Holly

July 3, 2021

The Harrises’ latest “guest” doesn’t eat the raw liver, and she tries to ration what remains of her water, but eventually both bottles are empty. She swirls her finger around the go-cup, getting the last of the Ka’Chava, but that only makes her thirstier. She’s hungry, too.

Bonnie tries to remember what she last ate. A tuna-and-egg sandwich, wasn’t it? Bought in the Belfry and eaten outside on one of the benches. She would give anything to have that sandwich back right now, not to mention the bottle of Diet Pepsi she bought at the Jet Mart. She would chug the whole sixteen ounces. Only there is no Diet Pepsi, and no phone. Only her helmet and backpack (looking like it’s been emptied), hanging on the wall with the tools.

The raw liver starts to look good to her even after God knows how many hours at room temperature, so she hooks up the flap in the bottom of the cell and pushes it out, giving the tray a final shove with her tented fingers so it will be beyond her reach. Get thee behind me, Satan, she thinks, and swallows. She can hear the dry click in her throat and thinks that the liver must still be full of liquid. She can imagine it running down her throat, cooling it. Knowing the salt content would only add to her thirst doesn’t help much. She goes back to the futon and lies down, but she keeps looking at the dish with the liver on it. After awhile she drifts into a thin, dream-haunted doze.

Eventually Rodney Harris comes back and she wakes up. He’s wearing pajamas with firetrucks on them, plus robe and slippers, so Bonnie wrongly assumes it’s evening. She further assumes that it’s now been a day since they drugged and kidnapped her. The longest and most terrible day of her life, partly because she doesn’t know what the hell is going on but mostly because all she’s had for the last twenty-four hours are two bottles of water and a cup of Ka’Chava.

“I want some water,” she says, trying not to croak. “Please.”

He takes the broom and slides the tray back through the flap. “Eat your liver. Then you can have water.”

“It’s raw and been sitting out all day! All last night, too… I guess. Is it the third? It is, isn’t it?”

He doesn’t answer that, but from his pocket he takes a bottle of Artesia water and holds it up. Bonnie doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of licking her lips but can’t help it. After its day at room temperature the piece of liver looks like it’s melting.

“Eat it. All of it. Then I’ll give you the water.”

Bonnie decides she was half-right. It’s not sex, but it is some kind of weird experiment. She’s heard people at the college talk about how Professor Harris is a little bit gaga on the subject of what he calls “perfect nutritional balance,” and ignored it as the usual bullshit—this professor is eccentric, that professor is obsessive-compulsive, the other prof picks his nose, there’s a video of it on TikTok, check it out, it’s hilarious. Now she wishes she’d listened. He’s not just gaga, he’s over-the-moon crazy. She thinks eating a piece of liver tartare is the least of her problems. She has to get out of here. She has to escape. And that means being smart and not giving in to panic. Her life depends on it.

This time she’s able to restrain herself from licking her lips. She goes to one knee and pushes the tray back through the slot. “Bring me a fresh piece and I’ll eat it. With water, though. To wash it down.”

He looks offended. “I assure you that liver isn’t… isn’t…” He struggles for what he wants to say, jaw moving from side to side. “Isn’t microbially damaged. In fact, like many other cuts of meat, calf’s liver is best at room temperature. Have you never heard of aged steak?”

“It’s turning gray!”

“You’re being troublesome, Ms. Dahl. And you are in no position to make deals.”

Bonnie grasps her head as if it hurts. Which it does, because of hunger and thirst. Not to mention fear. “I’m trying to meet you halfway, is all. You have some reason for what you’re doing, I guess—”

“I most certainly do!” he cries, his voice rising.

“—and I’m agreeing to do what you want, but not that piece. I won’t!”

He turns and stomps back up the stairs, pausing only once to glare at her over his shoulder.

Bonnie swallows, and listens to the dry click in her throat. I sound like a cricket, she thinks. One dying of thirst.

Emily is in the kitchen. Her face is drawn with pain, and she looks her age. More than her age, actually. Roddy is shocked. For it to come to this after all they’ve done to hold senescence at bay! It’s not fair that their special meals, so loaded with life-extending goodness, should wear off so quickly. It was three years between Castro and Dressler, and three years (give or take) between Dressler and the Steinman boy. Now they have Bonnie Dahl, and it’s not only been less than three years but the symptoms of old age (he thinks of them as symptoms) have been creeping up for months.

“Is she eating it?”

“No. She says she will if I give her a fresh piece. We have one, of course, after the Chaslum girl it seemed prudent to keep an extra on hand—”

“Craslow, Craslow!” Em corrects him in a nagging voice that’s utterly unlike her… at least when it’s just the two of them and she’s not in agony. “Give it to her! I can’t bear this pain!”

“Just a little longer,” he soothes. “I want her thirstier. Thirst makes livestock amenable.” He brightens. “And she may yet eat that one. She pushed it through the slot, but I noticed that this time she left it in reach.”

Emily has been standing but now she sits down with a wince and a gasp. The cords on her neck stand out. “All right. If it must be, it must be.” She hesitates. “Roddy, is this diet of ours really doing anything? It hasn’t been our imaginations all along? Some sort of psychosomatic cure that’s in our minds rather than our bodies?”

“When your migraines cease, is that psychosomatic?”

“No… at least I don’t think—”

“And your sciatica! Your arthritis… and mine! Do you think I like this?” He holds up his hands. The knuckles are swollen, and he can straighten his fingers only with an effort. “Do you think I like searching for words I know perfectly well? Or going into my office and realizing I don’t know what I came in for? You’ve seen the results for yourself!”

“It used to last longer,” Emily whispers. “That’s all I’m saying. If she eats the liver tonight… the piece that’s down there now or the one in the refrigerator… then tomorrow?”

Roddy knows that forty-eight hours would be better, and ninety-six before harvest is optimum, but the Dahl girl is young and the awakening of her own liver should happen quickly, speeding vital nutrients to every part of her body with every beat of her healthy young heart. They know this from the Steinman boy.

Besides, he can’t stand to see his wife suffer.

“Tomorrow night,” he says. “Assuming she eats.”

“Assuming,” Emily says. She’s thinking of the intransigent bitch. The intransigent vegan bitch.

After all these years, Roddy can read her mind. “She’s not like the Black girl. She more or less agreed to eat if I gave her water—”

“More or less,” Em says, and sighs.

Roddy doesn’t seem to hear her. He’s staring off into the distance in a way she worries about more and more. It’s like he’s come unplugged. At last he says, “But I must be careful. She hasn’t asked enough questions. In fact, she’s hardly asked any. Like Chaslow. There’s been no begging and no screaming. Also like Chaslow. It wouldn’t do to slip up.”

“Then don’t,” Emily says. She takes his hand. “I’m depending on you. And it’s Craslow.”

He gives her a smile. “We won’t celebrate July Fourth this year, dear heart, but on the sixth…” His smile widens. “On the sixth we feast.”

Roddy returns to the basement at ten o’clock that night, after assisting Emily back up the stairs. Now she’s in bed, where she’ll lie wakeful and in pain for most of the night, managing an hour or two of thin and unsatisfying sleep. If that. He assures himself that her questioning of the sacramental meals is caused not by rational thinking but by her pain, but it still bothers him.

He’s holding the backup slab of liver on a plate, having seen from the video feed that Dahl has continued to refuse the first one. He wishes they had more time, both for her body’s nutrients to awaken and because it’s not good to give in to a prisoner’s demands, but Emily can’t wait for long. Soon she’ll be insisting that he take her to a doctor for pain pills, and those things are death in a bottle.

He sets the plate down and tells Dahl to push out the plastic Ka’Chava go-cup. Dahl does it without asking why. She really is too much like the Chesley woman for his taste. There’s a watchfulness about her that he doesn’t like and will not trust.

From his robe pocket he takes a bottle of Artesia and pours some—not much—into the cup. Then he takes the broom and begins pushing the cup toward her. He has to be careful not to tip it over. The last thing he wants is for this bitter little comedy to turn into a farce. She lifts the flap and reaches out. “Just hand it to me, Professor.”

The surest sign that he’s slipping is that he almost does it. Then he chuckles and says, “I think not.”

When the cup is close enough, she grabs it and chugs it. Two gulps is all it takes.

“Eat your liver and I’ll give you the rest. Refuse and you won’t see me again until tomorrow night.” An empty threat, but Dahl doesn’t know that.

“You promise you’ll give me the rest of the water?”

“Hand to heart. Assuming you don’t vomit. And if you vomit into the Porta-Potty after I’m gone, Em will see it. Then we’ll have trouble.”

“Professor, I’m already in trouble. Wouldn’t you agree?”

She worries him more and more. Scares him a little, too. Ridiculous, but there it is. Instead of answering, he uses the broom to push in the liver. Dahl doesn’t hesitate. She picks it up, sinks her teeth into the raw flesh, and tears off a bite. She chews.

He looks at the tiny droplets of blood on her lower lip with fascination. On July fifth, he will roll those lips in unbleached flour and fry them in a small skillet, perhaps with mushrooms and onions. Lips are fine sources of collagen, and hers will do wonders for his knees and elbows, even his creaky jaw. In the end this worrisome girl is going to be worth the trouble. She is going to donate some of her youth.

She takes another bite, chews, swallows. “Not terrible,” she says. “It’s got a thicker taste than sauteed liver. Dense, somehow. Are you enjoying watching me eat, asshole?”

Roddy doesn’t reply, but the answer is yes.

“I’m not getting out of this, am I? There’s no sense saying I’ll never tell a soul, and all that, is there?”

Roddy is prepared for this. He widens his eyes in surprise. “Of course you will. This is a government research project. There’ll be certain tests and of course you will have to sign a nondisclosure form, but once you’ve done that—”

He’s interrupted by her laughter, which is both humorous and hysterical. “If I believe that, you’ve got a bridge you want to sell me, I suppose. In Brooklyn, gently used. Just give me the fucking water when I finish this.”

At last her voice trembles, and her eyes take on the shine of tears. Roddy is relieved.

“Keep your promise.”