In Laymon's Terms

O ONE NEEDS to be told just how cool a guy Dick Laymon was. He was a great writer, a great person, and a great friend, and when I got invited to participate in this fantastic tribute anthology, I couldn’t have been more honored or thrilled. Dick’s work, going back all the way to the beginning, had a tremendous impact on me; it helped forge my own desires to become a writer, to the extent that I’ll always feel indebted to him. I feel bad that there’s no way I can ever pay him back. But the biggest trip of all was devouring his fiction for all those years and then later actually getting to be his friend—yes, that was a trip-and-a-half, to know the master behind all this wonderful dark art. Dick gave me encouragement, advice, and enlightenment at times when I couldn’t have needed it more desperately, just one hell of a stand-up guy.

I thought a slightly comic piece would be fitting for In Laymon’s Terms; it’s an “entree” from my “Grub Girl” mythos, spiced up with a few dashes of a political tangent. I have a feeling that the author to which this book is a tribute would appreciate that, since he had a few strong political convictions himself. I miss him. I’m just hoping that the publisher has a distributor in Heaven.

Edward Lee

T TASTES KIND of like pork, if you cook it right. Low heat in the oven, or else it dries out. Pan frying depends on what you’re cooking; like with venison, you have to add a little light oil or you’ll wind up with a chop that’s sinewy.

And when you’re broiling? Six, seven inches from the element at least. Any closer and all the fat drains.

Come on in, don’t worry. Nobody’ll see you back here with me. Just come on in through the back door. Ain’t nobody uses the back door but me, lemme tell ya.

Living on the street, huh? Well, I can relate to that, partner. Lived on the street awhile myself before I lucked into this gig. Give me a sec and I’ll get ya some grub. Plenty of it around here, lemme tell ya.

Call me Chef. That’s what I’ve been called for years because, well, that’s what I am. I was executive chef at the Emerald Room, eight goddamn years. Best restaurant on the City Dock, and, man, could I do it up. You ever been there? Like from eighty-five to ninety-three? If you ever had the Pan-Fried Louisiana Shrimp Cakes, the Jack Daniels Shrimp, the Bay Scallops in Whiskey Cream—well, that was me. I about invented Eastern Shore Lobster Fritters; the reason mine are best is the dipping sauce, a little sweet-baked garlic and about a teaspoon of poached roe from the carapace. Nothing like ’em. My filet mignon will melt in your mouth, and if you’d ever had the chance to try my Flaming Mad Nero Crepes or my Veal Porcini, you’d shit your pants. Four-star reviews three years in a row, babe, and, no, we didn’t grease the critics like a lotta these busted humps. It was me that made The Emerald Room famous for the finest cuisine in town.

And now...

You should try my stuff now.

See, I’m a grub. You’ve heard of us.

People call us grubs same as they call blacks niggers and Pakistanis towelheads. Oh, sure, everyone says they respect our rights as human beings, but that’s just the same old shit. I read in Newsweek there are over ten thousand of us total. It all started with that ramjet thing, I don’t know, a year or so ago? Don’t tell me you never heard about that. NASA and the Air Force were testing some new kind of airplane, remotely piloted, they called it, flying it a hundred miles off the coast over the Atlantic. They called it a nuclear ramjet or some shit, could fly indefinitely without fuel, no pilots, ran by computers. The idea was to have these things flying around all the time real high up. Cheap way to defend the nation. “The ultimate deterrent,” the President said when they announced that they were gonna spend billions developing this thing. First time the Democrats and Republicans ever agreed on anything. The Senate got this thing passed in one day; everybody from Trent Lott to Ted Fuckin’ Kennedy said it was gonna trim a hundred billion a year off the deficit. Was gonna create jobs, lower inflation, reduce the federal budget, blah, blah, blah. What they didn’t announce was that plane kicked out a trail of some off-the-wall radiation wherever it flew. The government wasn’t worried about it ’cos it flew so high, the shit would go right out of the atmosphere. Well, something fucked up during one of the test flights, and one of these ramjet planes wound up flying up and down the east coast at treetop level on something they called an “emergency urban alert bomb mode” for like five days before they could veer it off course over the sea and shoot it down. Thing was flying over cities, for shit’s sake. And I was one of the ones lucky enough to get zapped.