They emerge out onto the top platform and Sylvia walks to the edge and leans on the capstones. She can see miles in every direction. In the center of the concrete floor is a round wooden table with four mismatched chairs grouped around it. A stooped and withered old woman emerges from the opposite, twin tower with a broom and starts to sweep around the table. She’s dressed in a quilted mechanic’s jacket over an old fashioned cotton housedress.
Leni pulls out a chair and says, “That’s Gramma. I’ll introduce you to the whole crew.”
They sit down and Sylvia says, “How do you know these people?”
“I know everybody,” Leni says, then smiles and shakes her head. “I’m their big booster. I bring everyone up here. Except Hugo. Hugo refuses. Hugo would have a food taster on payroll if he could find someone willing.”
She starts to study the chalkboard menu that the old woman is now holding and Sylvia looks out again at the view and keeps asking herself questions like, what about the cops and how do you cook in this place.
When she turns back, Leni is staring at her.
“Isn’t this a little better than the torture booth?” Leni says. “That place just wasn’t right, Sylvia. Bad juju. You were drowning in there.”
“Little melodramatic. Leni.”
“This is where you’re absolutely wrong. It’s the little stuff that gets to you. Always. It’s the stuff we don’t pay attention to. Our environment is hitting us on a hundred levels every second and we don’t even recognize it. But inside we’re growing tumors and making plans to buy assault rifles.”
“Assault rifles,” Sylvia says.
Leni brings her head across the table. “You walk down the street in a big American city, okay? You walk by block after block of these big towers, these monster rectangles, that just shoot up forever. They’re just enormous blocks of glass and steel and concrete. No design. No angles. No color. No real variation. You know what those buildings are saying to you when you go by?”
“The buildings?”
“They’re saying—you’re worthless. You’re powerless. You’re a peasant. Your time here has no meaning. They’re saying you’ll never know what goes on in here.”
They stare at each other for a second and then Sylvia shakes her head.
“What?” Leni says.
“Nothing.”
“No, what?”
“I just can’t help … I’m just … Do all of Hugo’s actresses talk this way?”
Leni sits back in her chair and says, “A. I’m not a possession of Hugo Fuckhead Schick. You’ve got to watch your terminology there, Sylvia. And B. No, the actors I know are like everyone you know. They’re all over the board. I work with stupid people. I work with really savvy people. I work with an occasional neurotic and I work with a lot of just average, boring stiffs. I did my last film with a girl who had a master’s degree in anthropology—”
“Get out of here,” Sylvia interrupts.
“You come down the Palace, I’ll introduce you to Miriam.”
A teenage girl comes to the table with an order pad in her hands. She nods and smiles at Leni, who says, “How are you doing today, Alejandra? I think I’m in the mood for Cuy. Maybe some Papas Arequipena. And a house coffee with the shooter on the side.”
“What’s Cuy?” Sylvia asks.
“She’ll have the same,” Leni says to Alejandra, who scribbles on the pad and walks away.
Sylvia opens her mouth to protest and Leni says, “Trust me here, all right? You’ll love it, okay?”
If Perry pulled something like this Sylvia knows she’d be annoyed for the rest of the day. But something makes her want to give over to Leni. Sitting here with her might mean forfeiting the Shack job. But so what. Leni’s right. You can always get another job. And maybe the Shack was doing something to her. Maybe sitting inside that big camera all day was getting to her in ways she couldn’t perceive.
Alejandra comes back with two mugs of coffee, black and looking thick. The mugs are only about three-quarters full and next to them she places two shot glasses filled with a clear, slightly green liquid.
“Uh-uh,” Sylvia says. “It’s too early in the day. And I drank way too much yesterday. I felt horrible this morning.”
“It was the thought of going to that hut out there. God, just the thought of it.” Leni imitates a full body shiver and picks up the shot glass.
“No, really—”
“Here’s what you do,” Leni says. “You take half of it in your mouth and hold it there. Let it roll around the gums. Tremendous. It heats up. Then you dump the rest into the mug, swirl it once, take a big sip of coffee and swallow the whole thing down.”
Sylvia gives her a skeptical look. “What is it?”
“Hootch. Their native moonshine. They won’t tell me the real name. No liquor license, you know.”
Sylvia watches the routine, then follows Leni’s lead, fires half the shot, dumps, swirls, and swallows. Then she sits back. The rush comes in about five seconds. It’s like she applied Ben-Gay to the inside of her throat and chest. It’s like her lungs have been soaked in mentholated muscle rub.
Leni is looking over at her, a huge grin breaking on her face.
“Isn’t that great,” she says.
“Does it let up?” Sylvia asks.
“Who wants it to let up? God, your whole face is flushed,” Leni says. “Gives you great color. You look gorgeous right now.”
“I feel like I’ve just breathed ether.”
“This is better than ether,” Leni says, straight-faced.
“I’m not going to be able to eat.”
“Three minutes, you’ll be ravenous.”
“Any other side effects I should know about?”
“Well,” Leni says, looking from side to side as if checking for spies in their little watchtower, “it doesn’t short-change the libido.”
Sylvia stares at her, finally says, “Am I ever going to know how much of what you say is the truth?”
“Sooner or later,” Leni says, “everything I say is the truth.”
Alejandra brings three bowls, one filled with what looks like potatoes mixed with eggs, olives, and red chilies, another with an unidentifiable meat dish, and the last filled with Ritz and saltine crackers. Leni takes a handful of crackers indiscriminately and crumbles them over the top of her food. Sylvia leans down and smells garlic and maybe mustard.
She lifts up her mug to take a sip of coffee and Leni says, “You’re going to want to make that last.”
Leni starts stirring her lunch with the concentration of a jewel cutter. Sylvia picks up a spoon, starts to make the same motions, moves her food in slow circles, reversing direction, cutting through the middle, pushing the top layer down to the bottom. She feels a little like a precocious monkey.