I felt betrayed and heartbroken. I felt like I was losing my mind.
I drove away, leaving Michael standing on the shoulder, looking surprised that I’d carried through with it.
I didn’t know how he was going to get home and I didn’t care.
I turned down the next four good clients, despite some very tasty-looking profile photos; I felt like I was still being hunted, as though Michael or Eleanor and the Dreadlock Girls were watching me, waiting for me to slip up.
I didn’t know if I could go out again. I didn’t feel confident that I’d be able to get the job done.
But I still owed money on the bus cum camper, and there was no way I could let it be repossessed; the damned thing’s filled with a sheepdog’s worth of hair from New England’s tastiest missing ladies.
So when the next solid call came along, I had no choice but to take it.
She lived a long way from Yale University and Michael the so-called pizza guy; that made me feel a little less uneasy. Her name was Lima and she was a laid-off line cook in New Hampshire, twenty-five, vegan and unhappy. It all sounded right.
She sounded a lot like me, actually. Except for the vegan part.
I arrived just after lunchtime at her apartment. I’d decided to meet her upstairs, and I waited for a samaritan to let me in rather than buzz her. I stood outside the door of her suite for a good ten minutes, listening for voices or for any other sign that I was walking into a trap.
All I heard was a very poor rendition of Rebecca Black’s “Friday”. That didn’t worry me too much.
We sat together on her leather couch, talking about the decision she was making; I even read her goodbye notes as a kind of test.
Lima seemed perfectly legit; I told her I was willing to take her with me.
She put on a sweater and an expensive-looking silk scarf and climbed into the camper with me, sitting in the passenger seat as we headed south on I-89. We talked for quite a while, and from what I could tell she was the right mix of sensible and scared.
“I’m embarrassed,” Lima said after an hour or so, “but I need to go pee. Can we stop somewhere?”
“I guess,” I said. “Does it matter where?”
“Anywhere.”
There’s nothing innately suspicious about bathroom breaks, but I was feeling paranoid. Since Lima didn’t have a place in mind, I stayed away from the upcoming service station and decided to pull off the Interstate completely. I took her to a restaurant right next to the covered bridge in Contoocook.
“I’ll wait here,” I said.
Lima went into the restaurant and I waited, flipping through the first few pages of a Stephen King novel that Michael had once lent me. I read a King story once where a man stranded on a desert island had started to eat parts of himself. I wondered how many hours of waiting in the bus it would take before I started to chew on my left arm.
The door opened sooner than I’d expected and I turned to give Lima a smile. But looking back at me instead was Eleanor. She was pointing a handgun at me. I wasn’t sure it was real.
“Get up,” she said.
I stood up from the driver’s seat, and she shoved me towards the back of the bus.
The door opened again and Lima stepped inside.
“Don’t come in here,” I said. Then I noticed the two women behind her. Both in dreadlocks, one holding a knife.
I had a feeling I wouldn’t get a chance to escape this time. I don’t know how many pizza places they have in Contoocook.
They taped us up on the floor, back to back, stuffing a couple of my dirtiest dishcloths into our mouths.
Eleanor was beaming like it was her wedding day, a smile filled with stress, anticipation, and a little bit of relief. “Now you’ll know what it feels like,” she said to me as she stuck the handgun into her ugly canvas belt.
I said a silent prayer, hoping she’d forgotten to put the safety on.
The three vegans took us back onto the Interstate, but I couldn’t see enough from my place on the floor to know where we were headed. I could hear Lima sobbing quietly, and for a moment I wondered if a kidnapping was just the shock she needed to get her life back on track.
I wondered if Michael was in on it; was he following behind us with the fourth vegan? Was he coming along so he could laugh at me when Eleanor finally got her chance at whatever revenge came from the mind of a woman who’d forgotten how to bathe?
Part of me hoped he was in on it, so I’d get one last chance to see him again. And maybe bite off his left testicle.
They cut off the tape a couple of hours later and led us out of the camper. It was late afternoon now, and from the smell we seemed to be in the middle of a fish canning district.
“Where are we?” I asked as we were brought out into an empty parking lot.
“Last stop,” Eleanor said. “New Bedford, Massachusetts.”
I knew just enough about New Bedford to know my day was going to end badly.
A Prius pulled in behind the camper. I watched to see who would get out; it was the fourth vegan.
“Michael’s not here?” I asked.
“Who the hell is Michael?” Eleanor asked.
I didn’t know how to feel.
They led us inside a manufacturing plant that stank of fish. There was no one inside. All I saw was the machinery, big, silent and dirty.
“This is where you’re going to kill us?” Lima asked.
Eleanor nodded.
“You can’t kill us,” I said. “You’re vegans. That’s completely counter to everything you believe in.”
“I’m anti-speciest,” Eleanor said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“I fight against human privilege. Sometimes that requires a little affirmative action at the fish plant.” She shook her head at me. “You were going to eat me, Marie-Claire. Now we’re going to eat you.”
“The best meat’s in the rump,” I said. “Make sure you kiss it first.”
“This has nothing to do with me,” Lima said, her voice trembling. “I didn’t eat anyone.”
“You’re innocent, I guess,” Eleanor said. “And I’ll bet you told Marie-Claire that you’re a vegan, too?” She sounded pretty skeptical.
“That’s right, she is a vegan,” I said. “No animal products of any kind.”
“Really?” Eleanor poked Lima in the stomach. “Wool sweater… silk scarf… fancy cow-skin shoes. Someone here is a pretty shit-awful vegan.”
“I don’t eat dairy,” Lima said.
“We’re making the right choice here,” Eleanor said.
I heard a jarring noise as the machinery powered on.
“We’re ready,” one of the other vegans said. “Put one on the belt.”
Eleanor looked over to Lima. “Take off your clothes,” she said.
Lima gave out a whimper but then she did as she was told.
Once she was naked, Eleanor and one of her companions lifted Lima up and threw her onto the conveyor belt. The belt wasn’t moving at that point, and Lima just laid there, motionless.
“She’s too big for the cooker,” Eleanor said. “We’ll need to hash her.”
“I brought something for that,” one of the other vegans said. She brought over a large silver cleaver and traded it to Eleanor for the handgun.
“You — you’re kidding,” Lima said from her place on the belt.
And then Eleanor took the first swing.
I didn’t watch.
Lima didn’t say anything else.
After less than a minute of cutting I heard the conveyor belt start to run.
“This is what’s coming to you,” Eleanor said to me. “I’m going to hash you up, and then we’ll steam cook you until you’re just right…” She held up her fingers, as if she were counting steps.