The Afrika Korps at The Lamplighter

During the cab ride from Dr. Adjavanti’s office in Burbank to The Lamplighter restaurant in Chatsworth, Trace reclined in the wide back seat and pondered the sorry state of his and Lisa’s finances.

After returning to Los Angeles from a disastrous 13-month exile in North Beach, San Francisco, Trace had hooked up with a documentary producer for the National Geographic Channel who occasionaly threw him a bone in the way of narration writing assignments on a freelance basis.

“If I put you on the staff,” Hank Hobart had explained, “the rules of the company are that we’d have to provide you with full medical coverage and, frankly, you have too many pre-existing conditions to qualify. Besides, you’re probably getting better coverage with your existing Medicare plan anyway.”

Trace felt that the producer was bullshitting him but the meager $350 per assignment wasn’t worth arguing about. Hard work for low pay had been Trace’s mantra long before the U.S. Congress officially cited nationwide economic conditions as recessionary.

Lisa was not faring much better; she spent her days and part of her evenings on a computer at the Buena Vista branch of the Burbank library, editing the new novel Trace was struggling with and scanning the editorial and transcription job listings on Craigslist. Many blog networks, she found, were hiring editors and writers but remuneration was in the form of gift certificates for online retailers like Amazon and Overstock.com. People were offering humiliating compensation for freelance transcription work (which she excelled at): 50 cents a page for a 50-page document.

Trace vowed to himself and to Lisa that he would avoid returning to the “porn ghetto” no matter how bad finances became but when his old friend — and sometimes nemesis — Norman phoned the night before, the rent on their small one-bedroom apartment in The Vistas Retirement Community was ten days past due.

“I’m not saying I’m going to take a job from him, Lisa,” Trace said when he balked at the mere idea of meeting Norman for lunch. “But I just want to hear the guy out; he does get legit work sometimes, you know.”

“Trace, the last time you wrote a porn script your blood pressure went through the roof and you had a blinding headache for three days straight.” Lisa was referring to script doctor work Trace completed for Norman the year before on a porn parody titled The Dykes of Hazzard — and she was right, the job damn near killed him.

The Lamplighter, at the corner of DeSoto and Nordhoff, catered to an incongruous customer demographic: blue-haired old ladies and their near-deaf husbands swarming in for the Seniors Specials and the personnel of the dozens of adult video manufacturers who dwelled in the windowless pre-fab warehouses and office buildings in the drab industrial parks of Chatsworth and Van Nuys.

When Trace arrived at 12:20, Norman was already eating lunch. Trace declined nourishment except for a beer that he ordered from the Lamplighter bar. Ten minutes into the informal meeting he was kicking himself for not succumbing to Lisa’s misgivings.

“Look, the market is changing, Trace,” Norman said. “I have to roll with the changes if I want to stay relevant. I know the idea is distasteful to you but —”

Trace took a swallow of his beer. “Rommel’s Last Blow Job is more than just distasteful, Norman.”

“Aw, Trace, do you know how many neo-Nazis live in Idaho alone?”

“No. How many?’

“I don’t know. But it’s a lot. And these fuckers are all into the same shit: anarchy, tattoos, body piercings, steel-toed boots, The Turner Diaries, thrash metal, Hitler, guns, and porn. They’re a niche market. There’s a certain symmetry to their interests and preoccupations when you think about it.”

“I would rather not think about it,” Trace said, squirming in the booth.

“Listen to you: I’d rather not. You think you’re Bartleby the Fucking Scrivener or something? You better start thinking about it because you need money and you owe me money, asswipe.”

Trace leaned forward in the booth and clenched his jaw. “I told you I’m out of that business for good, Norman. I came back to L.A. to take care of my mom, not to fall back into porn. It’s a goddamn ghetto.”

“You’re ghetto, Trace,” Norman mocked.

“Stop with the name calling; this is the table for grown-ups.”

Norman picked at his colorless tuna salad with a fork. “It’s so easy, Trace. You could write this in your sleep. It would take you all of two hours, for chrissakes. Rommel was one of the good guys, you know. He turned against Hitler and joined a conspiracy to assassinate him; the plot was thwarted but since the Field Marshal and his Afrika Corps were national heroes in the Fatherland, he was given an honorable way out. So it only makes sense that a man of Rommel’s stature would’ve been provided with one last fraulein; hence the title, Rommel’s Last Blow Job. I know it’s stupid but it doesn’t have to be. That’s why I need you: to make it smart. It’s niche marketing, Trace. It’ll sell a half a million units in the first four weeks of release.”

“And I suppose we do Adolf and Eva in the bunker as a sequel.”

“Now you’re thinking.”

“Need I remind you, Norman — as you’re not shy of reminding people when it suits your needs — that you have relatives who perished in the goddamn Holocaust.”

“I know. C’mon, don’t make me feel like shit, Trace.”

“Someone has to.” Trace swallowed the last of his beer, grabbed his cane, and began sliding out of the booth. “I thought you hit a new low when you edited one of those Faces of Death movies, Norman, but this really raises the bar.”

“Look, it wasn’t my idea, okay?” Norman pleaded. “The company came to me with the concept.”

“Right. You were just following orders.”