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sunbaked pizza with three kinds of tomato and Mexican salt from Oaxaca
    Snack
Fresh greens in a lemon sauce
    Dinner
Veggie sushi
    Snack
Unsweetened cider
    AT THE CENTER OF MONSTER’S LAIR was a stone mansion that resembled a castle, but it had far too many windows. A plumber, there for a few days to work on a secret new project that required an earthmover, mentioned an old project as I made him a sandwich. He whispered that he suspected Monster saved his piss, had some sort of trough in the master bedroom that drained into a cistern.
    â€œHoward Hughes complex.”
    The plumber laughed and asked for another sandwich.
    â€œMy ex-wife was into that,” he said between bites of his sandwich. “Back in the eighties in Santa Barbara people did a lot of weird shit. I think it was all that cocaine going around.”
    I offered him lemonade, and he revealed more intriguing information.
    â€œI thought it was the biggest pool we’ve ever dug. It was in the shape of an O, and it ran all around the mansion. The contractor said it was the first fucking moat he had ever built. A month after we first filled it with water, a truck arrived, tipped backward, and toothy fish tumbled out,” the plumber said with a shrug.
    â€œI guess he’s got security concerns.”
    Monster had a moat, and I know we were all expected to be overwhelmed and maybe intimidated; why would you pay for a moat if not to impress the world with it? Impressed or not, you get over that sort of thing pretty quickly, though it was more irritating than impressive to cross a moat to go to the mansion kitchen, having to wait for Security to check their stupid clipboard before lowering the drawbridge. I guess they had to do that, though I had been running the kitchen for months. I’d heard the rumors that the stalker was still at it, trying to find a way into Monster’s Lair.
    Yeah, I suppose there was some truth to it, just as I suspected there was some truth to the rumor I made up that Monster has a dungeon with chains hanging from the walls, an iron maiden, and all the other tools of the trade. Say that to a hungry plumber and you know that story will accelerate until it achieves enough escape velocity to take off and maybe make the pages of the National Enquirer or Fox News. What else are you gonna do if rumors are thick as pea soup around you but be a rumormonger?
    THE RED FLAG STOOD AT ATTENTION on the old-fashioned mailbox in front of my bungalow. Can’t say I didn’t feel mild dread. I guess it was better than having to meet with whoever it was who ran the day-to-day business of Monster’s Lair. I don’t know why disembodied directives make me so nervous. I guess it’s better than having someone disagreeable in my face, giving me shit, but the notes were always in an envelope and on expensive paper and handwritten, and they got to the point with few words. Turns out I had good reason to be afraid; this letter was on the subject of a party for Monster’s birthday involving two hundred very important guests who would be expecting to enjoy a meal of the healthiest and most invigorating food direct from my kitchen.
    I imagined myself going slowly nuts trying to develop a menu based on uncooked vegetables, without sugar, milk, butter, cheese, meat, just about everything. Then and there I was of the mind to quit, go back to the halfway house and return to long hours of labor in the kitchen. I had no choice but to educate myself in this food and the idea behind it. Research would save me.
    I looked up everything I could on the subject and, after hours of reading, decided what these super-vegans wanted was a good, quick, cleansing fast. They wanted the discipline of monks, denying themselves, mortifying the flesh, forgoing the temptations of this life.
    Taste equals illusion.
    They wanted something real, realer than real, blander than bland, and, consequently, healthy. I wondered what Monster wanted. Did he