Jack O'Connell - The Skin Palace

Ten minutes later, they pull up next to Kunitz Tower at the top of Behrman Hill and just sit there for a few minutes looking at the thing. It’s a sixty-foot tall, two-and-a-half story monument built of boulders and cobbles and designed to look like a mini feudal castle. The structure is acutally two towers joined together by an open-air archway.

Sylvia lives less than five miles from the Tower, but she’s been here exactly twice — on a grade school field trip and in high school, parking with a boy names Bobby Fenton on their first and only date. She wonders now what ever happened to Bobby.

The Tower is surrounded by a circular gravel road that in turn is surrounded by a scrubby, overgrown woods that covers the hill. Supposedly the view from the top of the Tower is tremendous, but to get there you’ve got to walk up these dank and grungy stone stairwells that always stink of urine. The rumor is that during the day the drunks and the gay hustlers share the place peacefully, but at night it belongs to the teenage punkers whose malt liquor bottles get tossed from the observation parapet. Today, the place appears empty.

Sylvia looks at Leni and raises her eyebrows for an explanation.

“The Floating Kitchen,” Leni says and climbs out of the car.

They walk to the stairwell opening and start up.

“It’s a hit-and-run operation. The owners haven’t scored a restaurant or a license yet, so they jump around. They’ve been using the Tower for about a week now. No signs. No advertising. They get by on word of mouth. It’s a family operation. The Zumaeta clan. From a village called Puquio in Peru. Everybody works. The old man, Jorge, he came north about six years ago. Worked as a cabbie and a barkeep. Put in like a hundred hours a week. Work and sleep. Lived on coffee. Brought everybody up one at a time. Soon as he had enough cash — bang, here comes son number one. Six months later, bang, here comes a daughter. The last to come was Maria, the wife. She held the fort back home until they’d all hit the road. Jorge sets them all up with work. Same deal, they work till they drop. Then six months ago, Daddy gets the idea for the restaurant. Keep everyone together. Capitalize on Maria’s fantastic cooking skills. Only they can’t afford to buy a place. So Maria comes up with the idea of the Floating Kitchen. They find empty spaces, move in and set up shop. And as luck would have it, the Zumaeta’s moveable feast is now the hottest trend in the Zone.”

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.