“What are we to do with you, dear?” Sadly.
At this point he would expect a prisoner—a normal prisoner—to say something ridiculous like let me go and I won’t say a word to anybody. This girl, hungry and thirsty or not, knows better.
Roddy pushes the plate with the slab of liver on it a little closer. “Eat that and you’ll feel your strength return at once. The feeling will be extraordinary.” He tries a thin joke: “We’ll turn you into a carnivore in no time.”
There’s still no response, so he starts for the stairs.
Ellen says, “I know what that is.”
He turns back. She is pointing to the big yellow box at the far end of the workshop. “It’s a woodchipper. You’ve got it turned to the wall so I can’t see the intake, but I know what it is. My uncle has worked in the woods up north all his life.”
At his age Rodney Harris would have thought himself beyond surprise, but this young woman is full of them. Most extraordinary, almost like discovering a canine prodigy that can count.
“It’s how you’ll get rid of me, isn’t it? I’ll go through the hose and into a big bag and the bag will go in the lake.”
He stares, mouth agape.
“How do you… why would you think that?”
“Because it’s the safest place. There’s a TV show, Dexter, about a man who kills people and gets rid of them in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe you’ve seen it.”
They have seen it, of course.
This is terrible. Like she’s reading his mind. Their mind, because when it comes to their captives—and the sacrament—he and Em think alike.
“You have a boat. Don’t you, Professor Harris?”
This girl was a mistake. She’s a sport, an outlier, they might not come across another like her in a hundred years.
He goes upstairs without saying anything else.
Em is in her study. It’s crammed with so many books on the floor-to-ceiling shelves that there’s barely room for her desk. Some of the books have been set aside in a corner to make room for a thick folder with WRITING SAMPLES printed on the cover in neat block letters.
Two framed pictures flank her desktop computer. One is of a very young Roddy and Em, he in a morning suit (rented) and she in the traditional white bridal dress (purchased by her parents). The other shows a much older Roddy and Em, he in a joke admiral’s hat and she with a common sailor’s Dixie cup cocked rakishly on her beauty shop curls. They are standing in front of their newly purchased (but gently used) Mainship 34. Em has a bottle of cheap champagne in one hand, which she will soon use to christen their boat the Marie Cather—Marie as in Stopes, Cather as in Willa. Their marriage has always been a partnership.
On the screen of her computer, Em’s watching Ellen Craslow sitting on the futon in her cage, legs crossed, head in hands, shoulders shaking. Roddy bends over Em’s shoulder for a closer look.
“She stood there until you were gone, then just collapsed,” Em says, not without satisfaction.
The girl raises her head and looks up at the camera. Although she’s been crying, her eyes look dry. Roddy isn’t surprised. It’s dehydration at work.
“You heard everything?” he asks his wife.
“Yes. She’s intuited a lot, hasn’t she?”
“Not intuition, logic. Plus, she recognized the woodchipper. Neither of the others did. What are we going to do, Emmie? Suggestions, please.”
She considers it while they look at the girl in the cage. Neither of them feel pity for Ellen, or even sympathy. She is a problem to be solved. In a way, Roddy thinks the problem is a good thing. They are still relatively new to this. Every solved problem adds to efficiency, as every scientist knows.
At last she says, “Let’s see what happens tomorrow.”
“Yes. I think that’s right.”
He straightens up and idly thumbs the thick folder of writing samples. This spring semester’s writer-in-residence at Bell’s greatly respected (almost legendary) fiction workshop will be a woman named Althea Gibson, author of two novels that reviewed well and sold poorly. As with several previous in-residence authors, Gibson has been more than willing to have Emily Harris do the initial applicant winnowing, and although the pay is a pittance, Em enjoys the work. This was an offer Jorge Castro declined, preferring to go through the stacks of writing samples himself. Thought having Emily do the pre-screening was beneath him. Em has noticed how many fags are uppity, and thinks it’s probably compensation. Also… all that solitary running.
“Anything good in here?” Roddy Harris asks.
“So far just the usual junk.” Em sighs and rubs at her aching lower back. “I’m beginning to think that in another twenty years, fiction will be a lost art.”
He bends and kisses her white hair. “Hang in there, baby.”
When Em comes down the stairs at noon on the 24th, the maggots and flies are back on the slab of liver. She looks at them crawling around on a perfectly good cut of meat (well, it was) with disgust and dismay. They simply have no business being there so fast. They have no business being there at all!
She pushes the meat toward the pass-through with the broom. And although Ellen looks exhausted, the cracks in her lips bleeding, her complexion the color of clay, she again blocks the hinged panel with her foot.
Em takes a bottle of water from her apron pocket and is delighted by the way the girl’s eyes fix on it. And when her tongue comes out in a useless effort to moisten those parched lips… that is also delightful.
“Take it, Ellen. Brush off the bugs and eat. Then I’ll give you the water.”
For one moment she thinks the stubborn girl means to give in. Then she says what she always says: “I’m a vegan.”
You’re a bitch, is what you are. Emily can barely restrain herself from saying it. The girl is infuriating, and it doesn’t help that the goddamned sciatica has kept her up half the night. An uppity, smartass bitch! BLACK bitch!
She drops to one knee—back straight, less pain—and picks up the plate. She’s unable to suppress a small cry of disgust when a maggot squirms onto her wrist. She carries the plate upstairs without looking back.
Roddy is at the kitchen table, reading a monograph and nibbling trail mix from a cut glass bowl. He looks up, takes off his reading glasses, and massages the sides of his nose. “No?”
“No.”
“All right. Do you want me to take her the last piece? I can see how much your back hurts.”
“I’m fine. Good to go.” Em tilts the plate. The rotting liver slides into the sink. It makes a squashy sound: plud. There’s another maggot on her forearm. She swats it off and uses a meat fork to stuff the spoiled meat into the garbage disposal, going at it with short hard jabs.
“Calmly,” Roddy says. “Calmly, Em. We are prepared for this.”
“But if she won’t eat, it means going out again for a replacement! And it’s too soon!”
“We’ll be extremely careful, and I can’t bear to see you in such misery. Besides, I might have a possibility.”
Em turns to him. “She exasperates me.”
Nothing so mild as exasperation, my dear one, Roddy thinks. You are angry, and I think the girl knows it. She may also know your anger is the only vengeance she can ever expect to have. He says none of that, only looks at her with those eyes she has always loved. Is helpless not to love, even after all these years. He gets up, puts an arm around her shoulders, and kisses her cheek. “My poor Em. I’m sorry you’re in pain and sorry you have to wait.”