Envy of Angels, page 7
Lena nods. “Yeah, it doesn’t feel like a Nuggie in your mouth at all, but the taste is dead-on.”
“Which means we can’t actually just peel the breading off a bunch of Nuggies and serve them.”
“No, Chef.”
“No, Chef.”
“No, Ch—” Nikki’s tongue stumbles. “I just can’t believe it! Chicken Nuggies?”
“Deal with it, Glowin,” Bronko instructs her.
“Yes, Chef.”
“I can go on the Internet,” Darren offers. “Try to find the recipe?”
Bronko nods.
Then he looks at Lena.
“Most important rule of working here,” he tells her. “Just when you think you’ve got a handle on how fucking sick the universe’s sense of humor is, it goes and tells you an even dirtier joke.”
Lena doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Bronko walks over to the nearest sink and spits.
“Fuckin’ Nuggies,” he mutters. “I hate Henley’s.”
MARCHING ORDERS
Darren follows Bronko down a narrow and rusted stairwell between stripped-paint walls. They’ve left the kitchens and magazine-cover façade of Sin du Jour far behind and are now descending the sublevels beneath the old brick building.
Having left Lena with Nikki to work on the rest of their substitute menu for the demon banquet, Bronko felt Darren should stay by the chef’s side until, as he puts it, Darren “shakes off that little-lost-puppy vibe.”
“I know it’s not really my place, Chef,” Darren says nervously, “but isn’t this kind of, like, extreme?”
“It’s not ‘like’ extreme. It is extreme. But we don’t have a choice.”
They’ve spent the rest of the afternoon and evening cooking test versions of imitation angel. Darren pulled dozens of homebrewed and so-called hacked recipes for Henley’s signature Chicken Nuggies off as many websites. They are all relatively similar in terms of ingredients, varying only in proportions.
None of them nail the taste of the world-famous fast-food concoction.
“There’s some kinda chemical differential. Some preservative or pesticide or some shit, probably proprietary. Without it, the taste is always going to be off. We need to know what it is, that’s all there is to it. We’re already working at a handicap, assuming we can pass off some free-range regular-ass protein for a fucking divine creation of the Lord Itself.”
“But can they really do something like that? Your . . . the receiving guys?”
“Receiving folks, if you please. Kid, most restaurants and catering services, their stocking and receiving departments’ job is to hit up the farmers’ market every morning. Sin du Jour employs a slightly different set for our needs. This’ll be like a vacation for ’em. You’ll see.”
The stairwell ends with a cast-iron door that might’ve been forged to withstand an atomic blast. Bronko easily yanks back its latch and kicks it open, as if he’s performed the action a million times before.
Darren half expects a steaming and dripping boiler room straight out of some bargain-bin 1980s horror movie. Instead the door groans open onto a simple, well-kept hallway. The walls are painted a yellow not seen since AstroTurf was fashionable, and it’s faded with age, but otherwise the sight is totally benign.
There’s also music.
The joyful agony of Louis Armstrong’s immortal trumpet winds throughout the hall.
“Satchmo,” Bronko comments idly. “My man.”
They follow the gravel-filled soul of the singer’s voice down the hallway, passing doors burdened with heavy locks that both look to be more secure replacements for whatever particle board was originally there. The hall ends under a sign made of strips of beige masking tape adhered to the wall above the awning. stocking & receiving has been scrawled on the rows of tape in thick black marker by an unconcerned hand.
Darren squints up at the makeshift sign, confused, then Bronko taps him lightly on the chest and motions him through the awning.
It opens into a large concrete space that might have resembled a maniac’s kill room if it weren’t plastered with posters promoting decades-old martial arts tournaments, awful circa-1990s rock bands, vintage muscle cars, and one oddly elegant and out-of-place Jean-Léon Gérôme print. There are foam practice mats covering much of the floor, along with some busted Goodwill furniture lining the walls. The rest is relatively Spartan.
The four members of Sin du Jour’s mysterious and concealed department Darren met earlier are all here. The giant, Hara, and the woman even more solidly built than Lena who Darren remembers as Cindy (he has always been good with names, as he is terrified of forgetting anyone’s and thus offending them and embarrassing himself) are taking turns hurling knives at what looks like a giant dart board.
They aren’t cooking knives, either.
These are knives forged for combat.
The little one, the weasel-looking man who doesn’t seem to fit—Moon—is reclining on a sofa that’s bleeding insulation in several places. He’s cramming potato chips into his mouth from a half-eaten bag while watching something unseen on his iPhone and listening to it through a pair of earbuds.
Ritter is sitting behind a folding card table. At first Darren doesn’t even take notice of it, then it hits him suddenly, causing his legs to lock midstride.
Ritter is sitting behind a folding card table, and he possesses two intact, fully functioning arms.
His left arm is folded above his head, hand twined in his hair as if ordered there by a police officer. His right arm, the arm Darren cradled that very morning after watching it severed from the rest of Ritter’s body, is stretched across the table. It’s once more attached to him.
Ritter is busily stacking toothpicks from a large box into what appears to be the shape of a log cabin. His focus is intense and he seems to be attempting to accomplish this balancing feat as quickly as possible.
Darren realizes he’s testing the dexterity and control of his reattached limb.
“Everyone wound down enough?” Bronko asks the room.
“Just another day at the office, Chef,” Cindy assures him.
Hara nods, just once.
“How’s the serving arm, Ritt?” Bronko asks.
Ritter continues stacking the toothpicks. “About half an inch shorter than it was yesterday. Otherwise I appear to be all good.”
Bronko nods. He looks at Darren, then back to Ritter. “So, I need you to take your crew upstate to the Henley’s corporate headquarters and steal the recipe for Chicken Nuggies.”
“When?” Ritter asks without hesitation or looking up from his task.
“Now.”
“You’re making Chicken Nuggies?” Moon asks Bronko. “I love Chicken Nuggies. With Big Top sauce?”
Darren looks at the faces of the rest of them.
No one seems to be concerned about the nature or implication of Chef Luck’s request.
Ritter nods. “Will do, boss.”
“Thanks.”
Bronko turns, suppressing a grin as he briefly faces Darren, and walks out of the Stocking & Receiving Department.
“You need something, Sparky?” Cindy asks Darren a moment later when he hasn’t moved.
“Uh,” he stammers.
“Reel it in,” Ritter instructs Cindy.
He finally puts the toothpicks down and looks up at Darren. He lifts his arm and holds it between them.
“That was a good catch earlier, kid. Thanks.”
Darren nods dumbly for approximately the twelve-thousandth time that day.
“Hey, you know,” he manages, “we all work together now, right?”
They all laugh at that, even Hara.
Darren feels caught for a second, but he realizes he doesn’t feel laughed at.
He’s also beginning to realize why not one of these people bucked at being ordered to commit corporate espionage and theft.
PART III
INTO THE CLOWN’S MOUTH
GUIDED TOUR
Their tour guide is the apotheosis of all tour guides.
Ritter, Cindy, and Hara are dressed like tourists. Ritter and Cindy, a teenager’s backpack strapped to her shoulders, both wear Henley’s T-shirts while Hara is decked out in resort wear because there was no article of clothing in the gift shop that would fit him. They’ve mixed in with about twenty other fast-food enthusiasts (or just easily impressed road trippers) eager for a peek behind the scenes of the restaurant chain at which they’ve grown up polluting their bodies.
The lobby of the Henley Corporation’s main corporate offices is clean, modern, opulent, and more or less exactly what you’d expect of a corporate lobby. Its only outstanding feature is a fifty-foot tableau draped from the ceiling. All the beloved characters from the Henley’s mythos are painted together on it, smiling down upon all their friends who’ve come to visit Circus Farm.
There’s Monsieur Udders, the beret-wearing cow who was created after Henley’s added beef to their formerly all-chicken menu of proteins. There’s Postman Potatohead, the most literally interpreted of Henley’s characters with his vintage mail carrier’s uniform and roasted red cranium.
They’re all grouped around one of the most famous clowns in history, Redman Britches, resplendent in his silver-and-crimson costume. Britches is cradling Mrs. Henley herself, the plump and venerable chicken who was the progenitor of it all. Her eggs and chicks were the first items served when there was no Henley’s, only a rickety roadside stand manned by the real Redman Britches.
Mrs. Henley wears her trademark pink-and-silver ruffled collar and colored face buttons. She doesn’t smile, because none of the original artists could render a realistic chicken smiling without it looking horrifying, especially to children.
The group’s tour guide, bright and bubbly with a blond perm that might’ve just stepped from a time machine, walks backward with perfect poise.
“Everyone is of course familiar with the animated versions of the Circus Farm family,” she announces. “Whether you remember them from any of over four thousand commercials through the decades, any one of the five incarnations of the Henley’s Saturday-morning cartoon, or from the related comic books, video games, and our recently launched Circus Farm education app.”
“Jesus,” Cindy mutters.
“You’re riveted,” Ritter informs her.
“Right.”
“What not everyone knows is Redman Britches was in fact a real clown in the 1930s, and Missus Henley was also not only a real chicken, but his star attraction. He fashioned her a costume and trained her to dance to entertain the local children in towns throughout the American South.”
As she talks, the tour guide leads them out of the main lobby and down a broad corridor that branches off through marble awnings into common areas and services for the staff, including an in-house Starbucks.
“Britches the Clown also used Missus Henley as his primary food source. Using her eggs and cooking in a small Georgia shack, almost exclusively for himself, he created the recipes that eventually led to the earliest versions of the Henley’s menu items we have all enjoyed for over eighty years.”
They find themselves surrounded by enormous frames filled with glossy photos of the food items that became a phenomenon and transformed a regional fast-food chain into a global biochemical conspiracy.
Cindy stares horrified into the depths of a ten-times-scale Double Cluck chicken biscuit topped with cheese, bacon, a fried egg, and too-vibrant-to-be-food hollandaise sauce. It’s accompanied by Henley’s “clown noses,” the signature miniature red roasted potatoes the chain serves in lieu of French fries.
And, of course, there are Henley’s Chicken Nuggies, blown up to the size of armchairs and ready to dive into a vat of Big Top sauce.
At least the corporate headquarters doesn’t smell like a Henley’s restaurant.
“Finding a need to supplement his income, Britches established the first Missus Henley’s Fresh Fried Egg Stand by a rural road just outside Atlanta in March of 1939. He sold fried eggs for a nickel apiece. The very first nickel ever made by a Henley’s restaurant Britches kept for good luck, and it remains a source of pride for the Henley’s Corporation.”
The nickel in question is suspended in a floating Lucite frame erected in the middle of the corridor.
Their tour guide motions to it grandly.
It’s a fake, of course.
The corridor reaches its end. Ritter stops as the rest of the group rounds the corner ahead. Cindy and Hara do the same, letting the tourists filter around them. They wait until the last body has disappeared around the corner and then Ritter removes three small webbed pouches from his pocket.
He hands one to Cindy, then one to Hara.
“Stick these in your cheek and try not to chew,” he instructs them.
Cindy pops the pouch into her mouth without hesitation. “Should we even ask?”
Hara sniffs his briefly, more out of curiosity than concern. He fingers it against the inside of his cheek.
“It’s something an Oknirabata came up with back in the day when they were worried about cameras and mirrors trapping their souls.”
“Okay-whatta?”
“Give it a few minutes to seep and no artificial eye can see you. Works wonders in the micro-surveillance age.”
“But real people can still see us?” Cindy asks.
“For now.”
They all suck on their acrid-tasting flavor pouches concocted by some Australian spirit magician before any of their grandparents were born. When Ritter gives them the nod, they make their way to a reserve elevator bank in the back of the main level, away from all the foot traffic and bustle of the lobby and commons. There are four elevators there, one with its doors open and a sign proclaiming it to be in disuse hung from a chain between them.
“Moon?” Ritter calls out.
His tiny, greasy-haired head pops out from the side of the elevator. The rest of him follows. He’s wearing an electrician’s coveralls and tool belt and sucking on his own Oknirabata-recipe pouch.
“Step into my office, ladies and gents,” he bids them with a grin.
They all step over the chain. Once they’re inside, Moon removes it and the screwdriver he’s jammed under one of the elevator door panels to keep them open.
The doors close.
“All right, suit up,” Ritter announces.
They strip off their tourist attire, and Moon removes his coveralls and belt. Cindy drops her backpack and unzips it, pulling out a webbed belt and clipping it around her waist. Affixed to it, among other pouches, is a tie-down rig cradling a tactical tomahawk, the bottom of which Cindy secures to her leg to keep the handle from swinging free.
“Did you rewire the elevator?” she asks Moon.
He stares up at her blankly. “No. I dunno how to do that.”
“Well, then how are we making it take us to research and development? It’s got to be restricted. We didn’t cop any access cards or codes.”
“Ritter just said hold it for you guys!” Moon insists. “I’m not a freakin’ master thief. I just eat weird things. I don’t know dick about bypassing wires or whatever.”
“Relax,” Ritter instructs them both without raising his voice.
He removes a small inkwell from Cindy’s backpack and uncorks it, motioning them to move against the back wall of the elevator.
As they watch, Ritter raises his arm and swings it in the direction of the exposed wall, splashing the inkwell’s contents across it. The liquid that splatters looks like blood.
Ritter reaches out and, using the tip of his thumb, draws several arcane symbols in the viscous surface of it.
“This’ll guide the elevator to wherever we want it to go. It was originally cooked up for Victorian carriage drivers lost in the dark, but it should turn this box into the same kind of deal.”
He waits.
So do the rest of them.
Even Cindy looks skeptical until the elevator suddenly and violently begins to rattle. They all widen their stance and brace themselves against the walls. It stops after a few seconds, and the elevator begins to lower on its own.
“Son of a bitch,” she says.
“Yeah, this heist shit looks way harder in movies,” Moon adds.
“You’d almost think it was magic,” Ritter says with such a deadpan delivery you’d almost miss the irony.
He corks the inkwell and places it back in the pack. Ritter takes out a tangerine-sized glass globe filled with an iridescent purple liquid.
“This is a temporary glamour,” he explains. “It’s only going to last fifteen minutes, but for those fifteen minutes everyone will see us as something expected. Whatever they’d expect to see that wouldn’t make them deal with an unwanted reality. So we need to work fast, but we should be solid if we do.”
“Where do you get all these great toys, anyway?” Moon asks him.
Ritter shrugs. “People who work in an office steal office supplies. People who work where I was before this . . . don’t.”
THE ALCHEMIST
There’s a decrepit 1970s-era camper permanently parked behind Sin du Jour. It has three flat tires and a boot clamped on its sole inflated wheel. Its windshield is currently more unpaid parking ticket than glass. A lone bumper sticker, faded and torn, reads, “Oaxaca ’79.”
Tag Dorsky is seated next to the camper’s open door on the steps leading inside.
Kneeling beside him is a half-lit man with messy dark hair and an unfiltered cigarette bobbing on his lower lip.
Ryland examines the sous-chef’s knife wounds closely. He squints, not because his vision is impaired, but because it’s still light out and focusing is giving him a splitting headache.
“You smell like a wino dipped in other winos,” Dorsky idly comments.
“Dorsky, I’m aware acting like a hippopotamus’s rectum is integral to your personality, but if you could stuff it for the next few minutes?”
Ryland’s brogue is pure Galway, although virtually no one in America ever can or does tell the difference. He drinks constantly, fine wine when he can both afford it and summon the effort to seek it out, and bottom shelf when he’s broke or already drunk and finds he’s run out of the good stuff.
