“So, you ladies want to go to a party?” I was now in a good mood. The air outside was hot and dusty and dry but clean compared to the infected spoor leading to David’s lair.

Elma stopped. I faced her. She asked, sounding disappointed and suspicious, “What about the dinner and dancing above the ocean?”

“No time now. You can thank your sister for that.”

Irmela was hanging back from us near the door. There was no way to keep an eye on her. She was like one of those half-alive people that slip in and out of reality. I just kept patting my pockets down and checking the exits. She pointed her toes in towards each other and rocked herself in the shadow of the building. A horn blew in the distance. There were scattered gunshots and light flashes over the horizon. “What did I do?” Irmela asked. Her face wore the wild, angry look of unjustly wounded innocence.

It wasn’t worth trying to answer that. I knew already I would only get tangled up in coils of illogic. I said. “The party’s in a mansion above Malibu. Better than any seaside steakhouse.”

“Is there a view?” Elma asked. She must like a view, I thought.

“Sure there’s a view. And a pool, gardens, gambling, food. You can eat and drink for free.” I tried to imagine them at the party. Well, long, desultory face or not, Elma was hot, the guests would let her slide on the ugly paisley harem pants, which wouldn’t stay on long anyway. But her feet were hard to take. The nail on her right big toe was cracked and her heals were practically black. You might scream if you woke up at night and saw those feet in your face. And Irmela! She looked like a child. Sneering over a pinball machine must have aged her. Maybe it was the swagger of the game, because off the game she didn’t even stand like a woman; her body language was that of a slightly retarded 12-year-old. Her tits weren’t big enough to dent her shirt. I’m not an idiot, I wasn’t buying the child act. I saw what I saw in Tony’s. Just because nothing she did seemed deliberate, didn’t make it so.

“I’m not dressed for a party,” Elma said.

“Don’t sweat it, you’re with me. The food is excellent. Grilled prawns, flank steak, pork adobo. Fried yucca and frijoles negro.”

“We already ate,” Elma said.

“I didn’t eat a thing. I snorted some of the cocaine and it killed my appetite,” Irmela said.

“You mean my load will be light?” I asked. Carlos wouldn’t like that. Junior would be pissed.

Irmela touched my elbow and looked into my eyes with eyes the color of water in moonlight. “It might perhaps be so anyway. But I did not give any to that pubic ass hair.”

“Well, you must have been careful. The package looked intact when I checked it out.”

“She has the fingers of a surgeon,” Elma said.

“Yeah, I noticed.”

Except for the lights of signs shining on the dirt it was dark. The moon hadn’t risen yet. Overhead were smears of stars. I checked my car out with a hand light. The kid hadn’t banged it up at all. She slouched and pouted when she knew what I was doing and even hissed when I checked the wheel wells for snakes. But I’m not fixing a flat tire on the highway in the dark and sticking my hand up into a six foot Fer de Lance. It was clean. I got in and settled back into the leather seat and started it up. You won’t catch me riding a fucking horse. Not if I can help it.

“Where did you get this car?” Irmela asked.

Elma looked into the back seat and cut her off. She asked, “How long is the drive?”

“I won it in a card game. We’ll be there in no time.”

I drove to Santa Monica and up the Pacific Coast Highway, hugging the ocean, which would rear into view and hang out on our left as we went by to Carbon Canyon Road, and Carbon Mesa road, to a dirt track through a damp, tree hung gully where there was a long driveway. I left the car to a valet. There was a hoot followed by a shriek in the brush. We followed the whale oil lamps up to the front door. The air was heavy and smelled of night blooming jasmine. Fruit bats flew around overhead.

The mansion was a replica of a Minoan palace. The walls were whitewashed blocks three feet thick. Giant ferns grew in mounds along the paths, and on either side were orchards of fig, orange and lemon, with oleander and hibiscus. Music drifted through the branches with the rumble of voices and people splashing in the pool.

“See if you can wash those feet in the bathroom,” I said. “The people who live here are away. No one is going to care if you clean yourself up. Also, as a rule, you don’t mention the address of one of these parties. You find out and keep it to yourself.”

“I think maybe that you are insane,” Elma said. Her face was petulant. It made me think that she was flirting.

“I’m just saying,” I said.

The hostess, a bad singer and veteran waitress at a luncheonette in Compton, greeted them. When she saw they were with me, she said, “I never knew you to go for a sister sandwich, Bob.”

“There’s been some moral backsliding.”

“This is the place for decadence,” she said, smiling. “Rome.”

“Actually, it’s Minoan,” Elma said.

“Yeah, right, Minoan,” the hostess said.

People were dancing slow, cheek-to-cheek, hands resting gently on their waists. The walls were frescoed with monkeys and dolphins, and boxing boys. Giant black columns supported the ceiling. The guests were the usual mix of minor lords with Ruler connections, low level entertainment people and hustlers in the movie and theater business, plus a slew of climbing lawyers and realtors and the kind of people who listen up in dive nightclubs for where the party will be. They cram into whatever will convey them and make their way in. If they’ve got enough glam on they drink for free.

The Priest was busy checking the bottles in the bar and keeping an eye on the band. He wouldn’t let them drink till after the third set, and he only fed them after the second. If they managed to remain upright through to the end they got a bonus of 25 bucks and a bottle of mescal. That is why musicians are so often the last ones standing.

Johnson blew into the sax and then the whole band started to play, slow and sultry, just how people like it. Irmela and Elma drifted towards a large square window that looked out east. There was a full moon rising and its light was reflected on a pool of lotuses. Elma’s face was lit partly by the moon and partly by the hair hanging against her cheek. Irmela leaned half way out into the night and only her lower half was visible. The orange shorts rode high on her thighs and her heels were lifting out of the jellies. I left them like that and caught up with the Priest in the kitchen.

The Priest had a lean face. His eyes were dark and sad like a dog’s, set in black rings. He looked like he was suffering from a slow-wasting, tropical disease, but he was not. He was in decent health. Maybe if he didn’t smoke so much he would have breathed a little better. He took out a pouch of Indian tobacco and rolled one up and lit it with a silver match. “Bob. I got everything under control here. Carlos is in the den. Go down a flight and make for the back of the house, you’ll find him. Where were you?” A man went by with a tray of grilled prawns. A lettuce leaf was dislodged and lemongrass and chili sauce was dripping off the edge. “Hey,” the Priest said. “You with that tray, stop.” He tucked the lettuce in place and said, “Go.”

“This girl I met in the bar ripped my bag off,” I said, in a very low voice.

He laughed. “Your problem is lust.”

“You saw her, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, she’s hot, but look at those feet. They’re biblical.”

“There’re lots of them around now.”

“Barefoot women. That’s why I got out of it.”

“Nothing to do with lust.”

“They’re related, of course.”

“Enough,” I said. “I don’t give a fuck. Anyway, it’s not her, it’s the sister.”

“The what? That piece of spring chicken, for you? Don’t be cruel.”

“She’s the one that stole my bag. And she picked my pocket.”

“You let that wild thing take your shit?” He laughed low. “That’s good.”

“She’s good. Don’t turn your back on her, that’s all I can say.”

“But you did.”

“Learn from the error of my ways.”

“How’d you get it back then?”

“Elma drove me around. They have this game. While we were looking for her, she was looking for us. She found us first, and then we had to follow her, chase her. Chase! Pinche chichis.”

“You want me to sit in with you and Carlos?”

“Nah, go enjoy yourself. Take a swim.”

The Priest laughed at the joke. It was hard to imagine him swimming.

Carlos was a tough guy in a suit, but he worked for the Mexican Proconsul’s office in Tenochtitlan and pulled a lot of weight. My boss, Junior said he was a Brigadier General and an Aztlanian. Junior was OK with powerful sponsors, so long as they weren’t Rulers. He didn’t like Rulers.

Carlos sat on the pine bench sipping a mock blue gel cocktail and nibbling a grilled prawn. “I was worried you were going to be late,” he said.

“I did my best. Your package from Junior.” I placed the briefcase on the floor before him and he took it. His hair was grey, cut into an arrow flat top, and his face was lined and weathered. “Stay and have another drink, on me.”

He shook his head and smiled. “Thanks Bob. Until next time.” He saluted me and left. I took no money, no jewels back. It’s tribute. I sat in the quiet room for a while looking at the books in the bookcases and the pots of ivy growing by the window. It was a nice house, but mine was nicer, less pretentious.

Irmela and Elma were at the bar chatting up the Priest. He nursed a dry martini, one rock, and appeared to be relaxed. But the man couldn’t hide from his own eyes, and it showed. It’s hard to explain, that’s just the way he was, and how people are sometimes made. And you act it out then, how you were made, once you know. I knew what I was by the time I was twenty. I was my father’s son. Enough said.

          The Priest still dressed in all black and kept his hair trim. A heavy shadow of beard showed on his face by late afternoon and it deepened throughout the night. I looked for Margaret but she wasn’t around. He called her Peg, and he adored her. Margaret was smart and she could make you laugh but you didn’t fuck with her. And when they were on the booze together it was desperate and dirty. One afternoon, after he’d been up drinking all night he told me that he loved how they clung to each other in Malebolge. He could barely form words but he hugged himself and said, “Peg and I, we’re like this, in Malebolge.” And I asked him, “Where’s that?” And he said, “Eighth circle of hell. Read The Inferno.”

So I read The Inferno. And then I knew where he was. Upside down in fire or shit, or under the flail. Where you turn into a reptile and demons tear you to pieces.

“Well, that was relaxing,” I said, getting a handful of peanuts from the bowl. “Give me a blue one,” I said to the kid behind the bar. He got to work right away with the crushed ice and the mock blue gel. It came up to the rim and he shaved off a curl of orange zest which he placed in the center of the drink.

“Your friends were telling me about their act,” the Priest said.

“What was it, Australian folk music?” The iced gel had a sweet, citrusy taste with an afterburn of Keane’s Cane liquor.

“Austrian,” Elma said. Irmela turned up her nose.

“What’ wrong?” I asked Irmela, standing closer and closer to her as she nudged towards Elma to escape me.

“It’s what he says,” Irmela said. “It is some bullshit of that dickeye. We do not sing Austrian folk songs. David made that up to get you off of his back. He is a fart from the cunt, an ass violin.”

“You mean small talk, don’t you?” I asked.

“No,” Irmela said. “If I meant small talk I would have said it. He makes no small talk, he only does lies. And sex movies. All he wants is to watch girls licking the butt.”

The Priest gave in to a dour laugh. “Watch only?”

“Then he makes the paja. Sometimes mamar,” Irmela said.

“How about we go out into the garden? I’ve been cooped up all day,” I said.

The Priest looked around. The band was blowing a dirge, couples were clinging to each other and circling the dance floor like dust devils, against the rhythm. The women’s clothes flouncy and red, with burgundy and plum scarves, the men in long suits.

We went into the garden and there were a few couples in various states of disrepair, sitting on a low stonewall smoking and laughing. One of the women, with curls of cheap, curly LuminEscent hair down her back was doing a toreador dance and pausing to laugh.

I took out some cocaine and said, “You’ve been good girls tonight, let’s do some drugs.”

Elma drained her glass and said, “I’d like another drink.” I passed around the little glass container with the cocaine and we each put some in our nostrils and sniffed. After a couple of rounds, as my head lightened and I started to wing, I got refills for us all. The Priest left us; he didn’t like any drugs other than alcohol or peyote and the peyote was serious. When I handed her the drink she smiled and looked at me differently. “These are very good cocktails. Not like the mierda we serve at the Morrow.”

“Sock juice,” Irmela said.

“Well if you stick around until we go to my place, I have real whiskey,” I said.

The conversation was suddenly lively. They seemed to nod at what I had said, and I didn’t see how they couldn’t have heard it, so I had some hope of bringing them back to my bed. Unless they were playing me along. It was time to let go and relax. Whatever happens will happen.

Irmela and Elma began to chatter back and forth half in Austrian, and half in Moron English with all these Aztlanian curses thrown in. They looked sober, other than their pale skin becoming flushed and their eyes like blue zeros. Suddenly they’d cackle, or giggle, or snort-laugh, and turn to look at me. Elma touched my shoulder, drained her glass again and said, “Things are looking up. I will get myself another now; you don’t need to serve me. What Irmela just told me is,” she turned to her sister, who flashed panic like a horse.

“Don’t tell him!”

“Oh, but it is funny. Or else he will think we are laughing at him.”

“Then he will say we are a foitrottl.”

I said, “I don’t think you’re a foitrottl, whatever that is.”

“A complete idiot!” Elma said.

“You sure fucked me up good, and I don’t get fucked much. That ain’t stupid.”

“What Irmela said was that the Priest is like your dog. Then we remembered a dog we had that looked like him, with black fur around his big sad eyes.”

“He had thick velvet wrinkles around his head and neck,” Irmela said.

“The Priest runs the show for me is all.”

“But you do love him?” Elma asked.

I laughed and gazed down at Irmela’s feet. Even with green jellies they were clean, and she didn’t have the black hair on the knuckles like Elma did. “You don’t seem like dog types.”

“It was in Paris,” Irmela said.

“No, Montreal! You remember.”

“I just remember it all happened in French.”

They both scowled and the mood sagged. I asked, “What happened in French?”

“This was not good,” Elma said. “Our uncle made us eat the dog without telling us.”

“He deserved to die.”

“We were hungry!” Elma said, her scold-face back on. “We did what must be done to survive.”

I waved at my neighbors, Frank Orsba, an entertainment lawyer, dressed in a white suit with a green knit tie, and his wife, Arphe Lux, a famous medium. She had a vermillion ruffle and wrap with dyed eagle feathers and cultured pearls. The night flowers and the trees oozing sap left a sweaty tang in the air. They waved back and she winked. I downed my drink and thought to slow down; I didn’t want to be too high, not while the party was on, not before collecting the take. The Priest took me aside and I asked him for a door count.

“Two hundred so far tonight, 75 still here. We have two thousand on the bar, another two in cocaine sales, and twice that at the Black Jack table.”

Ten percent of everything was mine. It would be a thousand dollar night, easy. Not bad. Enough to keep going anyway.

Irmela trailed after the Priest. Elma, who was quite drunk, asked me to dance. Her body, hidden under the soft paisley sacks, was strong and muscular, and she had a smooth step on the dance floor. I rested my head on her shoulder and her hair glowed in my eyes. Then they played a polka and I twirled her around. Her face got red and she started to smile. We were both sweating after that. I gave her some more cocaine and she held to me tightly. I resisted a little and craned my head around looking for Irmela, hoping she would be jealous, but she was not in sight.

After a few more polkas and a waltz we were wiped out, drinking down water at the bar. Still half out of breath, she said in a slurred voice, “Now we should dance in the pool!” and ran off. I followed her out into the backyard, a formal garden with a rectangular pool of illuminated water. Torches burned along the side, where naked and half-naked people sat around tables drinking and laughing, their cigarettes glowing in the dark. Mosquitoes zapped in the insect lights. Elma staggered out of her clothes and dove into the water. I don’t like to swim much but I followed her in. We swam around with abandon. She wasn’t the same person in the water. In the water she let it loose.

Normally I’m not going to show my ass to strangers at my own party. I’m not the boss anymore then. But it was late. I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about those beautiful white tits swaying in the water just a few feet away. Other couples dove in and soon there were a dozen people cavorting in the water. The band played a little louder. There were shrieks and the din of laughter as all the guests crowded the pool and expanded onto the lawn. The band set up outside one by one, each playing the part he came with and then going off. And the guests were dancing, and swimming, and the waitresses worked them for drinks.

“Should we look for Irmela?” I asked. I was sure she would be among those diving into the water but I didn’t see her.

Elma had a frozen mock blue gel smile. “Oh no, not just yet. I’m sure she has a found a friend.” She had her pants back on and she was fastening her bra. I thought, what a fucking shame that is. She pulled her shirt over her head and lost her balance. “Ha! Now you have to catch me.” She fell back against me and her wet hair pressed in my face. I let her slide down and cradled her with my left arm and I gazed down at her half-open mouth. Then there erupted a tremendous, distorted electronic noise, followed by a slow descending run of guitar notes. Elma shrieked, “Clever Hans, you’ve found her.” She ran off into the crowd and I followed her. Standing with the band, with an electric guitar across her chest was Irmela. When the feedback and notes stopped reverberating, and the boys in the band were still chuckling, she strummed a few cords and started to sing a voice so pure and perfect I couldn’t I couldn’t imagine it coming from her vacant face. But there was no one else singing.

It was getting late. The sky was lightening. There weren’t so many people there but those that were there were all done. They’d pass out where they stood and not wake up until the sun got too bright. A few might manage to crawl into the shadows till mid morning, but the Priest would take care of them. I edged away from the girls and headed in to wrap things up.

The caterers had packed and gone. The kitchen was spotless. The oven and fridge were exactly as before. There was no more alcohol in the house, other than what Margaret and the Priest sat consuming on folding chairs in front of the monkey frescoes. Margaret had on a red dress with a wide white collar, and white rubber shoes. Her face was shaped like a frog’s, and her skin was pink. She had wavy red hair that made her look ten years older, and between the hair and the lipstick her complexion had a hot glow that grew more intense when she got angry. When she was angry she blushed crimson and her eyes swam in vindictive tears.

“I’ll take that now, Peg.” said the Pries.

“Don’t Peg me unless you want to get busted one. Hey Bob. A good haul I hear.”

“It must be then, if that’s what the Priest says.”

“You’ll net twelve hundred, after my cut,” he said.

“The bank?”

“Safe. Junior’s bag took it.”

“Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“You were in the pool, Bob. I had a heart.”

“I suppose that would have sucked.” I laughed. They nodded their heads in the same knowing way and their laugh sounded like a bladder losing air. She handed me the bottle and said, “Go on, sluggo, do your best before the Priest turns it into water.”

I drank a little and handed it to the Priest. “We’ll all turn it into water, of the Dead Sea,” he said. He gazed at the bottle and smiled. “My sweet baby glass.” He took two big glugs. “Here ya go Peg love, till we meet on the mountainside, I’ll be rolling the boulder up while yours is rolling down.”

“I’ll be rolling it up your arse, mate.”

“I thought I might go,” I said. “Can you wind things up? I’ll take the twelve now, keep anything else that comes in. The house is closed. Everyone out before the landscaper comes.”

“Amigo,” the Priest said. “It’s done.”

Now all I had to do was find the girls. They were off the stage walking around the shadows at the edge of the lawn, arm in arm, holding each other upright. “Party’s over,” I said, coming up alongside Irmela, who was in better shape than Elma.

“OK,” said Irmela. “Elma, we have to walk this way now.”

Elma lifted her head up and then let it flop forward. Irmela led her up to the house. At the car she let go of her and Elma leaned against the hood and groaned.

“I don’t like that groan,” I said. “You get in first, and see she pukes out the window.” I stuffed Elma into the back seat, rolled down the window and shut the door.

I drove down to the coast highway and headed to Topanga Canyon to the house. The house was a split level bungalow with flat roofs, perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific. The driveway was lined with banana, mango and lemon trees, and there were stands of eucalyptus, pine and cottonwood around the property. A network of stairs and trails lead down to a cove with a beach. I parked by the front door. The sun was up and it was starting to get hot. Elma had fallen asleep without throwing up. She wouldn’t budge from the backseat. “What’s with her? Can’t she hold her drink?” I asked.

“She can. She took a pill. She wanted to be asleep.”

“Fuck. Help me then. Push her out and I’ll take her in.”

“OK, I will help you.” Together got her up to the front door. “This is your house?”

“Yeah it’s my house. Now if I can only find the key….”

“Do not look at me as you do, I did not–”

“Don’t sweat my shit. A joke. Get it?” I held up the key and we were in.

In fact it was not actually my house, in the sense of ownership. I was the listing agent on the property. The owners were away and I was living there, making no effort to sell it at all, in the hopes that they would never come back.

I hit the light. “We’ll put her on the couch upstairs. The covers are canvas so it’s ok if she bludges in the night.”

We carried her up the stairs through the French doors and into the living room, which had a view on three sides through floor to ceiling windows. And there was a deck with a hot tub off the west side. We laid her down on the couch and I got a blanket out of the cedar chest in the corner and put it over her. Irmela stood at the west window gazing out at the pacific, beneath a sky brightening into violet. “Now what about you? A nightcap?”

“That is ok. You have whisky?”

“You bet I do. I get it from New York. None of that Hong Kong shit.” Elma snored softly and shifted on the couch. “You sure she took a pill?”

“What do you mean by sure?”

“I thought only she did that. I mean did you see her take it or did she just say she took it?”

“Said. But she does that when she takes cocaine. She drinks a lot and then you know, she wants to take a pill to end it. But nothing ends.”

“She’s a restless sleeper.”

“Yes. We have travelled to many places. Her feet were born in motion our mother said.”

We went downstairs to the kitchen and I got the whiskey out. She stood next to the door staring out the picture windows leading to an inner courtyard garden. Bougainvillea grew over the stonewalls. There were seats around a wrought iron table beneath an overhang off the kitchen roof. I poured us each three fingers over one rock and nodded towards the door into the garden. “Do you want to sit out there, or on the deck upstairs?”

“Out there.”

“Suit yourself.”

She took the glass. “There will be humming birds.”

“Yeah, and a bunch of other stuff too.”

“Like what, parrots you mean? They were all over New York. It was disgusting. They say they drove the pigeons out.”

“A sure sign of decline, when parrots drive your pigeons out. I guess the West Coast has it all over the East.”

We sat down and sipped our drinks in a silence that was comfortable and familiar. We had made it to the next day. We could count toes and fingers and sit in the glow that damaged brain cells give to early morning light. And there were hummingbirds, all over the flowers. She said, “I don’t think this West Coast has it all over the East one.”

“Well, I haven’t been to both places, so I won’t say.”

“Everywhere is the same.”

It was getting kind of hot. And she was looking good, all ragged from the night, the cocaine and the drink. Her hair was frightful, sticking up this way and that, and there was something angelic about her blank stare. The only thing left to do was fuck. And she had been the one I was after the whole time anyway. “So let’s shake it up then,” I said.

“Oh, you mean like, we could dance?” she asked in a dead voice.

“I think we’re past that.”

“You and Elma danced. You are pledged to her, no?”

“Pledged? No. Not pledged to anyone but you right now.” She shrugged. “Look, there’s one thing left to do here to make it a perfect night.”

“No, my pussy hurts.”

“Well, I’ll fuck your ass then.”

“I don’t think so. Not tonight.”

“How about a little head then?”

“That one is small enough.”

I drained the glass and rolled a Kretek cigarette up. “You want one?”

“Sure. I’m very tired, but I can’t sleep. I will have more whiskey.”

I tossed her the cigarette and a lighter and rolled another one up for me. The smell of cloves hung in the air, mixing with jasmine. “Yeah, me too. But this’ll be the cheap stuff.”

She shrugged and went pffrr with her mouth. I went into the kitchen and got an idea. There was bound to be some methaqualone around somewhere. I could offer her that for sleep. Then I could see how things went. I searched the kitchen cabinets till I found where the owners kept their drugs and there it was. One each should do. I poured out two Mekong Whiskeys and put them on a tray with two glasses of water and the pills.

“Real service,” she said.

I put the tray down. The glasses were beading up. “I’ve got some methaqualone if you want. It will help you sleep.”

“I don’t want that.”

“You know what that is?”

“Yes.”

We finished our drinks and I’d had it. She was inert. My armpits started to sweat and then my forehead. I was fading, even as her body taunted me. Her breasts barely filled the wrinkles of the green tank top, not big enough for cleavage. Her legs had no sign of sun on them, they were almost bluish purple in the shade, the veins and arteries faintly visible, and I noticed a small scratch on her ankle. The orange shorts were so tight in the crotch I could see bumps. She was sitting there motionless except when she kicked her jellies off and scratched the top of her foot with her big toe. Every move she made screamed sex. I felt the nerves bucking around inside me and a burning sensation in my throat. But as I said, I was fading, and she was just as stubborn as could be.

“You’re driving me nuts here,” I said finally. She looked away from the hummingbirds and narrowed her eyes. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Go and fuck my sister if you want, or beat off. I don’t care.”

I scowled at her. “Where do you want to sleep then? There’s the other couch in the living room, or the guest room downstairs. It has TV and radio.”

“Couch with Elma.”

“What are you, a package deal?”

Irmela looked at me strangely then, full of hatred, but also at something far away. She said, “You could have hurt David for me. Maybe things would be different.” Then she turned away and I followed her inside, feeling suddenly like I was in her house. She pulled the cuff of her shorts down and then the hem of her shirt, which was riding up her back. She filled a glass of water from the tap.

“How do you know you can drink that?” I asked.

Irmela faced me. “Because you are rich, and rich people have clean water, even when they don’t drink it.”

“How do you know so much about the rich?”

“I read somewhere that they don’t drink the water on Mars.”

I laughed. “I read somewhere that women like you play with men the way kittens play with a ball of twine.”

Irmela nodded. “It is the way a cat plays with a mouse before she eats it.”

“Messing with a guy like David isn’t worth the risk. I got what I was coming for and he was smart enough to know it. A dick would have forced my hand. We both understood how things would work out.”

She drank down the water and put the glass in the sink. Then she walked up to me very close and kissed my cheek. “Good night.”

Elma checked her rearview mirror, the sails lifted taut and she spun us out of there. “Put on your seat belt. We’ll go to her usual spots first.”

I tightened the belt and tried to stretch my legs but there was little room. The car had a slightly foul odor, very faint, as if the upholstery was stained with sweat. “She has a route when thieving? I come from a place where that kind of behaviour is fatal.”

“You think she’s very beautiful?” Elma asked, craning her head as she drove. I didn’t answer. She looked in the rearview again. “Sometimes she follows me. I must drive around until I catch her, and then I chase her around for a while. We learned that back home.”

“Where would that be?”

“Tell me your name first.”

“Bob Martin.”

Elma turned onto a dirt road that took us towards Beverly Hills. The small adobe domes on either side looked like igloos with kitchen gardens, grape arbors and orange trees. We raced along on the ruts and the sails turned this way and that and dust blew up around us. “Montreal. Then New York, Vegas. We have a musical act.”

We came to a fancier neighborhood with Spanish colonial houses behind stucco walls and gates and modern bungalows with fences. She pulled off the road and parked under a giant eucalyptus tree in front of a low, single story block building with a flat reflective roof. “Maybe she is getting a hair cut,” Elma said.

“She could use one,” I said.

“That is what I would do, but she is young, she hasn’t learned.” There were three unoccupied hairdrying units shaped like eggs against one wall and three sinks, where three people were getting their hair washed by decrepit old men with long pink fingers. None of them were Irmela. We got back into the car. It was getting late. The cocaine wasn’t due till midnight but I didn’t feel like relaxing.

“Where does she drink?”

“She doesn’t drink anywhere. She plays pinball.”

“She knocked the Mekong back today like they were old friends.”

“We will go to streep mall next.”

Elma kept her eye on her rear the whole way to streep mall. She got off the freeway and onto a local pitted road lined with shacks with goat and chicken pens and cactus hedges. The dust rolled up over the windshield and engulfed the car. Up ahead three ceramic building ports shimmered in layers against brown dirt and dead grass. Horses and buggies, mule carts, cars and bikes were parked under the palm trees. At the turn off there was a sign that said, streep mall.

“So what’s here?”

“A bar where she knows a girl. They all have big breasts. Irmela could not get a job in this bar. She has the boy’s body and the owner said, this ain’t a Ruler bar. This wasn’t funny to me. I have heard of Ruler bars only in ludicrous stories in newspapers, the kind you get at the train station, for the toilet and the waiting room. Where they make those lies to keep you quiet while the train goes.”

“I’m familiar with them.”

We entered the first port. The stairwell down smelled like piss and rotting fruit. The climate control clanked and the air inside smelled like mildew and damp carpet. There was a long bar full of men with boob jobs. The bartender was a six foot blond dressed from the neck down in black. Elma spoke to her in what she later said was French, but I didn’t know French from German.

“We’ll look in back,” Elma said, taking my hand to lead me through a curtain into a dark room with ten pinball machines and a red light in the ceiling. We stood by the curtain watching till our eyes had adjusted and we saw she wasn’t there, though there was an unruly girl at one of the machines that looked like her for a moment.

We drove in light traffic towards Santa Monica, through Serra Springs. Elma looked relaxed and cool, her lips pursed as if she was whistling. I was sweating. Sweat poured down my neck and soaked my underarms. The vents were clogged with dust. The engine stalled slightly, as if it had a weak heartbeat.

We drove in broadening circles till it was dark and I knew at best we had two hours of power left. I was hungry. It was late. Carlos was picking it up at midnight at a Malibu mansion I was selling. The owners were away at their summer home in Canada, and my partner, the Priest, and I were running a party there that night. No one would show up till after ten, but I had wanted to be there first to make sure everything was right with the caterers. “Just one more place,” Elma said.

“Doesn’t Irmela ever get hungry? I mean, what kind of a game is this? I’m starving.” The blood was pounding in my ears. “I’m gonna lose what’s left of my mind here.”

“You cannot stand a little hunger to get what you desire? What kind of a weak man are you? If it were my briefcase I would not rest till I had it back again. I would not think of food.”

“Must be I can want two or three things at once.”

“Where we are going is a restaurant with a good pinball room that serves sticky rice, in Hollywood.”

“I am so fucking sick of sticky rice!”

“Everyone likes that. With the dried shrimp and chilies.”

“Yeah, yeah, and fish sauce. Ten years I lived down the block from the Kathasaritsagara Nam Pla factory. You know I learned to sleep with that smell in my head? I was once so drunk I curled up with my dog and slept with my face in his ass and didn’t even fucking know it, that’s how bad it was.”

“This is the place. Can you try to control yourself a little?”

“Whatever you say, if it will get my briefcase back.”

The restaurant was above ground on a desolate lot at the end of a block of one-story homes with all the windows broken out, and live ammo rounds scattered on the ground. Inside was efficient, clean, with strong fans, but sweltering hot. There was a counter and three small tables against an opposite wall, with a view of a compost dumpster and some stunted bougainvillea and jacaranda, dimly lit by the interior lights. The walls were white junk block, and the tables were boards screwed to metal stands. Out back, under a corrugated solar roof with screened-in sides and whale oil lamps were five pinball machines with a line for each. There was a bar at the far end where a girl dispensed bottles of cheap bironga and boiled water.

A short man with bags under his eyes and a pot belly stood behind the counter leaning on his hands, staring glumly out into his empty dining room. There was a strong scent of toasted dried squid in the air. He looked at Elma and smiled. “Oh, Elma, long time you haven’t been in.”

“I was not permitted to leave.”

“Sit down, please. And your friend,” he looked at me a little critically. I tried to get a line on whether he was her dad or not, but got nowhere with that. I looked at the time. It was nearly nine. My stomach roared. “You have roast pork sticky rice?”

“Yeah. With sauce?”

`“Sure, with sauce. And a side of toasted squid.”

Elma said, flipping the menu over twice to check between two things, just to be sure, “Convolvulus, with tempeh.”

“And brown rice?” he asked, looking up from his pad and smiling.

Elma returned the smile. “You remember. Thank you. And a mango juice with Keane’s Cane.” It was a sweet smile she had. Her whole face changed when we walked in.

“I don’t really even like toasted squid, but it smelled so good,” I said.

“Thaksin chars it. They all come here for dried squid.”

“Who?”

“Ruler Bikers, who else?”

I made a little air noise with my throat. “Is Irmela friends with them?”

She smiled again, only this time she was up to something. “Irmela is friends with everyone.”

“Does she steal everyone’s wallet and keys, and their briefcases?”

“No, not everyone. Everyone else though.”

I looked at Elma and thought, only a mad man would turn her down for that pinchependeja sister of hers, but that’s just what I’m gonna do. I remember that like it was yesterday.

Thaksin brought our food and I sat silently dipping balls of sticky rice in dried shrimp sauce while she ate the convolvulus greens and brown rice with a spoon and fork. It was good and I felt better, at least better enough to start hammering away at her again. “That car of yours hasn’t got two hours left on it. I’m under a very serious deadline.”

“What do you mean? The charge? I have two spare batteries. I can go all night.”

“Well in that case, I’m belching, let’s go.”

“Can you get the check?” She looked at her feet.

“Elma, I don’t care about the check, but don’t hang your head. I don’t feel sorry for you and I won’t. And by the way, we’re together here for a reason. You’re in the shit as much as she is, don’t forget.”

Elma said, “It is only that I don’t like asking for things.”

I got the check. “I’ll take it out of your end.”

“My end? Of what? I’m not in on any cut. Don’t try to make me think I am.”

I paid Thaksin and we took our food out in paper. As we headed out into the parking lot, a pair of headlights came on. “That’s my car,” I said.

“You see? She is waiting. Now she is done chasing us and we have to chase her.”

I ate the food out of my lap while Elma followed Irmela for block after block of boring shithouse homes. Lumps of clay in the desert. I could have been in the hills above Malibu sipping mock blue gel out of a martini glass and screwing an actress in the pool. The caterer would have the grilled prawns out. The band would be tuning up. (I can miss the sound check but the first set, I want to hear what I’m paying for. It’s got my name on it.) A few people would be there, but the big crowd wouldn’t arrive till after midnight, after Carlos picked up.

As long as the Priest was there I knew things would be ok. He ran whatever needed running. He treated my money like his own, so I had to be careful and know exactly what he was stealing. He had the ultimate shingles, MD and Priest. Or at least, he once did. He was defrocked in both professions, shorn of his titles and rights to practice, but not of his abilities. A medical man is invaluable in all kinds of business. And a Priest knows how to win the trust of others.

The taillights were more or less in view for about an hour, and I was getting antsy to find out if she even had the briefcase or if she’d turned it over to her Ruler biker friends, who might very well have known that I would be in Tony’s bar. You can set a clock by that.

Finally Irmela pulled onto the shoulder off the San Diego Freeway. Elma drove up along side her and I rolled down the window. “Do you have his briefcase?” Elma shouted. “He says he needs it. There are men who will kill him if it is gone.” Irmela smiled and laughed and bit her nails.

“Look kid, I know you got the bag.”

She shook her head and then her eyes welled up. “I gave it to David. Like he asked.”

“Asked what? David who?”

Elma yanked my sleeve and I turned on her and her face was an inch from mine. I could smell her breath, shrimp and garlic and lime juice. “Let me talk to her. You want the briefcase back?”

“Yes I do want the briefcase back.”

“Then shut up for a moment. Irmela, David has the briefcase? For how long?”

“While you were at the restaurant I brought it.”

“Goddamnit, would he open the thing, what kind of a pendejo scumbag is this guy?”

“A real one,” Elma said. “Much worse than you. He is a pig. He makes me do mamar. Blowjobs.”

“I’d make you do that too.”

“I hope you will not find out what a pig he is.”

“He said we owe him money,” Irmela said.

“But it is a lie,” Elma said.

“We have to pay. You know we have to pay. It is what you always tell me. Why would I not take it and give it to him? All that cocaine? You will never have to do mamar again. We don’t even have to sing.”

“If you think,” I said.

“Shshs! Cocaine? Why didn’t I know that? Am I so stupid? Court documents.” Elma shook her head. “Oaschgeign!”

“Oh, you took pity on a poor lawyer, but a burro, that’s another story then? It’s my stuff and your pinchita pendejita sister stole it and gave it to your pimp.”

“Hijo de la puta madre, we are not whores. He pays us to sing,” Elma said.

Irmela said, “We should go back before it is too late.”

“I agree,” I said.

We drove to Sunset Strip where there were 500-seat theaters running old TV comedies, Bewitched, The Honeymooners, Dragnet, strip joints and destination restaurants. I used to screw Samantha Stevens a couple of times a year, different ones in different seasons, and a Trixie understudy when I was starting out. But David’s joint wasn’t on that block. It was off of Sunset Boulevard, on Disney Street, a toilet. David’s end was the back end. There was a dairy on the corner and a peyote shop that also sold toilet paper and water and chocolate candy. There were three clubs and a bunch of bars. The clubs were small and unhealthy. The singers there were going down or nowhere.

David owned the Morrow, a nightclub with a loud pink neon sign above the door, squeezed between a whorehouse and a bar. There was a hot wind. Irmela yanked open the door. To the left was a zinc-topped bar with a few old men eating hard boiled eggs and drinking shots of mescal, and to the right a blacked out room with a small stage with lights and amps.

We walked to the end of the bar. There was a room with a black curtain across the door. Irmela opened the curtain. It was an office with a couch and a desk and a worn-out swivel chair that smelled like a fat man’s behind.

“He’s not here,” I said.

“Then he is in his room,” Irmela said.

“Maybe,” Elma said. “And maybe we don’t want to know what he’s doing.”

Irmela looked at me. She was afraid. “Let’s go,” said.

We went up a back stairs behind the stage to a dented, unpainted metal door. It smelled like goat piss. The stairs were soft under foot. She opened the door and we entered a room where the air was curdled. Seated in a reclining easy chair was a fat man with a big head and a roll of belly fat. He hadn’t shaved in a few days. He wore tinted glasses and breathed through his mouth. Under his arm were big patches of sweat. He had a remote control in his hand and he was watching two women fuck each other with strap-ons. On the floor was the briefcase, unopened. He turned the sound off. “Hello ladies,” he said, without taking his eyes from the television. “And whoever the fuck you are.” The air was warm and still and smelled of dirty laundry and unwashed scrotum.

“I would be the fuck who owns the goods in that bag.”

He turned from the TV and looked at me. I could see his eyes behind the amber lenses. “I can’t say I wasn’t expecting whoever she took this from to show up. I was trying to protect her is all. She’s like a daughter to me. Ever since they came to audition. Have you heard their act? They play two electric guitars and sing Austrian folk songs.”

“Ew,” Irmela. “Futschas.”

“I thought you said you came from Montreal?” I asked Elma.

“After Wiener we came from Montreal. Do you want a genealogy from me?”

“Hey,” David said. “We aren’t getting very far with this.”

“There’s nowhere to get here,” I said.

“What’s it worth to you this much of a find?” He leaned back in the chair and rubbed his balls.

I cleared my throat. “I’d be willing to consider not killing you if you give it back for free.”

He nodded. “That’s about what I figured.” he smelled his hands and sat up, reached down beside the chair and lifted a bottle of Cerveza Norte.

“Is that it?” Irmela asked.

I took the briefcase. “Yeah why not. One more thing, David. I’m taking the girls out tonight. I hope you don’t mind.”

His eyes widened and he looked at Elma.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Goodbye David.”

By Buzz Callaway

“I see the girls go by
Dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head
Until my darkness goes.”
–Jagger/Richards, Paint it Black

“My advice is to not let the boys in.”
–Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues

CHAPTER ONE

She was seventeen and all leg, banging the hell out of a pinball machine. Her back was turned and she had a cigarette going in her left hand with a cone of ash hanging off the end. The muscles in her bare thighs tensed up every time she bumped her pelvis into the coin box. As the ball shot towards her flippers she turned her feet in and banged with the right and then the left hand, knocking the ash to the floor. The red light on top of the machine started to turn and a police siren went off. It barked, “Pull to the side of the road…” and she slapped the flipper, sending the ball up the side and into a thousand-point hole. While the lights flashed and sirens sang she took a long drag off the cigarette.

I should have known better, but I wanted to buy her a drink so I moved the briefcase by my feet to the side of the stool where I could keep an eye on it and hopped down. In two steps I was standing beside her. She was tense, waiting for the ball to release. “What are you drinking?” I asked.

She didn’t look at me at all but eyed the ball, breathing through her nose. “Fuck you, I’m shooting,” she said, in some kind of an accent, one I never heard before.

“It’s just a game,” I said. “There’s no money in it.”

“Money? No.” Thwock. The ball knocked around making bing-bing noises and then disappeared in a shade. Her neck tightened. She had short tufted hair, all in a jumble of mismatched dyes and cuts, but in that light I couldn’t tell the colour of her skin; just that she was all lit up in neon beer signs and pinball. She wore a green tank top and orange cotton shorts that rode up her butt and lime green jellies on her feet. The machine exploded to life and the ball shot down the center. She hit both flippers and missed. “Chinga tu madre,” she muttered. “You did this. You owe me a drink. Oaschloch.”

“Sit down,” I said.

We took our seats at the bar. I moved the briefcase back in front of the stool and called Tony over. “Make it Mekong and bironga this time, and whatever the perrucha wants.”

“That’s ok to me,” she said. Tony slowly went about getting our drinks. He didn’t shave often, and he wasn’t a dresser, but Tony was a good guy.

“So what do you do?” I asked. I had her in the stool, so far so good, but she was sitting there looking bored, staring at the bottles with her chin propped up on top of her hands. Her eyes were the color of the room.

“Nothing. Why do you ask? Where’s my drink?”

“Relax, it’s coming.”

“O.K.” She scowled but she was still beautiful, with her cat eyes and high forehead and flat chest.

Tony put down the beers and poured the shots. She downed hers and drank some beer. I took a sip and watched her. She didn’t sit still for long. She was like a long guitar lick. Every minute she pulled a new face on me, or the mirror, or she twisted back and forth on the stool, her eyes narrow.

“You don’t go to school—“

She stared at her fingernails and asked, “To what? That? No. Do you take me for an idiot?” She looked me in the eyes and said, “Why don’t you tell me what you do?”

“I’m in real estate, mostly. I’m a small business man.” My old man always told me, whenever he wrote from Alcatraz, to get a shingle and work my angle from inside the law. Be a broker, he said. Real Estate, CPA, lawyer. Anyone who takes a cut.

“Small business, right. Pimp?” She was sort of smiling at me now.

“What the fuck is it with you?” I asked. “Pimp. Is that how I seem?”

“Forty-year-old guy, seventeen-year-old girl. What do you call that?”

“That’s bad math. I’m 25, you’re in range.” I raised my glass to her and smiled. “I wouldn’t expect no remuneration or nothing, for my greater maturity.”

“You think I don’t know those words? Because of my accent?”

I didn’t know what to think. “I was just making a lawyer joke. I can do that, cause I’m a lawyer.”

“That must come in handy.” She rolled a thin cigarette up from a pouch of Kretek and lit it.

“Are you really seventeen?” She held her wrist up and showed me her scar code. “Who gave you that?”

“Immigration. Bastards.”

“What the fuck are you doing here anyway?” I asked.

“What the fuck is anyone doing here?”

I couldn’t stay long. I had to deliver the briefcase to Carlos. “You want to go for a drive? This place is beat.”

She shrugged and looked like a child. “Maybe. I’m waiting for someone.”

“You tell me that now? After all that?”

“You never asked me. She will be here soon.”

“Oh, a bloody tortillera now. My fucking luck.”

She looked at me strangely, and the door outside opened, letting in a flood of sun that lit up her face and I saw that her eyes were blue. In walked a woman, blinking. She shut the door and looked around. My friend got off her stool and called, “Elma, over here, here.” Elma looked a little older, longer in the face, and she was a bad dresser. Her paisley pants were like bags and her feet were filthy from walking in sandals. Her hair was cut nicely though, it hung to her shoulder straight, and it was all one color of blond, with the left side of LuminEssence flashing in the dark like the sun.

“This is my sister Elma.”

Elma nodded and tried to smile.

“Now I know who she is but who are you?” I asked.

Elma answered. “She’s my little sister, who should not be talking to people like you.”

“People like me? Now what is that?”

“I won’t say. Irmela, are you done playing pinball?”

“Yes, I am all done with this.”

I got down off the stool and turned to face Elma. “We were just having a drink, I hope you don’t mind. In fact, I invited Irmela to go for a drive. If you want, you can chaperone us.”

“This we cannot do.”

“Now don’t be so harsh.” I could tell I had Elma, she just needed reeling in. But it wasn’t gonna happen in two seconds. “Irmela can sit in back where she’ll be safe. You sit up front with me. We’ll go for a ride along the coast. I know a bar with great food looking right out over the ocean. We can get steak and dance all night long. And we can always rent a room if we’re too drunk to drive.” She pretended to grimace and now, for me, it was a matter of pride. “If you don’t wanna do that, then I’ll drive you wherever you’re going.”

“I have a car out front.”

“Maybe I’m going at this wrong.”

“Why don’t you buy me a drink here. Then I can decide about the roadhouse and all that.”

I turned to Irmela, with a big smile on my face, thinking, now for the little sister. But she wasn’t there. I had not seen her go out the door. I looked down the bar, and then, as I turned back to the door it was closing slowly and I could hear footsteps crunching on the stones of the parking lot. “What the fuck—”

Elma’s face didn’t budge. She said, “Irmela does that a lot. She’s very moody. I’ll go after her.” She walked out the door and I sat down and started to sip my beer when I noticed that the briefcase was gone. “Fuck!” I yelled. Tony stared at me, and I ran out the door into the blasting sun. Elma was trotting out of the parking lot, chasing my car on foot. I patted my pockets. She had taken my keys and wallet too. “God damn it!” I screamed.

Elma stopped running and turned towards me. “She drove off in someone’s car. I tried to stop her, but….”

“But what? Fuck, that’s my car. And she stole my briefcase.” I was fucked. Two kilos of cocaine, gone! I never had to kill anyone before and I’d only known her five minutes and all I could see in either direction was murder. Five fucking minutes. The first no less.

“She’s always doing this, I’m sorry. What was in the briefcase?”

“Important court documents. I’m totally screwed with my firm if I lose those things. Screwed. Like dead screwed.”

“Well she doesn’t care about your documents!” Elma said, laughing. “You are like a child. She is only after money or drugs.”

“We have to find her. It would not be good if my associates or a competitor laid hands on those documents.”

It was the hottest part of the afternoon and we were in the sun. The heat coming off the crushed stone of the parking lot baked my face and the wind made my eyes wince. I needed my silver snood and goggles. She looked around the parking lot and said, “There. That’s where I parked. Come on.”

I followed her to her car and my spirits fell as soon as I saw it. “Oh man,” I said. It was pathetic, a solar toy made out of Litewood and rubber with two solarsails. Useless at night after two hours. And a maximum speed of 40 mph. “Am I nuts?” I asked. “Yes,” I answered, and got in her car.

You would think that completing my fifth novel, Gaha: Babes of the Abyss would be an occasion for celebration but I don’t feel like celebrating at all. Each book I complete becomes harder to sell. At this point the number of agents reading unsolicited manuscripts is small and even the indie presses don’t want to see manuscripts. Publishing and the whole apparatus of editors, agents and bookstores is in total collapse. But, for some reason, I keep at it. Completing a book is its own reward, especially, as in my case, if you have a handful of readers.

It was a joyous moment when I discovered I had written the final lines. That was one of the strangest moments of my writing life. I knew how I wanted the novel to end, but it was bending away from that ending. Faced with about 30 pages to go, I felt the whole thing slipping away from me. And it was making me panic. Unable to think my way through to a plausible, satisfying ending, I finally gave up and told myself to let it come. Let the characters go where they are going. Without a lot of hope I wrote the chapter I was working on, knowing that when it was done I would have at most 20 pages to wind things up. I sat down and plodded along as I had for 3 years, putting down the words. The scene worked out very well, and as I brought it to a conclusion I wrote a sentence and felt, after that sentence, a total silence. There was no next chapter. I had said all I had to say about things. Without planning it, without even knowing it, I had written the last line of the book. It was irrefutable. The End. I sat there a little stunned. Was it really over? Yes it was. It required revision. I had to tweak some parts. But the last sentence was there.

Gaha took 3 years to write, but there were interruptions, many interruptions. I worked for an hour to an hour and a half 4 or 5 nights a week. I wrote two or three pages on a good day, and revised constantly as I went along. It is the first novel I have written entirely on a computer, and entirely at home, after dinner. And it is more disciplined than the others. I set out to write a book about 100,000 words long and wrote one that is 102,000 words. I hewed closely to my protagonist/narrator’s voice and character. I stuck to the plot and kept at it to make sense. And I resisted the impulse to explain Bob’s world in ways he wouldn’t naturally explain it as the narrator of his story.

The story itself comes from The World’s Worst Women (Of the 20^th Century), a true crime book I discovered in the stacks at the library I work in. It was 1993. I knew right away I wanted to steal the story of the First Acid Bath Murders (see here for the second acid bath murderer).  It was not until years later that I knew I wanted to set it 500 years in the future. And it was not until years after that that I realized that the sci fi trilogy I planned on writing would start with the murderous adventures of Bob Martin and the van Doderer sisters, Irmela and Elma.

This book is sci fi noir. It is a dark, bitter tale of lust, exploitation, fraud, murder, and civil war. When I tell friends who have lived in LA that I destroy the city of Los Angeles, reduce it to rubble, they smile and cheer. Literally.

I am going to start posting chapters shortly, one a week, hoping to find readers. Then there will be e-book and print-on-demand editions for sale.

Recently my pal in all things literary, Miette, shared the following search term, used to reach one of her bloghs:
“my anxious young pussy eater was only priming me for the fucking i was about to get”
N0t being one to miss an opportunity, i pasted the tasty morsel into Google and found Mrs. Giggles, a reviewer of romance fiction. the book under review is an erotic e-book, The Pussyeater. But it is the review that transcends the text. It may be the best book review I’ve ever read. And it made me want to read the book! despite apearances, I don’t actually read ‘erotica’ or pornography. But then, I don’t read much sci fi either, i’m more sci fi curious. any book in any genre can be good! http://www.mrsgiggles.com/pod/christian_eater.html

Chanticleer

Last fall I bought a stewing rooster from Kingbird Farm at the Ithaca Farmer’s Market. Over the years, decades actually, I have been a big fan of the soup chicken. Mostly because a soup chicken costs a lot less than a regular chicken. They are scrawny, tough but flavourful birds. Slow cooking produces a delicious stock and enough meat to figure in the resulting soup. Putting as soup chicken into a crock pot in the morning, and returning after work to the smell of chicken stock is wonderful. In less than an hour a soup of noodles, tofu, chicken and vegetables will be on the table.   

A rooster is a different critter altogether. This bird was not years old, and had not spent its life laying eggs. It was a year old, ten pounder with lots of fat and meat on its bones a Chanticleer who died strutting about among his many Partelets. I have never seen one before but in appearance anyway it reminded me of the capons my mother used to get for special dinners, like Passover. I decided then that I would pay $4 a lb for this guy and make Coq au Vin.

I don’t know why Coq au Vin should intrigue me. Maybe it’s the idea of cooking a chicken with red wine. Maybe because it’s a French dish that appeals to me, where most don’t. And the thing is, you never see a Coq anywhere, unless you live on a farm.

There were many recipes on the web, most for either your standard 3-1/2 pound roaster, or the tough layers. I did find a couple that referred to actual roosters, but none of these was for a ten pounder. So I cobbled together a recipe and made adjustments: instead of pearl onions I would use garlic leaks, which were fresh at the farmer’s market, and instead of bacon I used some lard. Pancetta would have been fine. Bacon would have been great but daughter Q doesn’t like bacon.

The recipe:

Cooking time: all day

Preheat oven to 300 degrees

1-10 pound rooster

Salt and pepper

1 cup chopped onion

1 cup diced carrot

1 cup diced celery

2 T chopped garlic

½ cup olive oil and lard (or brown bacon and reserve the bacon)

2 bottles red wine

2 cups chicken stock

2 bay leaves

2 t thyme

1 t rosemary

1 lb portabella mushroom

1 lb shitake mushrooms

1 large leak or a bunch of garlic leaks

Chop up the rooster: thighs in two pieces, legs whole, wings in three pieces, breast in half and then each half in three pieces, back separated at the middle joint, pat the pieces dry, and sprinkle salt and grind pepper on both sides of each piece

Brown rooster pieces in several batches over high heat

Sautee onions, carrots, celery and garlic over medium heat in the same pan adding a little salt and pepper

Add one bottle of wine to deglaze the pan and let it bubble with the vegetables

Add the herbs

Arrange rooster pieces in a deep roasting pan large enough to hold them in a single layer. Pour over the vegetables and add another bottle of wine and stock. It should be at least 2/3s up the sides of the thickest pieces. Put in the oven until it is simmering and then cover with a tight piece of foil. Bake for 2-3 hours, until tender but not falling off the bone. Then put it aside and let it rest for hours. The next step is to preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Sautee the mushrooms in olive oil and add to the rooster pan. Sautee the leaks, or baby onions and add them to the pan. Taste for salt. Shake it a bit to evenly distribute everything and then bake for another hour or so, until heated through. Remove rooster and vegetables to a platter. Skim some fat and reduce the sauce on the stove over high heat. Serve with mashed potatoes, rice or pasta and a salad. We had a tossed salad and frisee wilted with bacon, garlic and olive oil and my vegan mashed potatoes: russets boiled until soft with garlic and mashed with olive oil and some of the cooking liquid. Oh yes, and a couple of bottle of red wine that was about 10 dollars better than that in which I stewed the rooster.

The recipe? I got it initially from one of Marcella Hazan’s great books. It works best with smallish birds (I’ve done 4-1/2 pounders, but it’s not as good). So when Autumn Harvest had  chickens only a little over 3 lbs, I was set. I bought two, then from Stick and Stone Farm I bought a head of escarole and fresh salad greens. This is the boon of a mild winter and summer temperatures in March. (I also cut three stalks of asparagus yesterday!) I had some left over tomato sauce, so dinner on Sunday was grilled chicken, whole wheat spaghetti with tomato sauce and a salad.

Split a 3-3 1/2 pound chicken down the back and spread open. Then using a heavy iron frying pan literally smash the chicken until it flat. In a mortar and pestle coarsely grind two T of black peppercorns and 2 T of whole coriander seeds. Put chicken in a shallow glass dish and squeeze two lemons over it, rubbing the juice into the skin and flesh. Rubbb  2T of smashed and chopped garlic. Then sprinkle rock salt to taste on both sides. Rub the coriander black pepper mix into both sides, in all the nooks and crannies (don’t neglect any part of the bird, pound more if need be). Let it marinade in the rub for at least 4 hours. Then, fifteen minutes before cooking time heat the grill on high, with the lid down. After fifteen minutes is up clean the grill and lower the heat on the middle two burners to low, keep the outer two on high. Lay the chicken skin side up over the coolest part of the grill and lower the lid. Total cooking time will be about 45 minutes. Turn the bird every ten minutes or so and rotate it around to cook evenly. When it is golden and crispy on the outside (with that intoxicating, spicy perfume of lemons, black pepper, garlic and coriander infused in the crunchy skin) remove it to a chopping board and let it rest for 5 minutes. Toss the salad and the pasta. Chop the chicken into serving pieces with a cleaver and serve with a great  rose from France or Italy if it’s a warm day, a light red wine or strong white, like Riesling, if it’s a cold a crappy day.

GAHA: Babes of the Abyss is finally finished, at least, provisionally finished: I am editing the manuscript to send out to my first readers. This implies I have more readers in reserve, which is true, but we are talking 4 people here and 5 people there. And grateful I am for having them! We would need two cars to get to a reading.

The past few months I’ve been reading source materials on the southwest and California, as research for the book. During the early stages of composition I did a lot of online research, and brought many books home for the library, but it was just enough information to feed the story, I hadn’t yet done the excessive reading I love doing for a novel. I read two books, one about Crazy Horse, and one on early exploration of the southwest by Europeans, from 1500-1846. In that book there was a reference to Samuel Chamberlain’s My Confession. My Confession is a memoir of fighting in the Mexican American war. Chamberlain was 16 when he ran away from his New England home and headed west. Written in the years preceding the Civil War, it recounts in rollicking detail his adventures fighting, whoring and drinking, falling in love with not a few women along the way. At the end of the war he deserts his unit and joins up briefly with the Glanton Gang, a notorious band of terrorists who killed indiscriminately for profit and pleasure, selling scalps to Mexican authorities. He barely escapes their destruction, lives briefly in California and then returns to New England, where he marries and lives out his life as a colourful and prominent man in his community. The book is source for Cormac McCarthy’s incredible Blood Meridian. My Confession lacks that book’s literary power but is instead full of humanity, romanticism and bravado.

After finishing My Confession I was going to read the massive trilogy about the fall of Hungary by Miklos Banffy, but instead found a book I’ve always wanted to read by Blaise Cendrars, Gold. Gold takes place in the same years as My Confession and is also an exaggerated true story about an outsized figure, in the case John Agustus Sutter, the Swiss ne’er-do-well who deserted his family and came to America to make his fortune. He heads out west, knocks about the Pacific coast, heads to Hawaii and Alaska and finally lands in san Francisco Bay, where he founds a dynasty on a Mexican land grant called New Helvetia. In 1848 he is on his way to being the richest man in the world when Gold is discovered on his land. The discovery of Gold destroys him, and he spends following decades trying to recover his land and rights. He never does. The story gives Cendrars and opportunity to indulge all of his interests. There are paragraph long lists of the languages Sutter learns, there is a pipe smoking dog that does tricks, and there is Sutter, strutting like Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. It is Cendrars first novel, but it reads like a masterwork. Oh yes, it violates all of our country club, MFA rules of good fiction writing. Bravo. Who needs them? The rules I mean. the book is extremely short, and, I was surprised to learn very close to the ‘facts’ at least in so far as they are available online.

One of the pleasures of writing novels is doing research, especially research I will never use. It is the saturation in a place and a series of ideas and events that energizes the story. One small detail that comes from reading makes the massive amount of work worthwhile. My mother-in-law, the great novelist Mary Anderson, once remarked that she always felt sad when she realized she wasn’t researching a novel.