D*U*C*K
By Poppy Z. Brite
Excerpt available

Signed Hardcover Edition: (sold out)
Lettered: $150

ISBN 1-59606-076-x

Poppy Z. Brite's first piece of original fiction since the levees broke, the long new novella D*U*C*K revisits Brite's popular characters Rickey and G-man (The Value of X, Liquor, Prime, Soul Kitchen).

Following a life-threatening assault by a waiter and the defection of one of his best cooks to a trendy new restaurant, Chef John Rickey accepts a gig catering the annual banquet for the South Louisiana branch of hunting/conservation group Ducks Unlimited. Held in the Cajun prairie town of Opelousas, this all-duck banquet mightn't seem a great opportunity for a chef to restore his wounded pride...but the guest of honor is Rickey's childhood football hero, former New Orleans Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert.

Rickey's crew is unstoppable, his menu is perfect, and the ducks are thick in the marshes this year. In Louisiana, though, every important occasion has a nutcase waiting in the wings...and all too often, the nutcase is an elected official. Will Rickey get the chance to cook for his idol, or will it end in chaos?

D*U*C*K will be available only from Subterranean Press in two unique editions:

Signed Hardcover Edition: Signed, fully cloth bound hardcover
Lettered: 26 signed leatherbound copies, housed in a custom traycase

From Publishers Weekly
"The ghosts of pre-Katrina New Orleans haunt Brite's latest culinary caper (after Soul Kitchen) in the form of great meals, good times and the carefree spirit that gave the Big Easy its nickname. The loose plot of this picaresque tale concerns Rickey's tribulations at crafting an all-wild-duck menu for Ducks Unlimited, a Cajun hunting club. Though Rickey's self-conscious fretting at all the possible disasters that could happen build an element of playful suspense, there's never any doubt that this will play out as a happy Cinderella story from soup to nuts. Brite does a fine job of evoking the Crescent City and its soul through delectable descriptions of its unique cuisine and the quirky characters who prepare it. This is fun foodie fiction, and readers will scarf it down as quickly as a plate of blackened crawfish."

From Booklist
"The real core of the book, though, is surprisingly philosophical, as Brite reflects perceptively on how we become who we are. The last few pages invoke a magical harmony between reality, imagination, and humaneness. Hardly a crime novel, but a must for followers of this quirky but fascinating series."

Excerpt from D*U*C*K
by Poppy Z. Brite.

V. SHAKE MOVES UP IN THE WORLD

Shake Vojtaskovic was deeply and secretly ashamed of the fact that when he got promoted to head chef of La Pharmacie, his first thought was This is really gonna put the piss in Rickey's cornflakes.

There was no reason for such a flash of pettiness. He'd worked with Rickey for more than a decade, off and on. Rickey wasn't always easy to get along with -- hell, let's face it, Rickey wasn't usually easy to get along with -- but Shake genuinely liked the guy. He was funny, good-hearted, insanely talented. There was just something about him that set your nerves on edge, that put tinfoil between your teeth, that made you think about pissing in his cornflakes.

Of course there was also the fact that Rickey had originally worked under him -- Shake had been sous chef at the Peychaud Grill when Rickey and G-man were raw line cooks -- and he had ended up working under Rickey, but that was no big deal. Rickey had hit the jackpot three years ago with one genius idea (a menu based entirely on booze) and financial backing from Lenny Duveteaux. Shake was more of a journeyman cook, fast and solid but not long on ambition. Though he'd been cooking since he was seventeen, this was the first head chef job he'd ever held, and he had only gotten it by way of a horrible accident.

Chef G�tz LaVey took inordinate pride in his long, luxurious blond hair; he claimed it was a chick magnet equivalent to if not greater than a badass car, a fat bank account, or a huge dick (which he also claimed to possess, not that anybody wanted to know about that). He wore it pulled back in a ponytail when he was cooking, of course, but that hadn't helped him on the day the automatic meat slicer jammed while cutting the beef daube glace. If anything, the 'do had made it easier for the machine to yank his face into the gleaming machinery when the thing kicked back on as he was examining it. Individual strands of hair might have ripped out of his scalp, but the ponytail reeled him in like a bull redfish. During his twenty-one years in restaurant kitchens, Shake had grated his knuckles, sliced through his nails, amputated his fingertips, worked with hangovers and the stomach flu, and smelled chicken that had been rotting in a powerless walk-in cooler for two weeks, but he was proud of the fact that he'd never thrown up on the job � until the day of the daube glace. There was no shame in it, though; everybody in the kitchen had thrown up.

Chef G�tz wasn't incapacitated for long, but he would need plastic surgery and skin grafts. Worse, he'd turned blade-shy; word was he couldn't even touch a paring knife. The head chef job was Shake's by default, starting that night.

La Pharmacie achieved its trendiness by unearthing ancient Creole dishes and replicating them with a twist, often an ill-advised one; G�tz had been planning to serve the daube glace with pineapple-Tabasco cr�me fraiche and Indian frybread. After he rode off in the ambulance, Shake pried the big jellied hunk of beef and aspic out of the slicer, washed off the blood, pared away the portions that had come in closest contact with G�tz's rearranged physiognomy, and sliced it by hand. It didn't come out as paper-thin as it would have in the slicer, but then again, Shake still had both cheekbones and all of his nose. He trashed the cr�me fraiche and Indian frybread, sent the pantry bitch out for several boxes of Melba toast, and served the daube with a garlic horseradish cream. It was the bestselling app they'd had in weeks. La Pharmacie's owners started thinking maybe G�tz should have made an appointment with the meat slicer ages ago.

Today, with G�tz's mishap a couple of weeks in the past, Big Easy magazine had sent a photographer over to take Shake's picture for a feature on new chefs at old restaurants. Less than a year in business, La Pharmacie didn't qualify as an "old" restaurant by any standards, let alone New Orleans ones whereby any restaurant open for under two decades was considered a young upstart. Shake guessed there hadn't been much top-end turnover at Antoine's, Arnaud's, or Broussard's lately. He didn't mind having his picture made, but the photographer had left him a few back issues of the magazine, and as Shake flipped through it while eating his staff meal, he reflected that he didn't think he had ever seen an issue of Big Easy without a picture of Rickey in it. If it was possible to receive blowjobs from a magazine, Big Easy would put G-man out of business. Rickey had been on the cover twice already, once when they'd named him Chef of the Year and once when Liquor had won a James Beard award. Not that he didn't deserve it -- he'd blown away most of his competition for the local honor, and a Beard award was a huge deal in the food world -- but Shake couldn't help wondering whether Rickey would have made the cover both times if he'd looked like, say, Danny DeVito. Maybe so; God knew Lenny Duveteaux was no looker, and he'd probably been on more Big Easy covers than any other chef in history.

The picture Shake was looking at now showed both of Liquor's co-chefs at the top of a story about The New Cocktail Culture, whatever the hell that was. Both were dressed in their whites. Rickey sat at a table holding a glass of what could have been any kind of whiskey, but Shake knew it was Wild Turkey. That and beer were about the only things Rickey ever drank. His hair was a lot shorter than it had been the last time Shake had seen him, almost buzzed. His vivid eyes, more turquoise than strictly blue, blazed out of the photograph. Rickey was not a skinny guy by anybody's standards, but there was a sharp, nervous cast to his features that the camera loved. G-man stood behind him, tall and rangy, arms folded across his chest. He had removed his shades for the photograph, but Shake thought he should have kept them on; his squint and his long, blunt nose gave him a moleish look.

"'Cocktails are a way of celebrating different cultures,'" Rickey was quoted as saying. "'Look at how the Sazerac symbolizes New Orleans, how the daiquiri makes you think of pre-Communist Cuba. It's a little bit of somebody's world, right there in your glass.'" Shake knew Rickey loathed Sazeracs and thought any mixed drink with more than two ingredients was "floofy." He wondered if he, too, would have to become fluent in Media Bullshit now that he was a head chef. Maybe he should call Rickey, get some pointers.

He thought he'd done all right, though. He wondered if he'd hear from Rickey when the issue featuring him came out. Shake had always believed in giving credit where credit was due, and this interview had been no exception.

VI. STANK-ASS MOTHERFUCKER

G-man could usually tell whether or not it was going to be a good mail day by the look on Karl's face when he handed over the mail. Karl was the maitre d', and he knew Rickey's moods as well as anyone in the front of the house. Bills were neutral, a fact of life. Personal letters were bad, as they usually indicated a customer who'd been unhappy enough with some aspect of his meal to pen an impassioned screed about it. Food and trade magazines could go either way -- Rickey liked looking at them, but generally found something in them to piss him off. Today looked iffy: a hand-addressed letter from something called Ducks Unlimited, probably a financial solicitation, and the new issue of Big Easy.

Rickey was in the back office making out next week's schedule. G-man dropped the letter on his desk and started paging through the copy of Big Easy. This didn't look good. A feature on new chefs at old restaurants quoted Shake Vojtaskovic, late of Liquor and currently of La Pharmacie, saying, "If I've learned anything from my last few jobs, it's to avoid the gimmick. Don't go for a cute trick or any easy sell. Just make good, simple food -- that's what diners really want."

G-man must have made some small sound in his throat, because Rickey looked up, saw the expression on his face, and snatched the magazine out of his hands. He read silently, his lips moving. For a moment G-man dared to think maybe there wouldn't be an explosion. Then it came: "GIMMICK? GIMMICK? I'LL GIVE HIM 'AVOID THE GIMMICK'!" Rickey grabbed the phone. G-man hoped Shake wouldn't be at the restaurant, but it was no good; Rickey knew Shake's cell number.

A torrent of invective such as G-man had seldom heard, even from his notoriously foul-mouthed partner, came pouring out as soon as Shake picked up. "Gimmick? GIMMICK? You stank-ass motherfucker! You shit-sucking bitch, I'll give you a gimmick right up your wide tan track! You got such a problem with my gimmick, how come I never heard nothing about it when you was working here, making goddamn good money too, you motherfucking bitch-ass cracker -- " At his angriest, Rickey tended to revert to a Lower Ninth Ward street patois that was somewhere between black and yat.

"Rickey," G-man could hear Shake saying on the other end. "Rickey, listen."

"Yeah, listen to my ass in your face, you fucking shitstain -- "

"Rickey -- "

"Give him a chance," G-man murmured.

"What," Rickey said finally. It was not a question; nor was there any hint of open-mindedness in it. Rickey was sensitive about his gimmick, always had been.

"Look," said Shake, and G-man reached across Rickey to press the button that would put him on speakerphone; he wanted to hear this. "I know it sounds like I was talking about Liquor, but I swear to God, they took my shit out of context. I was talking about the stupid-ass gimmicks of the guy who was chef here before me. You know he was gonna serve beef daube glace with pineapple-Tabasco cr�me fraiche?"

Rickey was stunned into silence, but only for a moment. Then he glanced back down at the article and said, "Yeah, so what's this shit about your last few jobs? Seems to me working here was one of your last few jobs."

"Well � "

"Yeah. That's pretty much what I thought."

"It was just the damn liquor all the time!" Shake cried, real desperation in his voice. "I think you're a hell of a chef, Rickey, and Liquor's a great restaurant. But god-DAMN, don't you ever get tired of having to find a way to stick booze in everything?"

"Booze set me free," Rickey said, and now his voice was not ghetto-raw, but icy. "Booze gave me a way to have my own restaurant with G, and cook the food I want to cook, and you better fucking believe I'm not sick of it. What I'm sick of is cooks who make their reputations here, then get a job in some trendy shithole and take a dump on us the first chance they get."

"Hey, I didn't make my reputation at Liquor. In case you forgot, I was sous chef at the Peychaud when you were one of Paco's little line bitches."

"Oh, right, and the name Shake Vojtaskovic was on the lips of culinary New Orleans. I guess I did forget. You know damn well the only cook that mattered at the Peychaud was Paco himself."

"Yeah, yeah, Paco Valdeon, a.k.a. God. I hadn't known Paco better, I'd a thought maybe you and him had a thing going on, the way you talk about him."

"WHAT? LISTEN, YOU CAN SUCK MY HAIRY NUTSACK, YOU FUCKING WAD OF FUCKJUICE -- "

G-man plucked the receiver out of Rickey's hand, leaving Rickey to gawp at him in utter, frozen surprise. He put the phone to his own ear and said, "You know what, Shake? That was low even for you. But guess what? We forgive you, because you got no idea what you're getting into taking over that place, and the shit you'll be dealing with is gonna be worse than your wildest dreams."

Gently, he replaced the receiver in its cradle. For a minute he and Rickey just stared at each other. Then Rickey said, "Well, I think you handled that better than I did."

G-man laughed. After a moment, reluctantly, Rickey did too.

"Fuck him," said G-man. "It's his first head chef job, he thinks he's hot shit, that's all. He'll be Flavor of the Month for a little while and then everybody'll move on to some other trendy joint. People might laugh at our gimmick, but we got staying power."

"Yeah, cause New Orleanians like to get drunk."

"It's not just that and you know it. Here, open the rest of your mail."

"Just junk," Rickey muttered. He picked up the envelope from Ducks Unlimited and slit it open with an old paring knife. As he read, his eyes grew wide and the scowl left his face. When he had finished, he handed the letter to G-man.

Dear Chef John Rickey:

I am writing to you as a representative of Ducks Unlimited. As you may know, we are a major conservation organization dedicated to the preservation of wetlands and other waterfowl habitats. We are currently planning our annual banquet for 300 members to be held on December 14 at the Lions Club Hall in Opelousas, which has a full cafeteria-style kitchen. We will have a number of guest speakers including our Guest of Honor, avid sportsman, bona fide Cajun, and former New Orleans Saints quarterback Bobby Hebert. We are interested in having you and your crew prepare the banquet as we want to do something a little different this year. We plan to have every course feature wild duck shot in Louisiana, and we understand that you are an expert at planning gourmet menus based around one ingredient. If interested, please contact me with a quote for the meal.

Sincerely yours,

Aristide "Tee" Fontenot

President, Ducks Unlimited, St. Landry Parish Chapter