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until the undersides are golden brown, about 3 minutes. Transfer the sandwiches to a cutting board. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in the skillet until foaming starts, then return the sandwiches to the skillet, browned sides up, and cook 3 minutes more. Transfer them back to the cutting board when cooked. Repeat with the remaining 2 sandwiches.
    Trim off the crusts and cut each sandwich into fourths.
    Optional: Top each piece with a drop of truffle oil.

CHAPTER THREE
    SOMETIMES I THINK I HEAR HIM CALLING , a sibilant whisper from a satin-lined oak coffin hidden below the subbasement in a tomb so cold he’d be able to see his rancid breath if he actually had breath. “Living Food, that’s what I’m feeling,” he says.
    Because he’s feeling it, I’m feeling it, and that’s why I’m drinking that Santa Ynez Sauvignon Blanc. I’m liking it more than I should.
    Backsliding. No more of this drinking after work, getting silly, having flights of fancy that do me no good. I’ve still got to deal with Living Food, no matter how silly it is to consider cooking without fire an earthshaking invention. Really, you’d think most reasonable people would agree that cooking is a good thing, a good invention, and we should feel good about it. Maybe Monster remembered something about predigestion in high school biology and it confused and disgusted him. Probably, though, it’s the influence of a gastronomic guru who put him on the road to bliss through the chewing of fresh ginger. Who am I to stand in the way of his path to enlightenment?
    Monster is a freak, a freakish freak, but he’s not a creature-feature villain, no matter how wine might insinuate that. No.
    He’s a self-invented American, freakishly fascinating in his attempt at reinvention, and because of it, his self-invention, his desire to live like something out of a cautionary tale of how outrageously wrong famous people go, doesn’t necessarily make him unique, just as unique as crazy wealth and an addiction to television can make him. I bet as a kid he rushed home to watch Dark Shadows with a chaser of The Brady Bunch , which explains some of it—the blond children running around like chickens shooed about by giddy parents. Really, it’s not Monster or the kids I wonder about; it’s the parents. What must they be like? What do they want for themselves, for their children?
    I’m sure they have lawyers on speed dial, ready and waiting for something actionable. Maybe that’s Monster’s real value, pulling back the curtain on the banality of human perversity—give somebody like him enough money and power and see what gets revealed.
    He’s fucking crazy, but it’s okay.
    Everyone here knows it. It’s common knowledge, living up here on the mountain. When will the townspeople realize what’s up and break out the torches and pitchforks and march on Monster’s Lair? Isn’t it inevitable?
    I have another glass of wine and try to return my attention to the task at hand: planning Monster’s meals for the week. I figured when I first saw him that the last thing he would be concerned about is eating, figuring him as a man who lived on meth and Twinkies and maybe Diet Coke, because these folks bathe themselves in Diet Coke. For a man over six feet, he must weigh a hundred twenty pounds, and that’s if he hasn’t evacuated his bowels. Considering what he wants to eat, he’d be better served by hiring a botanist than a personal chef. “Living Food” isn’t something a cook makes. No, give a kid mud, wheat, and water and whatever and let him go at it.
    But I’m a professional; if that’s what Monster is into this week, I’ll give it to him straight, with a sprig of fresh rosemary on that sunbaked gluten-free ravioli.
    Breakfast
Sun-roasted oatmeal with coconut milk and raisins
    Snack
Cracked barley porridge with fresh strawberries
    Lunch
Vegan