Free Monster's Chef by Jervey Tervalon

with a napkin, satisfied with his large meal, Prince’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend” reverberating about the cavernous interior of the Rolls as we returned to the Lair.
    â€œYou were so right, man, this is what I wanted. I owe you, Gibson. Mr. Chow needs to understand that I’ve got to let go and live.”
    I DIDN’T WANT IT TO HAPPEN , but it did. I became a kind of friend to Monster. I just wanted to work, earn money, and settle myself into the rhythm of a drug-free life, but that hope was dead. Without me being anything more than professionally friendly, Monster could not get enough of my company. He’d drop in to say hello and watch me prepare the food I knew he didn’t want to eat but insisted on. I suspected that for him it was like magic, and that if he stopped with the Living Food, who knew what might happen? Maybe he’d revert, lose all the progress of that miraculous change , the spectacular and spontaneous event that transformed him from being a black man into a new man, a man whose color bled away until he was near albino. Is that evolution? And his hair, now that was technology, or maybe science fiction. I suspect that his hair had a mind of its own, twisting itself into a ponytail, lengthening or lightening itself whenever it got the inclination.
    With a man like Monster it’s hard not to become obsessed with every little detail of him, and adding up those details was an unending job.
    Around him I was an anthropologist, and he was a race of one and the subject of my life’s work. Reading him was worse than reading tea leaves. I had no idea what Monster thought. If he said anything at all, it was usually to complain about whatever music I played in the kitchen, though he tapped his foot to it.
    Then one afternoon I watched him sample the fresh blueberries I put in front of him; he ate a few, his long white fingers staining blue, and looked up at me.
    â€œYou were married? How did that go?”
    â€œIt was good, marriage was good for me.”
    â€œExplain that.”
    â€œExplain what?
    â€œHow marriages can be good.”
    â€œI just know about my marriage, I couldn’t tell you about anybody else’s marriage.”
    â€œWell, can you explain why your marriage went bad?”
    I shrugged. I wasn’t interested in this, explaining my life to him, but I did want to know about Rita. If his relationship with her was falling apart, I wanted to know everything I could about that.
    â€œMy wife and I had a good thing going for a while and then I blew it,” I said.
    â€œDrugs?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œWas it her fault, did she lead you to drugs?”
    I shook my head, “No, that disaster was all me. She didn’t have a thing to do with it.”
    â€œYou’re lucky. Rita makes me wish I was high all the time. Sometimes I think she wants to drive me crazy. Women are like that, capable of all kinds of evilness, but I thought she was different, different from that. I was wrong, I see that now.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    Monster stood and did some fluid dance move like floating away, and then suddenly he was so close to me I took a step backward.
    â€œYou know I’m a religious man. If you’re gonna bring a child into the world, you need a family, a father and mother. That’s what I wanted, a real family, but I have to admit the reality, the reality is a bitch.”
    â€œIf you feel like that, maybe you should get help, counseling or something.”
    â€œOh, no, my friend. It’s not me. It’s her. I try to get her to see, I want her to know she’s got to do better. Otherwise . . . I don’t know.”
    I didn’t have a clue of what to say to him, but he looked at me like he expected something.
    â€œMaybe you should get somebody to talk to her. She might not understand your point of view.”
    â€œI’m a private person. I don’t like dragging my business through