Monster's Chef by Jervey Tervalon Page A

and lingered in the doorway, eyeing me.
    â€œFirst, Monster thought you were a Jew. He used to like Jews. Now, he has problems with them. I said you were cool, you weren’t a Jew. He looked right over the fact that you were black. I mean, you are light, lighter than a lot of white people with tans, but still Monster used to be up on that. He’d say, No way! Don’t be hiring black people, I don’t care if they look white.”
    â€œWhy?”
    Thug laughed thunderously.
    â€œDo I look like a psychiatrist? All I know is I’m the only real black man working for that crazy muthafucka. I thought I could slip you in since Monster didn’t notice you, or didn’t care.”
    â€œThanks, I guess.”
    â€œI thought we had something big in common,” Thug said, and grabbed at his crotch. I took a step backward.
    â€œI don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m just average on a good day.”
    â€œLet me be the judge of that,” he said.
    I retreated another step. Thug finally gave up on his heavy-handed seduction and stepped outside into the brightly lit night of Monster’s Lair.
    After Thug left, I put a chair beneath the doorknob and slept in the recliner near the fireplace, leaving pillows under the sheets for Thug to interfere with if he decided to bum-rush the show.
    Morning came and I was out of the bungalow with a backpack stuffed with everything I could possibly need for a day away.
    Manny blew the horn of his pickup and I hurried outside and hopped in.
    â€œMy friend, you stay away from this Thug. He is unnatural. A pato .”
    â€œA duck?”
    â€œYes, a pato .”
    He dropped me off at the beach and said he’d give me a ride back the next day when he returned from Lompoc. Lompoc was another strange California name that sounded like a disease, a rare form of smallpox or something. Anyway, it was a town I didn’t plan to visit, even if it was the Cut Flower Capital of the United States and the vast fields of flowers were supposed to be spectacular.
    I arrived at the motel and immediately put on my trunks, grabbed a skinny towel, and ran straight for the ocean. I dived in without hesitation, though it was an overcast day.
    Frigid!
    I tried swimming out somewhere near the distant buoys, but I didn’t get close.
    My stroke was fucked up and then the chill got to me, so cold my testicles headed north, lost in the maze of my lower intestines. I turned around and pounded the water until I dragged my sorry ass out of the surf and collapsed onto my towel.
    Frigid fingers fumbled with the envelope, ripping the letter as it pulled free.
    Gibson—
    We need to talk, work through our issues. I’m ready for a face-to-face. Hope you are well.
    Love,
    Elena
    A firebomb went off in my chest, air rushed from my lungs, gasping for breath on dry land.
    Dazzling images of the perpetual happiness of marriage: sharing a bed, a shower, breakfast, a return to a life I had never expected to have again, a life with her. I was high on it, higher than I had ever been on the pipe.
    Exile was over. Elena was calling me home.
    It took a day for Asha to return my call; she had one emergency after another to handle back there at the halfway house. Meth freaks were in revolt. Mistake was that they sent her three, and in a program for ten, three tweakers were ten times too many. Crackheads and heroin addicts were more or less manageable, but not meth freaks, or so she told me. They were always irritable, belligerent, or withdrawn, and of course they regularly relapsed, which meant a hell of a lot of paperwork.
    â€œI wish you were here,” she said, laughing. “At least I never had to worry about the kitchen.”
    We laughed about that, the good old days of life in a halfway house, slinging gruel for the semi-institutionalized.
    Then I told her about the letter.
    â€œOh, that’s great, that’s wonderful news.”
    â€œI want to come back to New