“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.”
4
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.”
She gives him the smile he has always loved, is helpless not to love. Even now, with the deepening lines around her eyes and from the corners of her mouth. “It will work out.”
She turns on the disposal. It makes a hungry grinding sound, not that much different from the sound the chipper in the basement makes when it’s running. Then she gets a fresh slab of liver from the fridge.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to take it down?” Roddy asks.
“Positive.”
5
In the basement, Em puts the plate of liver on the floor. She sets a bottle of Dasani water down behind it. Ellen Craslow gets up from the futon and blocks the pass-through with the side of her foot before Em can take the broom. Again she says, “I’m a vegan.”
“I think we have established that,” Em says. “Think carefully. This is your last chance.”
Ellen looks at Em with haunted, deep-socketed eyes… then smiles. Her lips crack open and bleed. She speaks quietly, without heat. “Don’t lie to me, woman. I was all out of chances when I woke up in here.”
6
Roddy is the one who comes down the next day. He’s wearing his favorite sportcoat, the one he always wore at conventions and symposia where he had panels to be on or papers to deliver. He knows from the video feed that the liver is still outside the pass-through, but the plate has been moved. He and Em watched as the girl lay on her side, shoulder pressed against the bars, trying to reach the water. She couldn’t, of course.
Roddy is holding the requested salad. Ordinarily he would never tease a caged animal, but this girl really has been infuriating. It’s not just her unshakable calm. It’s the waste of time.
“No dressing. We wouldn’t want to violate your dietary principles.”
He sets the salad bowl down, noting the naked greed on her face as she looks at it. He pushes it toward her with the broom. He could let her eat it before putting her out of her misery. He has considered it and decided against. She’s made Emily angry.
He pushes it into the cell. She picks it up.
“Thank y—” Her eyes widen as she sees him reach inside the sport coat.
It’s a .38. Not much noise and the basement is soundproofed. He shoots her once in the chest. The bowl falls from her hands and shatters. Cherry tomatoes roll here and there. As she goes down he reaches through the bars and puts another bullet into the top of her head, just to make sure.
“What a waste,” he says.
Not to mention the mess to clean up.
July 23, 2021
1
Once Penny is gone, Holly takes a packet of antibacterial wipes from the top drawer of her desk and swabs down both the part of the desk where Penny rested her clasped hands, and the arms of the chair she sat in. Probably overdoing the caution—you can’t disinfect everything, it would be crazy to try—but better safe than sorry. Holly only has to think of her mother to know that.
She goes down the hall to the ladies’ and washes her hands. When she returns to her office, she reviews her notes and makes a list of the people she wants to talk to. Then she sits tilted back in her chair, hands clasped loosely on her stomach, looking at the ceiling. A vertical crease—what Barbara Robinson calls Holly’s think-line—has appeared between her eyes. The missing backpack doesn’t concern her; as Penny said, her daughter would have been wearing it. What interests Holly is Bonnie Rae’s bike helmet. And the bike itself. Both are very interesting to her, for related but slightly different reasons.
After five minutes or so the vertical crease disappears and she calls Isabelle Jaynes. “Hello, Izzy. It’s Holly Gibney. I hope you don’t mind me calling your personal phone.”
“Not at all. I was very sorry to hear about your mother, Hol.”
“How did you know?” Izzy wasn’t at the Zoom funeral, unless—and this would be just like her—she was lurking.
“Pete told me.”
“Well, thank you. Losing her was tough. And needless.”
“No jabs?”
“No.” Pete probably told Izzy that, too. Holly doesn’t know how closely they stay in touch, but she’s sure they do. Blue never fades. Bill told her that.