Cleaving Page 10

  I fake a look of trauma. “Pretty intense.”

  But the truth isn’t so simple. I think mostly I’m disturbed because I’m not so disturbed at all. I just saw this creature killed and gutted, and I’m more or less fine with it.

  As I’m tying on my apron, Aaron comes up to me with an unidentifiable something on the end of a fork.

  “Try this.”

  “What is it?”

  “Just eat it.”

  “Is it something disgusting?”

  “No.” He cocks an eyebrow. “But I wouldn’t tell you if it was.”

  I open my mouth and close my eyes, obedient, as he pops the something in. I chew.

  “Not half-bad. What is it?”

  Aaron grins. “It’s heart.”

  “Heart?”

  “Grilled beef heart. You like it?”

  “I do. Sorry, you’re going to have to try harder to wig me out.”

  Aaron makes a who, me? face. “I’m not trying to wig you out. I’m trying to educate you. Educate!”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Hey, Julie?” Jessica is dressed up more than usual, in fitted jeans tucked into leather boots and a nice black top with a draping cowl neck. Her hair is not in its usual frizzy updo, but down and smoothly styled. I think she’s wearing makeup. She doesn’t look particularly happy, though.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “I’m going out to one of the restaurants we supply in a couple of hours. Josh… can’t make it. Or won’t. So do you want to come? It’s a great place, and I’m betting there’ll be free dinner in it for you.”

  “Absolutely!” I swallow my gobbet of heart.

  The drive from Kingston to the restaurant will take about an hour and a half. It would be a little less if Josh the speed demon were driving in his itty-bitty Mini, but tonight it’s just going to be Jessica and me in their big red van. I unfold the mirror on the sun visor and take a peek. “Good God, I’m a mess.”

  “Eh, you look fine.”

  “Um, thanks, but I really, really don’t.” I’ve got no clothes with me at the shop but the jeans and Fleisher’s T-shirt I’m wearing. My hair is mussed and pressed sweatily against my skull, my face is bare of makeup and flushed with my day’s exertions. I stink. I run my fingers through my hair a few times, but soon give up and settle back into my seat as Jessica pulls into the traffic circle that spits us out at the New York Thruway toll plaza.

  “So I’ve heard a lot about this place, but I’m like the last person alive not to have been. Even Eric went, with his ex-girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend? But I thought you two have been together since basically birth?”

  “Yeah.… Um.”

  Jessica glances over at me. “Ahh.”

  I grimace sheepishly. I’ve been so good up to now. But I suppose some of everything that’s so constantly roiling inside was bound to slip out sometime. I’m relieved, to tell the truth. Suppressing the urge to blather is exhausting. “Yeah. It’s been an interesting few years.”

  Once the floodgates of female conversation open up, shutting them down again is not really an option. Before we’ve driven half an hour, I’ve explained both Eric’s indiscretions and my own, bemoaned the loss of my lover, and admitted to my preference for a bit of the rough and tumble.

  “Wow. If Josh slept with someone… I don’t think I could take it. I can barely stand him sometimes as it is.”

  “Yeah, what’s going on with you two lately? I mean, if I can ask? Jesse said there was something of a blowup yesterday.” Josh and Jessica make no efforts to disguise their disagreements from colleagues. They’ve been known to rail at each other, right by the cutting table, yelling and snorting with ire, then march off in opposite directions, muttering in disgust, while the rest of us are left standing around in the clearing dust. Afterward, when the tension recedes, Josh refers to it as “Mom and Dad fighting in front of the kids.”

  Jessica rolls her eyes. “Oy. I’m telling you, husbands and wives working together.… I try to get him to concentrate on something he doesn’t want to deal with, and he just flies off the handle. Made this big damned fuss about being too swamped to come out with us tonight, as if I’m inconveniencing him.” It’s nearly dark now, high clouds fading to purple. Jessica flicks the turn indicator for the Tarrytown exit.

  “Well, I am amazed that you two can fight like that. Eric and I practically never actually fight. Even during the worst of it—”

  “Is that good?”

  “I don’t know. It’s easier. Though there was this one time when he sleepwalked in the middle of the night and when I woke up the next morning he’d taken all the knives out of my knife block and lined them neatly up on the kitchen counter—”

  Jessica cuts a glance over at me. “Okay, that’s psychotic.”

  “Oh, I think he was just feeling guilty because he’d broken one of my knives, stabbing it into a cutting board—”

  “Which he did why?”

  “Oh, he was angry. I bring it out in him, I guess. I sometimes think I ruined him. He was just a gentle soul when I found him.”

  “You do realize that’s crazy, right?”

  “I guess.”

  We’re pulling up onto a gravel drive leading to the back door of a rambling stone building. It looks like the restaurant’s staff entrance. “Well, every marriage is its own special hell, sometimes, right?” We get out, slamming the van’s doors shut. The air smells faintly of animal dung. I’m conscious all over again of my hat hair and my meat-spattered shoes and T-shirt.

  And she just walks right in the door. It’s the sort of thing I would never do—barge right into a bustling place full of people busy doing important jobs to find the person I want. I am more of a linger-at-the-doorway-looking-cowed girl. But I follow her through the narrow, terra-cotta tiled halls to an open doorway.

  “Hey, Dan. You got a minute?”

  The chef is a thin man, with full lips, a high forehead, and a long nose. Large, dark eyes. He gives Jessica a slow smile. “Absolutely.” He holds out a hand with long fingers, meeting her eyes in that way that particular people do, then turns to me.

  “This is Julie. She’s an apprentice at the shop.”

  “It’s a pleasure.” He shakes my hand as well, and meets my eyes too. “Pull up a chair, why don’t you both?”

  We do. Introductions over, Dan turns all his attention to Jessica. I simply sit, trying to look both attentive and small, as the two of them talk slaughterhouses and budgets and FDA approvals. The conversation lasts for maybe twenty minutes; I entertain myself sometimes by watching the hordes of restaurant workers in their chef’s checks bustling to and from the bright kitchen outside the office, and sometimes by watching Dan talk to Jessica. I know his style, recognize it all too intimately—the eye contact, unwavering then broken, the fingers playing along the edges of objects on his desk, the low chuckle that’s just amused enough. I am a sucker for such performances, but it seems to have no effect on Jessica. She laughs her honking laugh only when Dan says something to merit it, she merrily twinkles or playfully smack-talks without a trace of self-consciousness or strategy. I’m envious of her.

  “I need to get back into the fray out here. But thanks for coming. You’re staying for something to eat, right?”

  “That’d be great, thanks.”

  “All right. We’ll throw a little something together for you.”

  Jessica rolls her eyes as the hostess walks us out of the kitchen into the dining room, where I stand out like a bedraggled Amazon in the honeyed light.

  “What?”

  “Him ‘throwing a little something together.’ You’ll see.”

  And so I do. For the next two and a half hours, Jessica and I eat our way through untold courses of wonderful, precious food—teeny tiny bulbs of fennel on sticks, pork chops so little they kind of freak us out (was this pig yet out of the womb?), paper-thin slices of apple. Two hours later, I will honestly not be able to remember all of what I’ve eaten. I
’m a champion eater, but this has even me feeling defeated. But there is a moment that makes the marathon worthwhile. The pig bonbon.

  It’s tiny, a perfectly shaped one-inch square. It is announced to us as pig heart, but it doesn’t look like the heart Aaron popped into my mouth earlier today, like a slice of dark meat. No, it seems to have a creamy texture, like a pâté. The square is sandwiched between two impossibly thin, crisp wafers of dark chocolate. Jessica and I are dubious. We pick up the squares and pop them into our mouths at the same time.

  Have you ever had a food-related orgasm? It’s much like the traditional variety—uncontrollable, accompanied by unseemly moans, somewhat embarrassing to experience in public places. Upon letting the pig-heart bonbons melt on our tongues, Jessica and I achieve simultaneous ones.

  “Holy Christ…”

  “Oh my fuck!”

  Jessica throws her head back. I growl and beat my open palms on the tabletop. Our eyes meet and it’s magic.

  Five seconds later, still a little flushed, we have our heads together and are mapping out strategy. Because once you’ve had your first pig-heart bonbon, you can spend the rest of your life trying to get more.

  “So it can’t just be heart in there. The texture is too smooth. I’d think some liver in there, and cream…”

  “Right. But still very meaty and dark. And then the wafers or cookies or whatever were so thin and crisp, almost like just a crisp chocolate candy coating.”

  “But only just the tiniest bit of sweetness…”

  The ride home is quiet, both of us trying to stave off the soporific effects of fifteen courses of macho-host food. I lean my head against the cool glass of the window, stare absently out. “You know, I wonder if he would even have liked that meal. Wonder if he would have noticed it.”

  “Who? Eric? Or, no… whatsisname, the other guy?”

  “Yeah. He never seemed to really care about food. Actually, he never seemed to really care about anything I cared about. It was always this fucking polite interest.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound fun.”

  “But it was always such a thrill when he really appreciated something. I remember I showed him this film short I like one time, and he loved it.”

  “That’s big of him,” Jess sneers. I shrug. “Would Eric have liked it? Would he like pig-heart bonbons?”

  “Are you kidding? He’d have gone bananas. He’d have made himself sick on all that food.”

  “Well. You share things with the people who want you to share them. Who get it. Otherwise, where’s the fun?”

  “I guess.”

  By the time Jessica drops me off at my apartment in Rifton it is nearly midnight. “Thanks for the dinner and the ride and everything.”

  “Thanks for being my wingman. I’ll see you tomorrow. You want a ride, since you left your car at the shop?”

  “That’d be great, if it’s okay.”

  “Great, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Great.” I slide out of the van, start to slam the door shut, then pause. “Oh, and… this is weird, maybe, but could you not mention all the stuff we talked about tonight? I kind of don’t want it being known around the shop.”

  “I won’t if you won’t.” Jessica waves, then pulls a U-turn and heads back the way we’ve just come. I fumble for my keys in my pocket.

  Not there. I open up my purse, fumble there. Nothing. Wait a minute, wait a minute… How can this be? I go through everything again. Still nothing. I don’t get it, I just don’t—

  Blinding insight. My key ring. I gave it to Josh so he could move my car out of the day-only parking lot. My key ring, you know, the one with my keys on it.

  It is remarkable how many times this has happened to me. In the two-plus years since things started with D, I have locked myself out probably half a dozen times. One of the times, I tried to climb through the second-story window of our Queens apartment by standing on two stacked milk crates. The resulting bruise to my hip when I smashed to the pavement was so enormous and dark that not even Eric, with his fevered, angry imagination, could think to attribute it to rough lovemaking with another man. I’m pretty sure there is a fairly complex system of guilt and self-punishment at the bottom of all this.

  I have a downstairs neighbor, but repeated knockings and doorbell ringings do nothing but awake a yappy dog. Giving up that tack, I walk around the house, looking for some mode of entry. I find a rickety ladder that gives onto the eaves, and having picked my way up it, I see I can get to my kitchen window from there.

  Too bad it’s locked tight. I tug and tug and tug, but it’s useless. I think about breaking it, even, but I can’t get out of my head the horrid vision of somehow slashing my wrists to the bone on the shards, and I can’t go through with it. Meanwhile, my fear that I’ll awaken my neighbors and that they’ll shoot me before I can explain what’s happening has faded, and I’ve stopped tiptoeing. I even stomp a little. But not a single light blazes on, not a voice speaks. The dog doesn’t even bark anymore.

  I sit down on the roof. It’s getting cold. Quite cold. I pull my BlackBerry out of my coat pocket, and I am surprised to see that I have a stairstep or two of service, though the battery is nearly dead. It’s twelve thirty. I scroll through my address book, punch Call when I get to ballnchain. Get voicemail. “So guess where I am? I dare you to guess. I’m on the roof of my apartment. Locked out. And—oh, hey, look—it’s beginning to snow. I’m not sure what I can ask you to do about any of this, but if you get this give me a call?”

  I pull up another number from my address book, a West Coast area code. It rings only once before going to voicemail. I know D’s awake; he never goes to sleep before two or three in the morning. His voice is no longer even on the message; it’s just an automated voice telling me the person I’m calling is unavailable. I murmur a few words into the phone, sounding tearier, and probably drunker, than I actually am, about being locked out, on a roof, cold and tired and so lonesome for him. I know he will not call back, of course, though every time I find myself in one of these sorts of situations, I think, Is this the circumstance that will move him?

  Eric calls back when I’m halfway down the teetering ladder. I sigh. His timing is always so inconvenient.

  “Hey, babe, why don’t you just go to a hotel?”

  “I don’t have a car. Left it at the shop. Now you’re cutting out. My phone’s about to die. Fuck.”

  “Okay, look. I’m going to call you a cab. What’s your address again?”

  “How are you going to call a cab?” I’m now standing in the street in front of my house, in a glittering circle of snow lit up by the streetlight, scuffing petulantly at the thin but increasing accumulation. Not a car passes, and there’s not a soul out.

  “They have this amazing thing called the Internet? I’ll find a company, call you back. If you don’t hear from me—”

  “I won’t. Phone’s dying, I said.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m ordering you a cab. Call me when you get to a motel. I love you.”

  I hang up without saying good-bye, as if this entire debacle is his fault.

  The cab is over an hour late; he’s had to come all the way from Kingston. “Hey there,” he asks as I climb in, “get stuck?”

  “Locked out.”

  “Jeez. So where you headed?”

  “Isn’t there a hotel over toward New Paltz? By the thruway?”

  “Motel 87, yeah. We can do that.”

  “Great,” I say, lying back against the seat in utter exhaustion. “That would be perfect.”

  So this place is just about what you’d expect from a thruway-side motel, murky yellow light in the bathroom and graying carpets. But there’s a bed, and heat. By the time I unlock the door to my room and fall onto the bed, it’s after two. I pick up the phone receiver, call my husband. When he answers, I can tell he’s been sleeping.

  “It’s me. I’m all tucked away.”

  “Good, baby.”

  “Thank you. I’ll call you
in the morning.”

  “Okay…” He’s got that breathy, drifting tone he gets when he’s not really awake at all. “Sleep tight, babe.”

  “You too.”

  I manage to get my clothes off, but not my contacts. I sleep with them in, naked under the sleazy coverlet. When I wake up the next morning, I shower, finally washing off my carnivorous smell with motel soap and no shampoo. Then I call Jessica.

  “So a funny thing happened last night after you dropped me off…” I go through the whole story in as little detail as possible.

  “You idiot. Why didn’t you call me? You could have slept at our house.”

  “I didn’t want you to have to turn back so late at night.” In truth, it had not occurred to me to call her. Why hadn’t it occurred to me to call her? Why did it only ever occur to me to call those same two faraway men, rather than the nearby woman who could most plausibly have helped?

  “Well, that’s incredibly dumb. You’re at Motel 87, right? Off Exit 18?”

  “That’s the one. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s totally fine. I’ll be there at around nine.”

  “Thanks, Jessica.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll see you in a bit.”

  I’m back in the store by ten that morning, breaking down lambs. My hair still isn’t clean. I’m wearing all the same clothes I had on yesterday, tired to the bone. The cutting is all that’s keeping me standing.

  7

  Opus Nauseous

  AARON IS BREAKING a pork loin down into chops for the case, and I’m at the table peeling off spareribs when he calls over to me, “Hey, Jules, you want to practice on the band saw?”

  The band saw is a machine about seven feet tall, with a thin, serrated metal blade stretched taut, vertically, the serrations facing forward, at the juncture of a stable metal surface and a sliding plate, all of it at about counter height. “Um…” I’m still a little nervous around the thing; power tools and I are not necessarily friends. But I can’t let myself wimp out around Aaron, so I say, “Sure.”