by Aaron Cohen
Charlie puts his arms out and puts a hand on both walls as if through sheer brute strength he can stop the mechanized vice from closing in on them.
Luke almost perceives the walls slowing down, like Charlie might actually being doing it, Superman-style, his flesh able to make metal surrender.
Charlie’s arms bend at the elbow. Sweat pours off his forehead. His face flames red from the effort.
He really thinks he’s going to save us. Or die trying.
The walls are two feet apart. Charlie turns sideways. His belly touches one wall, while his ass touches the other. He pushes hard, everything going into it. Again, the walls seem to pause for the briefest of moments, as if Charlie is stronger than the machine, even for just a split second.
“This is the worst rescue ever!” Leanne screams. “And why am I standing on these crates!”
“Because I wanted a good look at your ass before I die!” Hank yells back.
She shoots him a murderous look, perhaps thinking about killing him before the room does.
There’s a PFFFFFT sound, the sound of air releasing from hydraulics. The walls stop moving.
They all look at each other, as if to double check before celebrating. Sure enough. The walls have stopped moving.
Charlie yelps with joy. Luke turns to Leanne for a hug only to see her leap into Hank’s arms. Hank shoves his tongue down her throat and she takes it with enthusiasm. Both of her feet are off the ground, her arms are wrapped around his neck. It’s like he just got back from some godforsaken war and she’s been waiting for him for years. She looks happy. She’s too beautiful to look at so he turns away.
What he sees instead is a handle set in the middle of a metal panel, painted white, blending in with everything around it. A few minutes ago several sheets of cracked dry wall had been leaning against it.
He reads the sign next to the handle.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he says.
The sign reads “EMERGENCY RELEASE.”
He grasps the handle, gives a firm pull and the floor drops away.
For a few seconds they are weightless, falling with the debris, down 20 feet and landing on a big mound of crushed building materials in the back of a dump truck.
It’s a filthy place to land, but also mercifully soft, his legs sinking into plaster and cardboard, with a few beer bottles and pizza boxes mixed in.
They are alive.
***
Artie asks into his phone, “Did that work?”
There is silence, and then screaming, all of them screaming like they are in a blender.
There is crunching, cracking and then silence.
Artie hangs his head, his heart broken. He cries for the first time since he was 8 years old.
“Dreadful shame, old chap,” Cecil says, and sounds sincere. “They were all good eggs. Especially dear Leanne. Now can we please leave?”
Artie looks up and sees the black-suited SWAT guys trot through the loading dock, heading straight for them.
“Not unless you have a plan to get around those guys,” Artie says.
From Charlie’s Notebook
On the Front of the House, and the Back of the House
When I was training to be a chef, back when I still had a tongue, I cooked in restaurants throughout France. I started with serving steak frites to tourists a few blocks from the Louvre in Paris, cheap food that Americans could understand, grilled beef in a heavy sauce and French fries with a hint of garlic. That hole in the wall became wildly popular, thank to my addition of basil to the butter we cooked the steak in, and to the truffle oil I used on the frites.
That establishment was the lowest rung on the French food ladder, a thatched-roof, mud hovel compared to the food palaces that surrounded us. When the lines began to grow down the sidewalk, people took notice.
From there, I worked my way up, from mid-priced bistros where I served up Coq au vin paired with underrated wines from Spain and Portugal, to an overly expensive, preposterously pretentious, Michelin-star rated room where I drizzled avocado foam over seared scallops topped with caviar. A prix frixe dinner at that restaurant would run you $150 without wine. And to be honest, you would have been happier grabbing my steak frites at the greasy feeding trough where I started.
Those were happy years, my restaurant years. I was at home in the kitchen surrounded by food, preparing meals people loved.
I lost that when my tongue was cut out of my mouth. I knew more than 250 recipes, but if you can’t taste, you can’t cook. I tried. It didn’t work. On my first night back to work, I had five dishes returned. Too salty. Too sweet. Missing something. Nothing I made was right, even though I followed the recipes to the letter. I was writing music but couldn’t hear. My audience was telling me I was making noise. I quit.
I don’t dwell on it. I have to accept my new life without regret or go insane. I am who I am, and whoever I was back then, that guy is gone. I miss him. I mourn him. I sometimes wonder what he is up to. Does he own his own restaurant? Is he married with a tribe of little half-French, half-Samoan football playing chefs running around? I will never know. That thought always makes me cry. So anyway…
Even though I lost my livelihood, I did learn a few things.
The lesson I value most from those years is what I call the “front of house, back of house” phenomena. A lot can be explained by this way of looking at life.
This is how restaurants work, and how life works…
In the front of the house, décor matters, atmosphere matters, form is more important that function. A dining room is designed to be attractive, interesting, and mood-creating. You want your guests to leave the outside world and enter a fantasy that you’ve created. Perhaps the fantasy is that you are eating in an old French country house, or an Italian castle or a Texas roadhouse or a rain forest or a ninja fortress.
Everything you see in a dining room is artifice, fake, there to lie to you. You take comfort in it, appreciate it, but it is meant to deceive you. It means nothing and become meaningless as soon as you walk out of the door. The front of the house is dishonesty given form. It is most of what you are paying for.
In the back of the house, functionality is what is important, and so there you can find the truth. The floor is textured tile, easy to clean and preventative of slips. The counters are stainless steel, meant to be sturdy and sterile. Attractiveness doesn’t come into the equation. When you are in a restaurant’s kitchen, your eye rarely falls on anything meant to be decorative. It is a real place where real work is done, the work of creating the illusion being enjoyed by the customers in the front of the house, the people paying you five times what your chicken dish is actually worth, paying for the pleasant lie that you have created for them.
Everywhere I go in life, I known if I am in the front or the back of the house. When in the front, I know I’m being lied to, know that an illusion is being foisted on me, sometimes innocently, sometimes with bad intent.
The news you watch, front of house, a product created by people paid to make you pay attention.
The editorial meeting, the one where editors and executives decide to run the “Kate Middleton is pregnant” story over the story about the growing separation between the rich, the poor and the shrinking middle class, that is the back of the house.
The presidential candidate’s speech where he promises to lower gas prices to $2.50 without explaining how, that’s front of house. That politician’s advisors conducting polls and focus groups about what voters want to hear, that is back of house.
The priest who tells you God loves you in a massive cathedral filled with stunning displays of stained glass artistry and a ceiling so high it seems to touch heaven, that is very much front of house. That same priest, filled with base desires and no actual belief that a living god would cast him into a lake of fire for eternity for acting on those evil desires, that is about as back-of-house as you can get.
My advice to you, dear reader, is this. Feel free to e
njoy the front of the house. It is a comforting place, a livable place, and a fun place. But always know that for every front of the house there is a back of the house, and that’s where the truth lives. You’ll want to peek in there every once in a while, just to make sure the cooks aren’t spitting into the food.
Chapter Forty-Two
Luke climbs over the side of the dump truck and finds the side ladder. He climbs down, reaches the ground. He’s in an open, well-lit space, a huge truck depot, probably where deliveries are made. A hotel this size would get a lot of deliveries.
He can breathe, the open space feels good. He’s sore from all the falling, even more so from the landing, but he’s alive.
Leanne clambers out over the side of the truck, slides down on the metal ladder. Her tight, short skirt rides up over her ass and Luke catches a glimpse of her black thong panties. Great ass. World class. She pulls her skirt down with one hand while hanging on to the ladder with the other. She’s still in her heels, legs covered in dust but still looking great.
“You go right ahead, princess,” Hank yells from inside the dumpster. “No need to thank us.”
“Thank you for what!” she yells. “Almost getting me killed?”
Hank and Charlie pull themselves over the top and begin their climb down.
“I cannot believe your lack of gratitude,” Hank says.
“I can’t believe you’re still alive,” she says.
Luke knows what he is seeing. He can tell when two people want to fuck but don’t have a convenient way to make it happen.
He feels a little sad that Leanne is more into Hank than him. Not too sad, it’s more of an ego bruise than anything. The guy is an old pothead with some charm, but doesn’t have much else going for him.
You want him more than me? Really? You are welcome to him and his pot-stained teeth and frizzy hair. Can the stoner even get it up anymore? Not my problem.
Luke, a devoted student of womanhood, knows her type. She is strong-willed, smart, ambitious, and tough. In the professional arena, she can lay waste to anyone, especially men. There is no stopping her.
On the other hand, she is also sexy, knows she is sexy, enjoys being sexy, and doesn’t mind using her sexiness to get what she wants. (And why not?) She also enjoys sex.
In Luke’s experience, some women overplay the sexy angle as a way to compensate for some other lacking quality, intelligence or charm for instance. Being sexy is merely their survival mechanism, a way to get life’s necessities. Quite often, women like that – the shallow, beautiful women whose goal is to be wanted at all times by anyone with a penis – don’t even care for sex. Men to them are no more than dupes, wallets to be opened, ATM machines with no limit on withdrawal.
Leanne is of the smart and sexy variety, a powerful combination. She doesn’t need her legs and tits to get ahead. She would do just fine in baggy mom jeans and comfort shoes. Instead, she chooses to wear tight skirts and heels. Why? One, because she uses sex as a weapon, one she wields with skill. Two, she likes to get laid. She likes men, likes the pleasures they can give her, and likes the submission they show her in return for making them hard.
The way Leanne and Hank keep finding excuses to snap at each other, and make eye contact, Luke expects them at any second to duck into any one of the 10,000 conveniently empty hotel rooms that surround them.
They enter a service hallway painted a stark industrial white that seems to stretch on for miles. The brightness burns Luke’s eyes. The place feels bleached.
“Which way?” Luke asks Artie over his phone.
“To your right five doors, then go through the door into Le Jungle.”
“Le Jungle?”
“You’ll see.”
They quickly trot down the long hall, looking behind them as much as looking ahead of them.
Down the hall, a door opens up.
“Fuck my ass with a baseball bat,” Hank says.
Luke tries to erase that image from his mind.
In come more goons with guns. They take aim.
Luke runs away from them down the hall, the others right behind him. He counts down five doors and bursts through the fifth, running onto a metal platform overlooking a stage that’s 200 feet below him. He gets dizzy for a second, vertigo rushing at him. It is a long way down.
On the stage below them, five acrobats in neon pink tights throw each other into the air where they twist, turn, flip and land in trampolines that throw them back into the air. They shout at each other in French and accented English.
“Higher! Oui! Higher! Zee legs! Use zee legs!”
They remind him of popcorn popping, their bodies bouncing through the air in graceful arcs.
Leanne, Hank and Charlie rush in behind him and almost knock Luke over the railing.
That is one fucking long way down. Speaking of a way down, how do we make that happen?
There isn’t a ladder, just a long drop down to the stage. There is a small platform in front of an opening in the railing. Next to the railing is a thick rope with a loop knotted into it, a loop that would normally be filled with the hand or the ankle of a person who has trained for years to do dangerous, difficult things in front of a paying audience.
An acrobat grabs onto that rope, swings away, and over the stage, and ends up where?
Across the stage, through all that empty space, he sees another platform, just like the one he is standing on. There is one rope and four people who need to get across, one of whom weighs as much as the other three put together.
Hank looks over the side of the catwalk, looks at the rope. Charlie bellows his veto of any idea concerning swinging anywhere.
“Yeah, I’m with you,” Hank says. “Fuck that noise. I’d rather be shot than die after landing on a pile of skinny dudes in leotards.”
Hank looks at Luke, says, “Get her to the other side. We’ll find another exit.”
Before Luke can get over his surprise and decide whether or not to protest, Hank and Charlie rush back through the door, guns out, screaming at the top of their lungs.
Below, the acrobats stop their rehearsal and look up confused.
“What izzz going on!” one of them yells.
Luke slides his hand into the loop on the rope and wraps his arm around Leanne’s thin waste. She feels good, fits nicely into his side. She’s light and he lifts her up, showing off the strength in his arms. She doesn’t resist. She melts into him, wraps her thin arms around his neck. He feels like he could hold her like that for hours.
She kisses him on the lips.
“For luck,” she says.
Luke feels strength and energy surge through him. Her kiss is magic. He feels like he can do anything, including something truly stupid like swinging through space while holding on to 110 pounds of hotness.
In the hallway, gunshots erupt. Time is up.
Luke leans forward, puts his left foot out, hanging it over the long drop. He closes his eyes.
“Zat izz not a toy!” screams what must be the head French Canadian acrobat. “It izzz not safe!”
Luke steps out in space, feels his right foot leave the platform and gravity pull them down. Away they go, flying. Luke opens his eyes. The stage zips underneath him, the massive set past him. It’s a jungle theme with huge green trees filled with fake florescent birds and stuffed monkeys.
Four of the acrobats applaud and laugh with approval. The fifth, the leaderish one, yells, “That izz not funny! And it izzzz not allowed!”
Luke feels their direction shift as they begin going up instead of going down. Their speed slows. He knows from high school physics that he’s going to have one shot at grabbing the railing, because otherwise their kinetic energy will dissipate and they will end up dangling over the stage after swinging a few more times in ever slowing arcs with bemused French-Canadians below them and men with guns behind them.
He grabs the cold, metal handrail with a hand slippery with sweat. His shoulder gives a painful pop as he fights gravity and pulls with
everything he has in him. He slowly drags them close enough to step onto the platform, his other arm keeping tight hold of Leanne.
As soon as her feet touch the catwalk, she is out of his arms and pushing through the door.
Gone so soon. Mine for just a moment.
“Come on already,” she yells at him. “I see an exit sign!”
Chapter Forty-Three
A few minutes earlier…
Hank is on the catwalk of Le Jungle, looking down at a stage that might as well be a mile away. He thinks about the word “high,” so friendly in one context, so fucking fucked up in another. This one, for instance.
He could swing across on that big fat rope, sure. Maybe. His arms aren’t what they used to be.
But can he swing across with Charlie? Nope. If Charlie fell, could Hank land on him and live? Maybe. Probably. But could he go through life knowing he lived because his friend made an excellent crash bag? No. No, he could not.
Charlie bellows his veto of any idea concerning swinging anywhere.
He’s right. Fuck it. I’ve got a nice big gun. No bullets, but it is a big gun. That should count for something.
“Yeah, I’m with you,” Hank says. “Fuck that noise. I’d rather be shot than die after landing on a pile of skinny dudes in leotards.”
The skinny dudes in pink freak him out a little bit. No one should be that thin. And no man should wear pants so tight you can see cock outlines from two hundred feet away.
He looks at Leanne to wash the phallic image away. Nice. Dusty, sweaty, and still sexy as hell. She needs saving. In this stupid world, women like her need to keep existing.
Hank looks at that good-looking dumbass Luke, Mr. Hero, Mr. Serious-About-Everything, and says, “Get her to the other side. We’ll find another exit.”
He jumps through the door, gun drawn, Charlie right behind him. Charlie is always right behind him, bless his giant Samoan soul.
He starts screaming a war cry, something he hasn’t done since he was in an actual war. Charlie does the same and the very floor seems to shake. They point their big, impotent guns and try to look scary.