The Franchise

Toby quickly found himself expanding the club, seeing no reason to limit the financial incentives to its success. He vacated his bedroom to make more space, and Sunday morning sometimes reaped the reward of his culinary and alcoholic taste in his aunt’s bedroom now converted into his den and priory — whether she was Kris or Cristina it didn’t matter. He was enjoying it, but it made him feel like a slut.

By the second month he promoted Post to general manager and let her cull the culinary groupies as his proxy and keep the list eclectic and close. Educated in public and art schools, she was trained well. She handled the calls and settled the schedule. She listened to his late night chats while he fretted over the menu and suppliers. She was there to expedite after he signaled that he had mounted the sauces and made a good Friday. She dealt with the neighbors curious about the late traffic.

Therapy, she said with a confident, posh ring to her voice, it was therapy.

In a way she was right. Toby was the great food psychiatrist, and he was looking forward to skewing their minds with his new research and his skill, his goodwill and feeling coming out in the food like well-curated spice. What it could do for a boy forced to fuck his father’s new second wife while his father watched he couldn’t predict, but he assumed there to be healing vitamins and minerals among the foods to which he gave his utmost care.

Post bought a little leather guest book for people to write their thoughts. She’d already categorized the remarks into nonsense, piddly pooh and crap. He’d spotted the comparisons to the usual English kitchen stars, but he wasn’t anything like Nigella Lawson, Nigel Slater, Jamie Oliver or Delia. He was his own brand of food porno and he was making his market.

Perhaps cynically, he had grown quite astute at deflecting people’s comments, invitations and suggestions about the club, but he was not opening a real restaurant and he was not going to occupy a gallery for a month. For once, he knew what he was doing was right. No doubt or rejection filled his mind. He plunged the money back into his underground business, but also enabling himself with a nice phone and a proper Hi-fi as part of the upgrade. But the school year was winding down, he hadn’t rotted to death in his aunt’s wet basement, and he did have the novel to write. It might not be delicious or edible, but he couldn’t underestimate the amount of work required to pass or excel. The club was to be only a temporary endeavor. The place couldn’t take too much wear and tear.

Toby was one big stomach.

He was taken by surprise when Charlie proposed to sleep with him. Red-headed, white-skinned, big-boned, she eased up to him at the conclusion to Club №5 when he had finished reciting Lorca in a quiet lull of Spanish.

“I can’t stop looking at you,” she said, emboldened by drink.

He’d heard something before about Charlie wanting his phone number, but he didn’t respond until now. He needed it. “Wait. You’re just my sort.”

He could play the guru and show the path.

Quickly prioritizing, he disposed of the last guests with a call to privacy and the strange tones of Merzbow from the sound system. Only so much Japanese noise from the 1,000-hour archive was bearable, unless synched by drugs. He was abrupt in hurrying Post through her last drink as he cleaned up and filled a bag with dead bones and trimmings. Charlie poured herself one more honey schnapps and lingered, but not long enough. She knew.

Charley and Toby clutched over the round kitchen table. She wrapped her legs around him. He touched her lips, ears, neck, breasts, waist. There was a lot to handle. They savored kissing, drunken wet bites. They went downstairs anxiously. He was trembling. He switched off the lights but left the blinds partly open to enjoy her body. She took off her shirt last. Her breasts were hard and pointy. Her ass was hard and large. She was young and new. She wanted to be his, to learn and also provide. She was wet and her anus was white. He wanted to feel guilty but he savored the experience too much, this young, hard body offered to him like a blessing. He used condom after condom and she was pleased to be with him so long. Rubber dick, he concluded, because of the alcohol. But she didn’t come and this bothered him even as he tried all the teasing, open closing manual and oral tricks in his repertoire. He was surprised by his ardor. As if he was young again. It was so nice. Better than the Internet.

Toby was puzzled. He’d never slept with a rich girl. He’d most often taken some flawed creature, maybe schizophrenic, epileptic or bulimic, burdened by a lack of stature and class. He liked damaged goods and the healthy balance of Charley often shopping or dieting was disconcerting; money helped her get on with it, she said, clutching a bag of organic cod for her steamer. She told him she was once in the officers training corps and somehow it seemed appropriate, the contrast. She cleaned bed and breakfasts during some holidays as a condition of the trust, yet sent herself to Mauritius during the term for a holiday with pals. That night, he discovered the copious bottom and the friendly calling charm of her voice. He was sure they’d do it some more under the nose of the writing class. Post would be curious and assuming, of that he was sure. His reputation was in dire need of a tune-up since skipping classes for a fortnight. Tongues would be sizzling. He almost could turn on the flames of the department; he joyously poked his tongue in derision from the cocoon of fire. They had found the monster in their midst and it was him, living in the bino-vaults, hirsute, odiferous, and fun.

It struck him that this was the first time he had sex in his aunt’s flat. Perhaps no one had ever had sex here, such was the prude and outmoded design, surprisingly a hit with most people for whom the novelty of not redecorating every few years seemed inconceivable. Why have it later when you can have it now was the unofficial motto of the club, as the meal digested in 24 hours in most cases.

He’d been having novel ideas about how to diversify as the club expanded in popularity and reputation. People liked his cooking and the run of the premises and his choice of wines. He devised rules and made a membership for his most trusted clients. But he thought of increasingly weirder menus like cooking clothes or children’s menus for adults or videoing his own kitchen show and contest.

Like sex, he’d found that changing the terms of the payment had also helped generate interest. He was willing to barter artwork for meals and that dramatically increased the diversity of people normally unable to afford the fare or disinclined to come; not everyone’s budget was devoted to food. He could enlargen the participants.

“I think it’s quite good actually,” Post said, rubbing her apple-like chin.

Post created a shrine with Nash’s Ming Horse, wise and cool in a skin of iron. Aside from the packets of cash left around his feet, and tucked into his armor, the offerings slowly gathering around the growing stupa, some magnetic point in the earth that was putting the guests at ease not only at the party but afterwards in their daily lives the more they charged it with offerings.

George presented him with a white rat in a bamboo cage and told him about the annual rat workshop in London. Amy presented him with a jar of his own testicles, something like grapes, which he called his sisters, a picture of the ochiotomy and an account of his time at the gender center. That gesture stole the guests breath away and everyone had a hard time eating the kidneys for the starter, even if cooked so perfectly in cognac and mirepoix that they were no longer redolent of piss.

Later, Low surrendered a series of photographic prints made from negatives from the nineteenth century and recreated by Low in his visits to the old sites. Natasha from Polish Belarus gave him a bottle of Ghengiss Khan Mongolian vodka and the recipe to an Angry Dog (raspberry syrup and Tabasco). He regretted the three-day stupor and wrestling after, one room of the basement smeared with alcoholic jelly shots, plaster and motor oil.

Lewis added a silver cigarette case heirloom and a pair of wooden sunglasses from Myanmar. Dan made a hand puppet of his own long maple hair. Charlotte tendered a puppy from her winning Isle of Man bitch. Esmerelda unbunged a barrel of cider from her father’s estate and flooded the two rooms with apple bubbly. Othello appeared on a tip, fresh from the Royal Theatre. Lev brought a harmonium from Calcutta and a Theremin of his own build to make a concert. Agnes brought a smorgasbord of smoked fish from the Baltic. Bernard reserved two tickets for him to Jerusalem that Toby subsequently missed. But then the gift-giving took an ominous turn. With the smell of garlic and rose incense teasing his nose, he sensed that lightening would certainly strike twice.

The big call came at the wrong time. The self-regulation was not working. The re-conversion of the ground floor bar back to the old writing study was not helping in anticipation of his aunt’s mid-summer visit. Neither did a new computer. Toby had no willpower. The weather was superb and he wanted to make the long day ride through the old druid villages to Wells again now the worst winds had died away.

“Good day, Toby, Post might have mentioned…”

“No.” Toby was used to saying no.

“Well, ha-ha, this is Lord Nash up at Dyrham Hall. We have met and I’d like to know if you were able to do a do?” Nash sucked the saliva through his teeth when he talked. He appeared to fiddling with some kind of instrument.

“What kind of do, sir?”

“A punk rock juggling festival. You see, I like juggling, juggling with fire especially.”

“For how many?”

“Well if the Palestinians and Albanians come — 300 friends?”

Feasible. Lucrative. It would have to be halal. He could make a contribution to the Fatah and the KLA. It didn’t matter if the Muslims were taking over Europe. He’d help. He like visiting the halal butcher and talking about his many trips to the Middle East and some of the music he collected. If they had so irrevocably changed Eastern Europe, then surely they would be good for England or America, surely they would make beautiful women. What better backdoor than juggling?

“You know how Hoxha stopped illegal weapons in Albania? Well, I’ll tell you. If you were caught with an illegal weapon in Albania, you were buried alive. But with a pipe, a pipe, a big pipe, sticking out of your mouth so you starved to death, buried, buried in the ground.” Lord Nash stammered, then warped into a twitching guffaw and strummed what sounded like a balalaika to accompany his mutant song.

Despite the engrossing facts, Toby pulled yet another cigarette butt from crack in the gold settee of the gold room at he talked to the lord. What else was down there?

“Very nice theater in downtown Tirana where we had the convention. This year it’s the Hall, and Post mentioned you as our man.”

“You’ll have to pay in advance.” Toby wanted to dissuade him.

“Just don’t tell my wife. I’ve got to organize the marquee — we need a good tent.”

Could he refuse? Surely a week to organize the party would not be too much of a diversion? It was bad timing.

“Ok, but how much” he said, shaking his head. Anyway, the novel files were gobbledygook and nothing was working. He needed a new deadline.

“What do you think they’ll like?” Toby asked tentatively. The Mediterranean moves were among his best. The Albanian and Palestinian guests would be epicures, used to the freshest and simplest food made by their women and combined in great flavorful ways. “Tajine, brouchettes of kidney and liver, fava bean salad, stuffed quince?” It wouldn’t matter what he fed the uppercrust barbarians up at Dyrham. They’d juggle boiled spuds and cabbages if need be to get something free.

“Talk to Maxi,” Lord Nash said, leaving off with a grandiose strum of the mystery instrument.

A week later when Toby met Maxi at Bar Ha-Ha for a drink to discuss the menu he realized he was overcommitted. She had brought over 20 cookbooks. Toby only used two, Larousse and Mrs. Beaton, and some Xeroxed pages on Caucasian cooking. Maxi smelled like manicures, hair dye and Silk Cuts. By her figure and youthful look, the sweep of blush rising from her mouth to her cheeks, it was clear she was a second or third wife. Her eyes were coy, her hands searching. He was in trouble when she soon eased her fingers on his thigh. She wanted to see the club.

Maybe she was just naturally flirty?

The club became hard to sustain with the catering event so near. He canceled two weekends in a row. Those weekends a hoard of people were angrily ringing the bell and clamoring for entry as if the club was going on secretly without them or a new more important set had replaced them. Some of his classmates felt let down too; they all wanted to read their new work at the club as the deadline was impending. It wasn’t his responsibility. The club was temporary; that was its first principle. His aunt had postponed her visit due to a case of shingles, so conceivably it could continue to be lucrative, but she would be coming as soon as she was better. It was best to stop.

Toby asked Post to come with him to the dinner at Nash and Maxi’s manor. Fairly, he wanted to gather what their concept of food was like, and allay Maxi’s fears about the food for the juggling convention. In the conservatory, after petrol-like Moldavian schnapps, they tucked into the excellent roast bird, liberally applying the gravy to their meal and tanking up on wine. Toby naturally commented on the succulent meat to which Maxi responded docilely. She crunched her stiletto heel into his toes. After that he had a hard time communicating anything about himself or his new writing. He ate and drank dutifully. Post recounted the appearance of her latest scar. Maxi queried Nash about their plans to go on vacation together. Toby hazarded Nash was right, Gaza was nice, but Albania was the perfect place for burial alive.

Lord Nash, obtuse and dribbling bird, regaled them in fragments with his juggling workshop in Gaza, and everyone heaved a collective sigh when he got to the jumbled end. Obviously, Nash had survived the grenade-like adventure and not been confused for a jocular member of Hamas by the Israeli snipers. As if to make up for his monologue, Nash rolled up a tree of cannabis into a flute and brought out the special glow-in-the-dark balls. He’s spent a fortune on juggling and, not wanting to be outdone, spared himself for the real show.

Toby felt himself disembodying into star-like purchases of light as the house glowed from the preternatural fire of Lord Nash’s gasoline-soaked juggling pins. Lord Nash was naked, juggling outside with fire, and Maxi danced on the picnic table under the apple tree. There had been no music but it must have been resonating somewhere when she plunged through the old wood of the picni table, laughing hysterically between groans. Toby clutched his stomach gripped by laughter. Nash blew a plume of fire over Maxi as a finale. The tree sang, the apples and old leaves partly ignited and burning, a red wig on the tree’s black crown.

Toby resolved not to do the juggling convention in this baffled state. He was overwhelmed and the ride back home seemed an eternity, suspended in the deep bass of Lord Nash’s soundsystem. Back on the cold wet bed of his aunt’s bedroom, his dreams were active and psychotic. He felt her watching him with her beady eyes from the broken chair all night. She knew!

He woke wan and pale that next morning. Food had lost its appeal and that was an omen that the temporary really needed to close. Toby too thinned as his interest passed. He was down to slightly blue cheddar, proscutto and olives, no bread.

Did he venally ask Maxi for compensation as his takings were down? He couldn’t remember. There were blank spots. What else had they done? Toby was restless and anxious.

Nash offered to pick Toby up a few days in advance in order to prepare the food and grounds. The Palestinians and Albanians had their visas and were about to embark.

It was with superhuman effort that Toby roused himself to call the farmers and arrange the halal slaughter of the lambs through the Bath mosque. He’d roast them whole in a Balkan feast. He organized the mackerels and sardines for the fast grill and roe for mezze. He sourced the sweetest onions in chalky Wiltshire and simplest, best ewe cheese in Somerset. He located the acacia and linden honeys from the Forest of Dean. The organic flour and butter was for sweets extraordinaire. But he needed nuts and spices and he expected the Palestinians to bring them and a special chap who appeared once in the market, his cache was that exclusive. In the exercise of cultural diplomacy they should use more than batons and balls. In the end he had to capitulate to necessity and buy from Julian Graves for Nash’s do.

Resourceful, Nash has sourced a French accordion player and her band. That would definitely make the food taste better.

Maxi was very curt when he arrived at the manor. Toby caught her hiding her best fleur de sal under the sink. Lord Nash took him to the studio, the annex that was to be his quarters. He tumbled over the drums and clunked into the piano. Nash shouted; he was nervous too. He didn’t like people sleeping with his instruments. Toby drew a joint from his pocket and that put Nash back in more mellow operation.

Maxi relaxed too once she saw his competence, efficiency and cleanliness in the kitchen. He moved much of the prep work under the apple tree and the new table capable of withstanding Maxi’s dancing. The chickpeas were thinly hulled. The mangos and pomegranates came from South Africa. He prepared the spongy organs, marinated the fresh anchovies, devised fruit salsas and diverse pickles like parsnips and dates or beets and cherries. He had no trouble deboning ten pig heads for roulade. The flies left only temporarily to pester the cattle on the adjoining estate. Inside, the oil-fired hob was excellent for his purposes and the kitchen filled with the pleasurable scent of urine and steaming skin. He set Maxi on boiling the spuds for salad. The refrigerator accumulated trays of food, and he stored less sensitive food in the pantry. He braced himself with a Ricard as he mopped his brow, cut with relief like the old butcher block. He wasn’t so young and lean anymore. That left the question of who would chop wood and prepare the fire pits for the lamb? Ever the pyromaniac, Nash supervised. Toby handled the chainsaw, then the ax as the late, potent sun fell over the Avon valley and the Severn close in the distance. The sawdust tickled his back like rosehip itching powder and his body was sweaty with smells. Nash put down the flashlight and rolled up a smokeable bromide. Toby resumed the dangerous work of building the fire pits.

He languished over his coffee at dawn, his legs sore, but not for too long. He prepared the doughs for biscuits, filo, burek and pie, the chapel and kitchen sterile and silent as the bright white and yellow colors melded in his hands. After bumping the oven closed with his hip, hungry, his hands redolent with yeast, he test-drove the cool salads to adjust saltiness and vinegar. A cold spicy kidney refreshed him. He cleared a way and made progress with more glutinous mixes, completing the stories of food, alternately turning and incorporating his hands in the pleasure of chemistry, the pleasant sweet stickiness of eggs, water, milk, cream, butter and sugar. More was never enough. In testament, the oven hummed mercilessly. But in deference to the vegetarians he made walnut, rhubarb and cheese burek. That would boggle them. And for fun he made a random batch of pepper biscuits and gravy, fried bacon and tomato for the sleepyheads.

He greeted the team of lads rattled the gate and who had come to the marquee and stage. When he last checked at ten o’clock, rolling the layers of filo, the tent was up and Maxi stamped over the stage, yodeling a boogaloo.

Soon, the first of Nash’s juggling pals appeared. The lane was clogged with posh cars and some took to the overflow parking at Dyrham Hall. Tents sprouted on the lawn. Acrobats limbered up and far too many unicyclists began to lurch around the sea of green grass, sometimes buoys, sometimes yachts. Toby caught sight of Post arranging beanbags and pillows for the chill-out area. Time was slipping by and a quick and easy lunch solution was tomato sauce and eggs.

The lambs’ arrival was an enthralling event. The mosque butcher unloaded the flock of little creatures curled in cute beards of fat. Gutted, they were still warm. He managed to rub the lambs with lavender, rosemary and salt and skewer them and test the tricky mechanical spits. A few vegetarians looked displeased at the low-caste meat eaters slavering over the carcasses, but they too would be provided for: burek, bhagee, saslik and salads on the hoof, not just spears of halitosis-inducing, karma-killing meat.

Toby jokingly reminded Nash to pick up a brace of fire extinguishers as he prepared to pick up a load of writing students to help tend bar on the day. Toby could finally, indirectly repay them in part for their investment at his club with a day’s labor at Nash’s juggling convention. All’s well that ends well, he’d told them.

Nash’d go back to Bath later to meet the Palestinians and Albanians and introduce them to the Honorable Lord Mayor.

The week after the fire, Scriptum brought a Ouija board and lit candles. She batted her hair behind her wrinkled neck. She jammed her cheap rings on her fingers. She moved the eye over the polished board. Toby was rigid with fear. He didn’t like witchcraft. The wind rushed through his legs. His aunt stood before him and she beckoned him to the river where he spoke to his mother, white and pallid like the drowned. As she left his mother sent him a trifle and a fruitcake, both alcoholic and sweet.

Toby looked up into Scriptum’s eyes.

Scriptum licked her lips.

He was disconsolate at that mean thoughtography and he didn’t know what it was with this older woman, and she grabbed his face and screwed her tongue down his throat like it was a dick. He shuddered and she squeezed her breasts at him.

“I was asleep in the wardrobe when you fucked Charlie,” she said. “But then I woke up and looked through the door ajar.”

Was it his aunt speaking through the Ouija board?

She was a waxy Bahamian tan and moved towards him. “It’s not nice to not say good night.” Her voice was wrinkled with evil intent.

She pushed him onto the bed. “You remind me of Peter,” she said, “I liked Peter.” She fell on his and her belly pushed against him. Toby had not willpower, not fortitude, not sense, when instead of banishing the woman from his room with oaths, he grabbed at her dangling breasts and inserted the flat nipples into his mouth obediently.

He made the mistake of filling her expectations once, he remembered, as he fiddled with the soft flaps of skin in the darkness. He had cooked her fresh seafood ramen. He was only being kind. He thought you could do that for friends. She had tugged her nipples and crotch at the table then but he had politely ignored the peepshow come-on. She arched her backside into his hand and he fiddled too with the flaps of her groin, thick like cords of shrimp. He turned her on her back and obligingly pulled on a jacket. She wasn’t going to leave without him in her, so he might as well get it over with. It was a horrible, base thought, but he couldn’t help stop.

“You don’t have to do that with me,” she said, frowning at the gummy sheath.

Despite the discombobulating circumstances, this too-near rape, he had a sense of preservation and insisted. Who knew what and for how long the old bird had been slagging?

He slipped in along her side and he was surprised to find himself in space. He wasn’t nearly big enough. He disappeared in her like she were a horse. She masturbated with relish as he plunged away, lost and saddened that it came to this. She lifted her hips and offered her muddy back garden but his wand found no reason to shy there lest it be a looser and even more unpleasant purchase.

He left the bed and slept upstairs when it was done. He was too angry too sleep and shaking with disappointment. He had urged her to take him.

The taxi came before dawn.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, smiling and crying crocodile tears before closing the door with a compact thud, her coat and bag caught under the door.

He found her torn silk gown wedged in his bed, blowing and murmuring like an ill wind, part aunt, part mother. By the unclean feeling and urge to take a bath and launder the sheets, he gathered he’d transgressed somewhere, for the old taboos were still there in the streets of Tub, which might as well be the streets of Vienna. They were called rape or sadism or incest or parricide, but really what Scriptum was about was evil.

His room was not the same. It was washed with shame.

All his life Toby had wanted to be wanted and now that he was, he didn’t like it. Or did he? He had admired the ‘in’ peers at the schools and consequently been utterly outside. He wanted to be ‘in’ but hated it. What he didn’t understand was that now, with the club, two half barrels dug under the road, he was suddenly Mister It. All he did was transfer his emotions, depression mixed with drug use, into the food, and the result was startling and fresh, as if his spirit dwelled in the chutneys, salads, meats and vegetables, something that was irrevocably new, a story of simplicity that he had learned after reforming from the heavy handed mixes of far too many components together to saturate his taste when simplicity was called for. Here he was doing the most uncommercial event ever (uninspected and untaxed) and people were responding to his enterprise. He knew all along that the capitalist world above ground, above the roof of the club, the saloon and estate cars parked above, was not for him. He’d learned long ago to disregard it and seek his own rules. He was not going to do down lying.

Stream and Marsh Menu, November 2005

Chrysanthemum, lime and honey tea

Terrine of duck liver and squash with Angus Durer bitters

Roulade of smoked salmon and dill

Glass of St. Andrea Italian Riesling

Sherbet of mango/pomegranate and mint

White Trash biscuits

Roast duck leg with green lentils

TBA: Deep-fried salmon and chips/Bremen and Ricard sole/Sesame cod

Glass of St. Andrea Bull’s Blood

Charlotte potatoes

Braised root vegetables

Endive radicchio salad

Salad of chard, spinach and cabbage

Chocolate fudge walnut cake

Apple charlotte with chocolate sauce

Glass of raspberry (?) schnapps

Concept

Home cooking pop up

Motto

Hunger is the best sauce…. Cervantes

Mission

This is a special introductory offer. Our house (office, writing room, living room, studio) will temporarily assume the functioning of a food club. We spend about three days preparing the meal. We take a few more days to set up the space and tables. For one night and for ten guests, our home will be transformed from a living to an entertaining space for a few short hours. Reservations are open to a select public. Our vacation from heaven is only so long.

Vision

Cooking and eating please us, perhaps to our detriment. Our lives are intersticed with a constant search for the most interesting and best ingredients to make our eating life healthy and fulfilling. We seek fresh, real food from wherever we may travel. That said, we ask what is food, and in looking for an answer we may also cook inedible meals from clothes. These are for wearing, not eating. We want to know: Can you eat it? How do you eat it? And what happens if you do?

Constitution

• Guests assume full responsibility for consuming food and beverages so provided by the purveyors/proprietors, and waive all rights therein for death or other bodily harm that may result from consumption of said food and beverages provided by the purveyors/proprietors.
• Guests may be removed from the premises for bad behaviour as well as expelled from membership.
• Guests may freely associate with other guests
• Guests may smoke on the balcony, weather permitting
• Guests may purchase more alcohol, dependent on availability
• Guests may suggest a guest chef or meal for further consideration
• Guests may not harm or otherwise threaten others
• Guests may freely consume or distribute any items within their personal possession
• Guests may offer gratuities to the purveyors and/or their representatives
• Guests may contribute exhibits, performances or objects d’art