Driving the Meat Wagon

We bundled up, my wife and I, ready for our excursion, our ill-fated mission.

Car keys? Check.

Gloves? Check.

Masks? Check.

Sanity? Negative.

We weren’t headed out on any necessary grocery or gas run.

Oh, no.

It’s worse, much worse.

We were headed out to make deliveries.

Meat deliveries.

We were ready for another wild ride on what I have come to call the Meat Wagon.

In this insane venture, I am a most unwilling participant.

But I must do what I can to keep my wife safe during these uncertain times, though she claims I have only put her life needlessly at risk.

(More on this point later on.)

Let me explain.

Does your partner have a particular friend who has become more of a partner-in-crime, who steers them both well outside the lines?

When they get together, do they commit sheer, unadulterated craziness?

For my wife, Gloria is just such a person.

A tough little cookie from Taiwan, Gloria is a never-ending source of half-insane, pie-in-the-sky money making schemes. 

And my wife has become her all-too-willing accomplice.

To me, many of these unbaked ideas carry the whiff of a Ponzi scheme.

“Get in now on the ground level,” Gloria advises. “Before it’s too late!”

First there was this rush, years ago, to cash in on the Brazilian acai berry juice health fad. They held parties at our San Francisco house, pressuring my friends to start buying this stuff in bulk.

Then came the negative-ion clothes made in Japan. And the Chinese-made spray that supposedly soothed away your wrinkles and made you look 20 years younger.

And please let me forget the Bit Coin caper.

There are others, of course, but I’ve repressed them.

Well, the other day, Gloria called with a deal she insisted no one could refuse. She's a dealmaker and her eyes became dollar signs.

Gloria makes her living as a restaurant supplier, mostly to Chinese businesses in the San Francisco Bay area. 

The Covid-19 scare has closed restaurants, leaving meat companies holding the bag on all kinds of cuts, that could be had — Gloria insisted — for a song.

Gloria wanted to let my wife in on the deal. And, of course, my wife wanted to spread the wealth to her other meat-eating Asian friends.

Not for profit, not this time.

And that's how the Meat Wagon was born.

For days, the two huddled by phone over an extensive menu of available cuts from all sorts of unwilling animals.

These cuts were available through some of the best names in the business, including the famed Harris Ranch from Central Valley, California.

I listened to all this plotting,

They were like two street thugs from South Philly fencing ill-begotten goods that had just "fallen off some truck."

Which, in a way, it had.

They made their selections — nearly $1,000 worth in all. Gloria submitted the order and, when the day came, I was enlisted to drive my wife 45 miles to Fremont to make the pickup.

This was not a good reason to venture out during this COVID-19 shutdown.

But I went, like a lamb to slaughter.

We met at a bakery, one of Gloria’s clients, and divided up the booty.

There were huge boxes of frozen cuts.

Pork Shoulders. Flank and Flat-Iron steaks. Australian rack of lamb. Sirloin. Filet Mignon. Pork bellies. Rib-eye and hangar steaks. New York strip.

I could hear the mooing from a mile away.

The women worked like Jesse and Walter White, two accomplices in a Breaking Bad meth factory.

Quickly. No nonsense.

When the sorting was over, we dumped the still-frozen cuts into the trunk and hurried home.

But not quite.

First we had to stop at my wife’s friend’s house to make a delivery.

Share the wealth, my wife insisted. That's what friends do.

The next day, our freezer was packed with enough meat to feed an army of Chinese revolutionaries.

My wife went back to work from home. But then I would hear her on the phone, whispering in a way that had nothing to do with accounting.

Illicit deals were being made, I knew.

Menus were dispatched online. Asian women were calling in with their orders. Every now and then, I could make out the word in Mandarin, (Ro).

Meat.

My wife was organizing another Meat Wagon run, this time with more recipients.

As the calls poured in, she was like an Amazon warehouse worker-turned five-star restaurant waiter, giving advice on the best cuts.

All at rock bottom prices.

Then she’d call Gloria and the two would debate such meat-delivery nuances as supply and demand and transportation costs.

All in a high-pitched shout.

Once, I told them not to fight.

"This is the way we talk!" Gloria said. "We're doing business!"

Yep, we're thick as thieves, me and Gloria.

To my wife, she refers to me as "your idiot husband."

Because I am blind to her money-making schemes.

One morning, Gloria called when I was still in bed.

I heard my name bandied about, Yue han, or John.

Since both women were busy at their day jobs, Gloria suggested that I make the meat run.

“He’s sleeping,” my wife said.

“That’s no excuse,” Gloria insisted.

Did I go?

Over my dead, frozen hamburger-helper body.

But I did go the next night.

Gloria enlisted some shills to make the delivery to our condo.

Still, my wife needed to make her rounds.

Is this wise? I asked.

Well, she was going — with or without me.

And since she could barely lift these huge frozen hunks, I had little choice.

I called a friend, a vegan, and told him the story as he sniffed in disgust.

Finally, well after dark, we set off.

It was Keystone Kops, all the way.

At our first delivery, the woman apparently wasn’t home. We’d later find that she had gone to bed early and that her elderly parents weren’t opening the door for anyone.

So we left a huge shank of something in a cooler discarded on the porch.

We made more drops, but the real trouble began when we stopped for gas.

After pumping, I didn’t immediately remove my gloves (my bad) and then absentmindedly picked up my wife’s company ID.

Well, she insisted, I’d just about handed her the virus on a platter.

A meat platter.

We made it home at last and I went to bed dreaming of the slaughter house.

In days, the reviews came in -- and they weren't good.

Some people complained they should have received more meat, their cuts were too small, the whole process was too disorganized.

Like vultures picking over a carcass, beaks were bared.

So much for good will in the era of COVID-19.

My wife has promised the Meat Wagon has made its last run.

But I can still hear her voice lower conspiratorially when she talks on the phone.

And I know it’s Gloria. 

They’re plotting their next heist.