cement floor was badish but an exposed brick wall gave it a nice feel. The remaining walls were a normal white wallboard, hung with absolutely gigantic paintings in bright oranges, fushcias and blues. Because there were some soft green streaks stemming from the bright blobs, Walter and I guessed they were flowers. Recessed lighting focused on the paintings to ensure good, even blob viewing.

  Toward the back, against another exposed brick wall, were several long, worn, wooden picnic tables hemmed in by various types of chairs, loveseats and benches. Old-fashioned milk jugs and pump pitchers held sunflowers, gladiolas and snapdragons, dotting the caravan of tables. Every place had some version of a Mason-jar drinking glass and each setting was a hodgepodge of antique china. Nothing matched and it all looked lovely. Things might not be so bad after all.

  We were invited to sit down, and we all did. There was a momentary heightening of alarm as Walter lowered himself down onto his own bench, which required the bringing of some additional chairs for the rest of us. Then all of us sat and grinned sappily at each other. Of course the facelift salesman had little choice. But a sense of calm and expectation settled as it slowly dawned on us that somehow we were all on the inside loop because of this very private, hush-hush party. I felt better for that. I actually started to feel a bit special. I even started not minding the $150 prefix. I started to befriend what remained of my toes and slid my sandals off underneath the table. My feet plumped up like ballpark franks.

  We began our rounds of introductions. The grandmother and punk-daughter were enjoying a silent auction prize from an anti-puppy mill benefit. The gay couple had friends who had attended Perpetua and Groggin’s ‘Barbados Bash’ last month and happened to have a pet-sitter in common with Perpetua. The used car/facelift salesman was actually an anesthesiologist whose nurse introduced him to Groggin (in the hopes of a raise no doubt). The newly-married couple from Nebraska were on their second marriage. Each had grown children from their first marriages, one of whom knew a friend of Perpetua’s, and had purchased their dinner tickets as a wedding present. K. waxed lyrical about our little van load and Gillian, who is Groggin’s hair stylist. I stared at Groggin. I hoped Groggin’s hair styling was intentional because his head was shaved clean.

  “Now that we’re a weensy bit acquainted – let’s begin!”

  Perpetua’s paws pounced upon a bell and rang in the feast. From someplace in the back we heard a heavy metal door open, the scuffling of feet and the squeaking wheel of a trolley. My Lancaster friends and I sat stupefied in horror as an Amish couple approached us. We stared blankly at each other wondering if they were lost, and where would they have found parking for their buggy anywhere near Bank Street?

  “Here we are!” peeped Perpetua.

  The woolen-clad bearded man in the straw hat sulked toward us and thunked a 15lb block of cheese onto the middle of the table. Next to him, his wife (or sister? they looked uncannily related) shuffled a plastic basket somewhat filled with Trisquits next to the cheese, along with a platter carrying an extremely large and phallic-looking summer sausage. She, too, was clad in black wool and looked very hot indeed. (What else could she be, wearing black wool in August in New York?)

  Walter, Ida, Armand and I stared pointedly at K. Were we really in the right place? But K. was engaged in a serious interior design discussion with the anesthesiologist (Dr. Brad, apparently soon to be K.‘s next client). I heard a snort and gazed at the punk grand-daughter, who was convulsing and nodding to her grandmother at the uncut summer sausage. Her grandmother sniggered. I looked down at my place setting and silently hoped that neither they – nor anyone else – would go all schoolgirl on us about the giant wiener.

  Whistler’s father and mother went back to their cart and returned carrying two very large, worn wooden handled knives. Brandishing these toward us, they simultaneously stabbed the cheese and whacked the sausage penis in half.

  “Be careful, they are very shc-aaararrrp,” the man glowered at us, sounding a bit like Colonel Klink from Hogan’s Heroes. Ida held her napkin over her nose in reaction to Col. Klink’s wool clad armpit reaching across her face.

  Col. and Mrs. Klink went back to the cart, looked reproachfully at us, and squeaked back with their trolley. We heard the opening of what we assumed was the ki
tchen door and the very loud bang of its closing.

  “There now! Isn’t this wonderful!” Perpetua piped. I crossed my fingers and my bleeding toes and wished for a logical explanation and a decent meal. “Welcome,” Perpetua beamed, “to the Amish Affair!”

  Amish Affair? Talk about coals to Newcastle.

  Silently, in one accord, my car load slowly and Children-of-the-Corn-like gazed at K. All the blood ran out of K.’s face, leaving it white as flour. Armand looked pointedly at the summer sausage, then at K. Ouch.

  “Gee, to think we drove – all the way up – from Lancaster – for Amish food – in New York,” Walter puffed, sucking on his inhaler.

  “Oh, well that’s marvelous!” Perpetua preened, “Amos and Angie are from Lancaster! They must be one of your six-degrees!”

  Again we stared as a unit at K. The white in K.’s face was replaced by a slightly greenish tinge.

  “My, my,” twittered Ida, slipping back into a Tara Ophelia drawl, “sometimes what is common sincerely is just that.” Her arrow flew straight and true and sank right into K.’s chest. He flinched.

  “Zees are not vaiters,” growled Armand, reaching for his cigarettes. “Zees are mammas and pappas.”

  “Oh, no, no, no – we are a no smoking facility!” Perpetua proclaimed.

  “K., you vant come outside for smoke, yes?” Armand directed. We gazed from Armand to K., wondering if K. would return home with us.

  K. burbled, “Actually, I’ll just nibble on a little piece of this delightful cheese.”

  Armand gnawed on his unlit cigarette. Suddenly I realized that K. was clearly as embarrassed and disappointed as we all were. However, as no one knew the ‘theme’ for this evenings fare (or unfair) I realized we couldn’t quite blame it all on K. – directly, at least. Indirectly would have to do.

  But looking around I saw everyone else was chatting happily and truly enjoying the anticipation of Amish food. I sighed. Alright, so the menu wasn’t exactly what we’d hoped. I shrugged.

  “Hey, you buys your ticket, yous takes your chances,” I said.

  K. leaned forward to our little group and whispered, “I had no idea!!”