Delicious (28 page)

“What's that, your fourth trip?”

Reggie sat down and grinned. “Number five.”

Baxter shook his head in amazement. “You amaze me, dude. How can you eat that much?”

Reggie smiled again. “It's all about the order. You gotta sequence things. That's the secret. And you gotta take your time. You eat too fast, the buffet wins.”

“The buffet wins?”

Reggie put his fork down and sipped his coffee. “Everybody pays like twenty bucks, right? All you can eat?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Whatever. Twenty, thirty, it don't matter. What matters is, you gotta eat more than twenty-nine dollars' worth of food. Otherwise the buffet wins.”

“That's a lot of food.”

Reggie agreed. “You gotta be scientific. Like it's easy if there's steak or lobster, because all you gotta do is grab a plate of surf-an'-turf, and blackjack! You win. But if it's like this breakfast thing, you gotta work in shifts. There's no way you can get thirty bucks' worth of bacon and eggs onto one plate. You gotta have a system.”

“You figured this out? You got a system?”

“Exactly, man.” Reggie warmed to his subject. “First thing, ignore the fruit. Fruit is cheap.”

“It's good for you.”

“Eat it at home. This is a buffet.”

Baxter nodded. “Okay. No fruit.”

“First, I hit the pastries. No muffins, unless they're super fancy. I'll have a couple of sticky buns or a Danish to kind of go with the coffee and kick my digestion into gear.”

“That's plate number one. Worth maybe four or five bucks.”

“Right. Then I move on to something like a waffle. Belgian waffles are my favorite.”

“But that's got fruit on it.”

Reggie nodded. “But it's more like a sauce.”

“It's still fruit.”

“Okay. But there's whipped cream.”

Baxter nodded. “Plate two.”

“Sometimes I'll have pancakes instead of waffles. How are those pancakes anyway?”

Baxter looked at the massive disks of fried batter mixed with chunks of macadamia nuts. “Nutty.”

“The waffles are good for like seven–eight bucks. So now I have to get serious. I usually go for an Eggs Benedict or an
omelet. Something like that. But not with too much meat. You know what I'm sayin'?”

“Plate three is eggs.”

“Basically.”

“So how much is that?”

“Figure ten bucks for the omelet plus eleven from the first two plates and we're up to twenty-one bucks.”

“You're getting close.”

Reggie nodded as he stuffed some eggs in his mouth and chewed carefully. He swallowed, then drank a little more coffee before continuing.

“Now, depending on the buffet, plate four is meat. Bacon or sausage.”

“Link or patty?”

“Dude. It don't matter. Both, if they got 'em.”

Baxter nodded. Reggie went on.

“Sometimes there's prime rib or steaks or a big ham or something. And that means you have a little prime rib and then go back for the bacon and sausage. That's how I got five plates today.”

“I think you beat the buffet.”

“I gotta eat it first, my man.”

And with that, Reggie began to shovel the scrambled eggs and greasy meat into his mouth.

...

Jack clomped painfully into his office. Up the two goddamn steps that his idiot son didn't get a fucking ramp for—thanks, Stan—and across the floor. Jack didn't look at the view; he didn't admire the puffy clouds forming on the
horizon. He shuffled past Stanley, the walker sounding like a chain gang's coffle, until he reached the door of his office. Jack wasn't feeling well; his stomach was upset. He'd spent almost an hour sitting on the john that morning, and it put him in a sour mood. Ever since he'd hired Keith to whack that fucking Samoan, his stomach had been acting wacky: bloated, gassy, and exploding one day; clogged like a sink with a hairball the next.

Jack turned to see Stanley sitting at his desk reading a thick book.

“What the fuck're you doin'?”

Stanley looked up. “Hey, Dad. How's it going?”

“Is that a Bible?”

Stanley closed the fake-leather-bound book in his hand and gave his dad an excited smile.

“It's the Book of Mormon.”

Jack did a double take. “What?”

“Revelations given to Joseph Smith, the prophet, for the benefit of all mankind.”

Jack didn't know what to say. His legs felt weak. He needed to sit down. “Why are you reading that?”

“It's interesting.”

Jack found a chair and flopped into it, making a noise louder than he'd meant to. “You've never been interested before.”

“I know. But I met some really nice people at the cultural center, and they told me about it.”

“The Polynesian place?”

“Yeah. You should come check it out. It's great. You could sit in an outrigger canoe.”

“They have Mormons there?”

Stanley nodded, a contented grin spreading across his face. It was the grin of the spiritually sated. Jack was not spiritually sated or grinning; his jaw dropped like the tailgate of a pickup truck, hanging open on its hinges. He couldn't believe it. Why of all people in the world did he have to have a son that would fall in with a cult of—well, he could hardly utter the words.

“Polynesian Mormons?”

“We're all sinners. Even Polynesians. But that's okay. It's how we learn.”

Jack was from Las Vegas, and there was nothing he hated more than preaching. All the losers in the universe came to Las Vegas, blew their money gambling, drinking, and whoring, and then—possibly due to sunstroke—they'd find God and start preaching on any available street corner. They never said, “I'm a loser and the only thing I can do to feel good about myself is tell all of you that you're goin' to hell.” No. They couldn't handle the truth. They blamed everyone but themselves. It made Jack want to puke. Sure, we're all sinners. Sinners, suckers, and whores. Big deal. Welcome to the fuckin' world. Jack looked at Stanley. He could barely keep the caustic out of his voice.

“Is that so?”

“Absolutely. God sent us down here to learn and to redeem ourselves by making the world better.”

“That's God for you. Big on the self-improvement.”

Stanley looked hurt. “I didn't expect you'd understand.”

Jack looked over at his son. His first instinct was to rip the Book of Mormon out of Stanley's hands and beat him with it. But then, like all parents when they learn their children are involved in something they don't approve of, he decided it was probably just a phase.

“So you're a Mormon now?”

“I haven't been baptized yet.”

“I thought that was Baptists.”

“It's a commitment to Christ; they all do it.”

“I'd be careful, you know. It's a religion started by a guy named Smith.”

“He was a prophet, Dad.”

Jack nodded solemnly. Mormons? Who knew? He wondered how his son, admittedly a dork, could keep several wives satisfied when he'd never even had a girlfriend. He was practically, although not technically, due to thirty-five seconds of intercourse his freshman year, a virgin.

“You're serious about this?”

“Yes.”

“Do me one favor. Get some pussy before you convert and go all Jesus-freak on me.”

“I don't think that has anything to do with it.”

Jack pointed to the Book of Mormon. “It says in there that God wants you to learn, right?”

“That's what it says.”

“So you should learn what it's like to get boned by a pro. These churchy girls are just gonna lay there. They may not even get naked. It'll be over in two minutes. You gotta promise me you'll try it with some wild-ass chick who won't stop until your well's run dry.”

Stanley looked at his father. “You're insane.”

“I'm insane? You want to be a Mormon. Just do this for your old man before you commit to Christ. Even Jesus got down before they nailed him to the cross.”

...

Yuki had always lived by the maxim,
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
She believed that she was smart and resourceful and that if she kept a positive outlook she would make the most of her life. Yet she had no idea what to think of her current situation. There was no maxim that starts with “
When life gives you a pimp. . .
” And yet life had given her a pimp and she found she was okay with it. She rationalized it to herself because Lono wasn't like any pimp she'd ever heard of. He was special.

The door to the office opened and Francis, looking slightly gray, came limping in. Yuki turned to greet him.

“Hey, welcome back.”

Francis looked at her, seeing her smile beaming at him, and shook his head. “You're a fucking saint, you know that?”

“Let me get you a cup of coffee.”

“How can you be so nice to me?”

“Because I don't want to be filled up with anger or fear or any negative emotions. I want to stay positive.”

Yuki flashed him another smile and headed off to the coffee room. Francis didn't know what to say, so he hobbled into his office and looked around. It was still shit brown, but it had been cleaned. Papers organized on his desk just the way he liked them. Some fresh flowers in a vase. Yuki's efficiency and affability only made Francis feel small and awful, like he was the lowest life-form on the planet. Then he remembered Chad. Chad was the lowest.

Francis had spent most of yesterday, the brief times between visits from the residents who were constantly palpating and measuring his dick, waiting for Chad to arrive and cheer him up.

At the end of the day, when it was obvious that Chad wasn't going to show up or call or send flowers, when it was time for the night nurse to tuck him in and turn out the lights, Francis had lain in his lumpy hospital bed and wept. He cried because he was scared, afraid his penis might never be hard again; he cried because no one loved him, he was all alone in the world; and he cried because he was mad at himself that he even cared about Chad.

Yuki came back with a cup of coffee for him. “Here you are.”

Francis took the coffee and looked her in the eye. “I hate to say this, but I've got to let you go.”

Yuki was stunned. She could hardly bring herself to blink. “What?”

“I know, it's ridiculous. But I can't work with you. I'm sorry. I'm too embarrassed. I'm ashamed of what I did.”

“But—” Yuki stammered.

“You can fly home first class. I'll give you one month of severance pay and a letter of recommendation. Whatever you need.”

“I don't want to go. I like it here.”

Francis sighed. “It's not about you. It's about me. I'm sorry.”

And that's when Yuki decided to call a lawyer.

...

Keith organized his supplies. He had several gallons of drinking water, two dozen papayas, five coconuts, a pound of beef jerky, and twenty-seven little cans of Vienna sausages with
the EZ-open lid. He'd also bought a serious-looking fish-gutting knife, some hooks, and some line. He figured if he got sick of eating Vienna sausages he could use them for bait, maybe land some yellowtail, have a little sashimi.

Keith squatted down in the shade of a palm grove and rested. He checked his ecstasy supply and found he still had twenty-two little pills. That, he figured, ought to get him where he needed to go. He'd seen the dolphins. They were out just past the reef. They were waiting for him. Waiting for the moonrise.

He closed his eyes and lay back on the sand. Its warmth relaxed his muscles; he melted into it, feeling the earth's chi flowing from limb to limb. He was filling up with life force; it was coming up out of the earth itself and into him in a kind of profound osmosis. He heard the wind whipping through the palm fronds overhead, the sound of the planet breathing. Without trying, Keith found himself matching the planet's breath with his own, and for a brief moment he felt he
was
the planet. He was one with the life force. He drifted off into a kind of exhausted sleep, floating on the energy of the universe.

The revelation flashed through Keith's subconscious and jolted him awake. For the first time in his life, he felt as if he understood why he was here, the purpose of his particular existence. Keith could sense the presence of death in the life force. He'd been around it enough to know it when he felt it. It was there, all around him, like a pungent dusky scent drifting in the wind. Keith had sensed it, smelled it, and tasted it in Afghanistan, Colombia, Las Vegas, Chicago, San Francisco, and Omaha. He had sniffed it drifting on the wind. He had felt its warmth and stickiness in his hands. But now he understood that death is just a part of life. The two are
one. Life does not exist without death, and vice versa. Breathe in, breathe out; yin and yang.

In the past, when Keith had killed someone, he'd always experienced a slight pang. It wasn't guilt, really. He didn't feel compassion for those he dispatched. But it was a pang. Maybe it was his humanity speaking. Maybe it was empathy. He didn't really know. But the pang was always there, sharp and sweet and sad. Sometimes he thought his soul was trying to tell him that killing wasn't okay, that it was bad. But now he realized that what he had done wasn't so bad after all. He was, in his own way, reaffirming the beauty, the value, and the power of life. The only thing he'd done that was bad was to take money for it.

Keith vowed to himself that in the future, he wouldn't accept payment for killing. He'd do it because it was the right thing to do and he had the expertise to do it well.

Keith sat up and opened one of the plastic bottles of water. He popped another hit of ecstasy and washed it down with the cool clear liquid.

Joseph carried several flattened cartons into his house, along with a tape gun and a couple rolls of tape. He had to figure out what he was going to take, what he was going to put into storage, and what he was going to give away. Joseph leaned the cartons against the wall and tossed the tape gun onto the couch. He looked around, trying to decide where to begin. Earlier, he'd called a friend who worked for a real estate agent and discussed renting out his little house while he was gone. No sense paying a mortgage in Honolulu and rent on a place in New York. And—you never know—he might really hate living in the city; this way he'd keep his options open. At first he felt he was being chicken. He should just sell everything and go, make a real commitment to his new life. But he found he wasn't comfortable with that. Maybe it was because that's what his parents had done. They'd sold everything, moved to the mainland, and never come back. Now, when he talked to his father on the phone, the conversations were always about their getting back to the islands: how the fish was better there, the air, the water, the people, the weather. Everything was better in the islands, and yet his parents couldn't move back because
the cost of living was so high. It was definitely better to keep his house. He could always sell it later.