They say revenge is a dish best served cold.  Not necessarily, as it turns out.

                 Many of us dream of getting published, and my neighbor Spirit is no exception.  For more than two decades now, in her quest to become a kind of Julia Child of the afterbirth world, Spirit has been trying to put together a placenta cookbook.  And I’ve been doing what I can to help, short of actually eating anything that emerges from her test kitchen.

                (For those of you who are new to my neighborhood, visualize a Deepak Chopra rally full of stoned Grateful Dead fans spliced into an episode of Green Acres, with Spirit and her partner Don as the psychedelic equivalent of Doris and Fred Ziffel.  Don and Spirit live about a quarter-mile down the road from us, where Don has a thriving practice as a gas-channeling massage therapist and Spirit runs a real estate business that specializes in feng shui property staging.  They are in their late seventies and active in the movement to promote world peace via simultaneous global orgasm.)

                 The placenta, not to be confused with polenta (though both, it seems, are quite compatible with a nicely seasoned tomato sauce), is the organ that connects a developing embryo to the uterine wall, supplying it with nutrients and oxygen.  According to devotees of placentophagy, or placenta-eating, this tissue is rich in life-giving energy and consuming it can lead to a more blissful and relaxed state of consciousness.  Don claims it also works wonders on hangovers.  (Don and Spirit stomp their own grapes, which they make into wine and bottle under their own label, Chateau La Foot, a robust Zinfandel with a subtle note of Dr. Scholls inserts; the perfect pairing, or so I’m told, with Spirit’s Placenta Lasagna.)

                     Most of the women around here are past reproductive age, so you might imagine that raw materials for recipe development would be difficult to come by, and for a time they were.  But soon word got around, and it wasn’t long before an Underground Railroad of sorts sprung up, with placentas being smuggled out of maternity wards in biohazard bags, then passed along to friends and relatives, and from there traveling up the coast and eventually finding their way into Spirit’s kitchen, where she would work her magic and transform them into paté or shepherd’s pie or pasta sauce.

   But like a lot of creative visionaries, Spirit is a person who is strong on ideas while somewhat weak when it comes to execution.  And so, between the real estate, the wine, the orgasm project, and an assortment of other ambitious schemes, including a plan to tie-dye an entire field of Holstein cows in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, Spirit’s placenta cookbook has been on the back burner for some time now, even as the flow of donations continues.  For the past few years, in fact, most of the placentas have been languishing in Spirit’s deep freeze, which finally became filled to capacity this past winter.  And that’s when she asked if I might be willing to temporarily house the overflow in my own freezer.

   Well, I figured, why not?  I’ve got another neighbor who puts road kill in his deep freeze, saving the poor critters up till he accumulates enough to turn them into art installations and, by comparison, placentas struck me as relatively tame.  So Spirit came by with a half dozen, all nicely wrapped in Cryovac pouches, which I wedged in among the frozen pot roasts and Ziploc bags filled with summer produce, never giving them another thought, until we happened to be entertaining some rather annoying houseguests… 

 I am standing in my kitchen, chopping garnishes for a soup and chatting with the female half of a couple who has come to spend three days in the country with us while the floors in their spectacular penthouse co-op are being refinished. 

 “So, Laurel, how’s the blog (barely stifled giggle) going?”

                      “Um, I…”

                      “Well, good for you!  And, who knows, maybe it will lead to something that actually pays.  God, I wish I had time for fun things like that.  I’m still such an achievement junkie.  Bor-ing.”  She rolls her big blue eyes, whose lids, I suspect, have been recently lifted.  I have to admit they look pretty good.  “Did I tell you I’ve just been nominated as Female Entrepreneur of the Year by the Northern California chapter of WARP?”     

                     “Wow.  Congratulations!  So business is still really great, huh?”  I try, not altogether successfully, to conceal the disappointment in my voice.

                     “Off the charts in terms of revenue.  Apparently some things are recession-proof, including kids’ birthday parties.”

                     I know Andrea from my days in the advertising business, back when I could spend time in her presence without feeling the need to anesthetize myself with massive quantities of gin. But that was before she got the MBA from Stanford, married Roger, and launched a highly lucrative jumpy castle empire.

“I don’t know why I keep pushing myself like this.  It’s not like we need the money.  More of a self-actualization thing, I guess.”  She laughs, running her long manicured fingers through a head of hair that looks like it requires more in monthly maintenance expenditures than a vintage Jaguar. 

 “But, hey, enough shop talk.  I must be boring you to death.”  You have no idea.  “I love those pants, by the way.  So slimming.  I wish I could put on a little weight.  But with these triathlons, it’s nearly impossible…kind of crazy at our age, I know, but the high, my God, almost better than sex, if that’s possible.”  She giggles and leans towards me in a confidential, girl talky sort of way.  “I swear, Rog and I will still be going at it like rabbits when we’re eighty!”

                    “That’s ‘cause you’ll still have the body of a sixteen-year-old.” 

 Enter Roger, who proceeds to playfully lift up the bottom of his wife’s expensively tailored shirt -- Italian-made, judging from the cut -- thus exposing her remarkably taut midriff.  “Check out these abs.  Not an ounce of fat.”  Andrea slaps his hand, giggling; clearly she eats this stuff up.  I contemplate the wisdom of another cocktail.

 Roger is an architect, frequently on the short list for all sorts of important prizes, or so we keep hearing.  He plops down on our kitchen stool, an old tractor seat mounted on a pedestal base.  “You know, this place is just so comfortable.  Like an old shoe.  A really nice broken-in old, loveable, smelly…” here Roger looks pointedly at our dog, Dudley, who farts as if on cue, “pair of cross-trainers.” 

 “Besides, I like funk.  To me, the whole so-called ‘tasteful design’ notion,” he continues, making little quotes with his fingers in the dog fart-saturated air, “is highly overrated.”

 We keep the really big bottle of gin down in the freezer.  I decide to go to the basement and fetch it.  When I open the freezer door, the first thing I see is placenta, and suddenly I feel more cheerful.  Gin in hand, I return upstairs to our guests and make an announcement.

 “Tomorrow while you guys go on that hike, I think I’ll stay here and whip up a batch of spaghetti sauce.”

  In truth, I make two batches.  One for my husband and me, produced according to the usual recipe, and another very special version for our guests who, for once, are actually impressed.  

                     “I don’t know what you’ve put in here, but it’s really good.”  Roger says, swallowing a mouthful of spaghetti, then washing it down with a slug of red wine.  “Fabulous texture.”

                    Andrea pats her flat belly.  “I’m blowing my diet, but what the hell.  Would it be too much to ask for seconds?” 

                    “Not at all,” I smile, as I take her plate and head into the kitchen.  “The meat is from a local grower.  All natural.”

                     The rest of the evening is surprisingly pleasant and, for the most part, free of insult.  Our guests are in a mellow mood.  

 Roger leans back in his chair, looks out the window to the cows on our neighboring hillside, and gives out a big, contented yawn.

 “You know, I could get used to this country living. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so relaxed.”

                      Andrea, nodding in agreement, takes one more bite of her spaghetti Bolognese and chews it thoughtfully, just the slightest trace of alarm flickering across her lovely botoxed brow.