Haunted

A gun. A scope. Good aim and a motorcade.

  What he learned as a kid, watching the news on television, every night.

  “So I'm not forgotten,” the Chef says.

  So his life isn't wasted.

  He says, “That's my Plan B.”

  Product Placement

  A Story by Chef Assassin

  To Mr. Kenneth MacArthur

  Manager of Corporate Communications

  Kutting-Blok Knife Products, Inc.

  Dear Mr. MacArthur,

  Just so you know, you make a great knife. An excellent knife.

  It's tough enough doing professional kitchen work without tolerating a bad knife. You go to do a perfect potato allumette, that's thinner than a pencil. Your perfect cheveu cut, that's about as big around as a wire—that's half as thick as a potato chip. You make your living cutting carrots brunoisette with hot sauté pans already waiting with butter, people yelling for those potatoes cut minunette, and you learn quick the difference between a bad knife and a Kutting-Blok.

  The stories I could tell you. Time and time again, how your knives have pulled my ass out of the fire. You chiffonade Belgian endive for eight hours, and you might get some idea what my life is like.

  Still, it never fails, you can tourné baby carrots all day, carving each one into a perfect orange football, and the one you screw up, that carrot lands on the plate of some failed cook, some nobody with a community-college degree in hospitality services, just a piece of paper, who now thinks he's a restaurant critic. Some prick who hardly knows how to chew and swallow, and he's writing in next week's paper how the chef at Chez Restaurant is lousy at tourné-ing carrots.

  Some bitch no caterer would even hire to flute mushrooms, she's putting in print how my bâtonnet parsnips are too thick.

  These sellouts. No, it's always easier to nitpick than actually to cook the meal.

  Every time somebody orders the dauphinoise potatoes or the beef Carpaccio, please know that someone in our kitchen says a little prayer of thanks for Kutting-Blok knives. The perfect balance of them. The riveted handle.

  Sure, knock wood, we would all like to make more money for less work. But selling out, turning critic, setting yourself up as a know-it-all, and taking cheap shots at the people still trying to make their living peeling calf tongue . . . paring away kidney fat . . . pulling off liver membrane . . . while those critics sit in their nice clean offices and type their gripes with nice clean fingers—that's just not right.

  Of course, this is just their opinion. But there it is, showcased next to real news—famines and serial killers and earthquakes—there it's given the same-sized type. Somebody's gripe that their pasta wasn't quite al dente. As if their opinion is an Act of God.

  A negative guarantee. The opposite of an advertisement.

  To my mind, those who can, do. Those who can't, gripe.

  Not journalism. Not objective. Not reporting, but judging.

  These critics, they couldn't cook a great meal if their life depended on it.

  It's with this in mind I started my project.

  No matter how good you are, working in a kitchen is a slow death by a million tiny knife cuts. Ten thousand little burns. Scalds. Standing on concrete all night, or walking across greasy or wet floors. Carpal tunnel, nerve damage from stirring and chopping and spooning. Deveining an ocean of shrimp under ice water. Knee pain and varicose veins. Wrist and shoulder repetitive-motion injuries. A career of perfect calamares rellenos is a lifelong martyrdom. A lifetime spent turning out the ideal ossobuco alla milanese is a long, slow death by torture.

  Still, no matter how thick-skinned you are, getting picked apart in public by some newspaper or Internet writer does not help.

  Those online critics, they're a dime a dozen. Everybody with a mouth and a computer.

  That's what all my targets have in common. It's a blessing the police don't work a little closer together. They might notice a freelance writer in Seattle, a student reviewer in Miami, a Midwestern tourist posting his opinion on some travel Web site . . . There is a pattern to my sixteen targets, so far. Yes, and there's my years of motivation.

  There's not much difference between boning a rabbit and a snarky Web-site blogger who said your costatine al finocchio needed more Marsala.

  And thanks to Kutting-Blok knives. Your forged tourné knives do both jobs beautifully, without the hand and wrist fatigue you might get using a less expensive, stamped paring knife.

  Likewise, cleaning a skirt steak and skinning the little weasel who posted an article about how your beef Wellington was ruined with too much foie gras, both jobs go fast and effortless thanks to the flexible blade of your eight-inch filleting knife.

  Easy to sharpen and easy to clean. Your knives are a blessing.

  It's the targets that always turn out to be such a disappointment. No matter how little you expect when you meet these people in person.

  All it takes is a little praise to arrange a get-together. Imply the kind of sexual partner they might want. Better yet, imply you're the editor of a national magazine, looking to take their voice worldwide. To exalt them. Give them the glory they so richly deserve. Lift them to prominence. All that attention crap, offer them half that and they'll meet you in any dark alley you can name.

  In person, their eyes are always so small, each eye like a black marble stuck into a fat man's bellybutton. Thanks in part to Kutting-Blok knives, they look better, cleaned and dressed and trimmed. Meat, ready for some good use.

  After you've pulled the cold viscera out of a hundred guinea hens, it's no big deal, slitting the belly of a freelance writer who wrote in some regional entertainment guide that your escarole-feta turnovers were too chewy. No, the Kutting-Blok ten-inch French knife makes even that task as easy as gutting a trout or salmon or any round fish.

  It's odd, the parts that stand out in your mind. A look at someone's thin, white ankle, and you can see who she must've been as a girl in school, before she learned to make her living by attacking food. Or another critic, who wore his brown shoes polished bright as the caramel crust on a crème brûlée.

  It's this same attention to detail that you put into every knife.

  This is the care and attention I used to put into my kitchen work.

  Still, no matter how careful I am, it's just a matter of time before the police will catch me. With this in mind, my only fear is that Kutting-Blok knives will become linked in the public mind with a series of deeds that people might misunderstand.

  Too many people will see my preference as a kind of endorsement. Like Jack the Ripper doing a television commercial.

  Ted Bundy for Such & Such Brand rope.

  Lee Harvey Oswald pitching Such & Such Brand rifle.

  A kind of negative endorsement, true. Maybe even something that would hurt your market share and net sales. Especially in the upcoming retail Christmas season.

  It's standard procedure at all major newspapers, the moment they hear about a big jetliner disaster—a midair collision, a hijacking, a runway crash—they know to pull all the big display advertisements for airlines that day. Because, within minutes, every airline will call to cancel their ad, even if it means paying full price for a space they won't use. A space filled at the last moment with a freebie promo ad for the American Cancer Society or Muscular Dystrophy. Because no airline wants to risk being associated with the day's bad, bad news. The hundreds dead. Being linked that way in the public mind.

  It takes very little effort to recall what the so-called Tylenol Murders did for that product's stock. With seven people dead, just the 1982 recall of their product cost Johnson & Johnson $125 million.

  That kind of negative endorsement, it's the opposite of an advertisement. Like what critics do with their snide reviews, printed only to show how clever and bitter they've become.

  The details of each target, including the knife used, it's all still so fresh in my mind. It would take very little effort for the police to make me confess, to make it public record, the wide
variety of your excellent knives I've used and for what purpose.

  Forever after, people will refer to the “Kutting-Blok Knife Murders” or the “Kutting-Blok Serial Killings.” Your company is so much better known than anonymous little me. You have a knife in so many kitchens, already. It would be a horrible shame to see your generations of quality and hard work wrecked because of my project.

  Please bear in mind, food critics don't buy many knives. Knock on wood, but industry sympathy in this case might well be with me. Me, a grass-roots hero. You never know.

  Any small investment you can make, it will benefit us both.

  The more resources you can provide me to evade capture, the less likely it will be that this unfortunate fact is ever known to the average knife-consumer. A gift of as little as five million dollars would allow me to emigrate and live unnoticed in another country, far, far outside your market demographic. That money will guarantee your company a steady rise into a bright future. For me, the money will allow me to retrain in a new field of work, a new career.

  Or, for as little as one million dollars, I will switch to Sta-Sharp knives—and if arrested will swear I've used only their substandard products throughout my project . . .

  One million dollars. How's that for brand loyalty?

  To contribute, please run a display advertisement this upcoming Sunday, in your local daily newspaper. Upon seeing that ad, I will contact you about accepting your help. Until then, I must continue with my work. Otherwise, you can expect another target.

  Thank you for considering my request. I look forward to hearing from you, soon.

  In this world, where so few people will devote their lives to producing a product of lasting quality, I applaud you.

  I remain, as always, your biggest fan,

  Richard Talbott

  15

  Behind the lobby snack bar, the microwave oven dings, once, twice, three times, and the light inside shuts off. Chef Assassin pops open the door, and takes out a paper plate covered with a sheet of paper towel. He lifts the towel, and steam mushrooms into the cold lobby air. On the plate, a few long curls of meat still pop and spit, steaming in their pools of melted grease.

  Chef Assassin sets the plate on the snack bar's marble countertop and says, “Who wants thirds?”

  Standing around the lobby, here and there, tucked into the shadow of alcoves and niches, in the coat-check window and usher's stand, Mrs. Clark and Miss America, Countess Foresight and the Earl of Slander, all of us stand, chewing. Grease shines bright on our chins and the tips of our fingers. Each of us holds a damp paper plate in one hand. Chewing.

  “Quick, before they get cold,” Chef Assassin says. “These have Cajun spices. It's to hide the flowery smell.”

  It's the smell of Comrade Snarky's perfume or bath powder, maybe her lace handkerchief, something sweet with the smell of roses. Chef Assassin says two-thirds of your sense of taste is based on how a food smells.

  Miss America steps over and holds out her plate. Chef Assassin puts a brown curl of meat in his own mouth, then plucks it out with his fingers, fast. “It's still hot,” he says, and blows on it. With his other hand, he drops little curls of meat on Miss America's plate.

  Her plate full, Miss America disappears to stand, almost hidden, behind the coat-check counter. The wall and racks of wooden hangers behind her. The hangers all empty except for the little numbered brass tag on each one.

  The lobby air is rich with cookout smells, fatty bacon smells, hamburger smells, burned-fat and grease-fire smells. And all of us stand here chewing. Nobody says: Should we go get more? Nobody says: We need to wrap what's left and haul it to the subbasement before it becomes a public-health issue . . .

  No, we stand here, licking our fingers.

  Each of us writing and rewriting our story of this moment. We're inventing how Mr. Whittier butchered Comrade Snarky. And what her ghost did, for revenge.

  Nobody sees her come down the stairs. Nobody hears her walking down the carpet from the second-balcony foyer. Nobody looks up until she says, “You have food?”

  It's Comrade Snarky. In her heaped layers of fairy-godmother ball gowns. Her piled-on layers of shawls and wigs. She stands at the wide foot of the lobby's grand staircase, her blue-white hands lost in the folds of her skirt. Her eyes lead the rest of her into the room, her eyes and nose pulling her forward. “What are you cooking?” She says, “Give me some . . .”

  Nobody says anything. All our mouths stuffed full. We're picking at shreds of meat stuck between our teeth.

  Comrade Snarky sees the paper plate of curled brown meat, steaming there on the snack-bar counter.

  Nobody thinks to stop her.

  Comrade Snarky lurches across the blue lobby, falling once on the pink marble floor, her skirts dragging, then reaching up to grab the edge of the snack-bar countertop and pull herself to her feet. Standing there, her face and the pile of her wigs collapse onto the plate of meat.

  Behind her, coming down the blue-carpeted stairs, are her footprints in blood.

  The on-again, off-again ghost of here.

  All any of us can see is her towering gray curls as they bob and bounce over the paper plate on the marble countertop. The seat of her dress is blooming, bigger and bigger, with a huge red flower. Then her wigs pull back, and all of her turns away from the empty plate. A brown curl of meat still clutched in one blue-white hand, Comrade Snarky licks her lips and says, “God, it's so tough and bitter.”

  Somebody needs to say something. To be . . . kind.

  Skinny Saint Gut-Free, he says, “I don't usually eat meat, but that was . . . quite delicious.” And he looks around.

  Holding up the stop sign of one greasy palm, his eyes shut, Chef Assassin says, “I warn you . . . do not criticize my cooking . . .”

  The rest of us nod our heads yes. Delicious. The rest of us, our plates are empty. We all swallow, still chewing. Our tongues sliding over our teeth for any leftover film of oil. Of fat.

  Comrade Snarky crosses to the tapestry sofas in the center of the lobby, dead center, under the frozen sparkle of the biggest crystal chandelier. Her hands lift a blue velvet pillow, gold tassels hanging from the four corners, and she moves it to one end of a sofa. Her feet kick out of her shoes. Her white stockings stained red. She goes to sit down, to lie back on the sofa with her head on the pillow. And Comrade Snarky, she winces. Her face pulls together, tight for a minute, then relaxes. She reaches behind her, feeling up, underneath the wet layers of her skirts and petticoats. She leans forward as if to stand, and her eyes fall on the footprints of blood that have followed her across the blue carpet from the stairs to the snack bar to the sofa.

  We all look at the blood spilling out of her shoes.

  Still chewing, her jaw going around and around, a cow with its cud, Comrade Snarky looks at us.

  Trying to digest this scene.

  When her hand comes out from the back of her skirt, she's holding Chef Assassin's boning knife. The blade still clotted and varnished with blood.

  Chef Assassin steps forward from behind the snack bar. His hand open, and wiggling his greasy fingers at her, he says, “I'll take that. It's mine.”

  And Comrade Snarky stops chewing. And swallows.

  “I . . . ,” she says.

  Comrade Snarky looks at the knife and the curl of meat she still holds.

  On the snack of meat, there's a rose tattoo she's never seen before. Except maybe in a mirror. Only now it's lightly browned.

  The Earl of Slander, his face is hidden as he licks his paper plate.

  Comrade Snarky says:

  “I only fainted . . .”

  She says:

  “I fainted . . . and you ate my ass?”

  She looks at the empty, greasy paper plate still sitting on the snack bar, and she says:

  “You fed me my own ass?”

  Mother Nature belches behind her open hand, and says, “Beg pardon.”

  Chef Assassin holds out his hand for the knife, a th
in circle of red showing under one thumbnail. He looks up to see a thousand-thousand tiny versions of Comrade Snarky sparkling in the dusty chandelier crystal. In her hand, the thousand-thousand Cajun-cooked roses.

  Countess Foresight turns away but keeps watching her own, smaller version of this reality, a movie- or television-sized version of Comrade Snarky reflected in the wide mirror behind the snack bar.

  All of us seeing our own version of Comrade Snarky. All with our own story about what's going on. All of us sure that our version is what's real.

  Checking her wristwatch, Sister Vigilante says, “Eat up. It's only one hour before lights-out.”

  All those smaller versions of Comrade Snarky, they all swallow hard. Their blue-white cheeks bulge. Their throats cinch shut, gagging on the taste of their own bitter skin.

  Each of us turning our reality into a story. Digesting it to make a book. What we see happen, already a movie screenplay.

  The Mythology of Us.

  Then, right on cue, the full-sized Comrade Snarky sitting on the tapestry sofa, she slides to the floor. Her eyes still open a little to stare up at the chandelier. To lie in a heap of velvet and brocade on the pink marble floor. It's then she's dying. One hand still holding the boning knife. One hand still holding the brown curl of her fried butt.

  The tapestry sofa blotted with dark red where she'd sat down. The blue velvet pillow still dented from her head. Comrade Snarky will not be the camera behind the camera behind the camera. We hold the truth about her in our hands. Wedged between our teeth.

  Her voice a whisper, Comrade Snarky says, “I guess . . . I deserved . . .”

  And after a moment of rewind, from the Earl of Slander's tape recorder, her voice again says, “deserved this . . . deserved this . . .”

  Anticipation

  A Poem About Comrade Snarky

  “I lost my virginity,” Comrade Snarky says, “through my ear.”

  So young, she still believed in Santa Claus.

  Comrade Snarky onstage, her knuckles rest on her hips, her arms bent

  so her leather elbow patches poke out at each side.