“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.”
July 27, 2021
Holly returns to her former parking spot in the two-hour zone and smokes a cigarette with the door open and her feet on the pavement. It comes to her that there’s something exceptionally perverse about taking all the proper precautions against Covid and then filling her lungs with this carcinogenic crap.
I have to stop, she thinks. I really do. Just not today.
The Golden Oldies bowling team is probably a bust. It’s hard for her to remember now why she ever thought it would lead to something. Was it just because Cary Dressler also visited the Jet Mart Bonnie used on a regular basis? Well, Dressler’s also gone, leaving his moped behind, but those are pretty thin connections. It certainly doesn’t seem to her that Roddy Harris is a likely candidate for the Red Bank Predator (if there even is such a person). She doesn’t know if Harris’s wife suffers from sciatica as well as migraines—finding out might be possible, although Holly doesn’t think it’s a priority—but it’s pretty obvious Harris has got his own problems. Onguarding for regarding, Clover for Covid, temperature lobe for temporal lobe, forgetting her name. There’s also the way he simply stopped a couple of times, frowning and looking into space. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s suffering the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, but the age is right. Also…
“That’s the way it started with Uncle Henry,” she says.
But since she’s started running the Oldies down, she might as well finish the job. She snuffs her cigarette in her portable ashtray and heads for the turnpike. Ernie Coggins lives in Upriver, which is only four exits away. A quick run. But now that Uncle Henry has come into her mind, she can’t stop thinking about him. When was the last time she visited? In the spring, wasn’t it? Yes. Her mother nagged her into it—guilt-tripped her into it—last April, before Charlotte got sick.
Holly gets to the Upriver exit, slows, then changes her mind and continues north toward Covington, location of both her mother’s house and the Rolling Hills Elder Care Center, where Uncle Henry is now living (if you want to call it that). It’s also where another member of the Golden Oldies bowling team is living, so she can get two for the price of one. Of course Victor Anderson may not be any more compos mentis than her uncle; according to Hugh Clippard, Anderson suffered a stroke, and if he’s in long-term care, he’s probably not in recovery mode. Holly can check him off her list, though, and talk to Ernie Coggins tomorrow, when she’s fresh. Plus, turnpike driving soothes her, and when Holly’s in a tranquil state of mind, things sometimes occur to her.
But the whole thing is starting to feel like a wild goose-chase.
Her phone lights up three times on the four-hour drive to the same Days Inn where she stayed three nights before. She doesn’t answer even though her car is Bluetooth-equipped. One call is from Jerome. One is from Pete Huntley. The third is from Penny Dahl, who undoubtedly wants an update. And deserves one.
By the time she gets to Covington, Holly’s stomach is growling. She enters the Burger King drive-thru and orders without hesitation when her turn comes. She has favorites at all the fast food franchises. At Burger King it’s always a Big Fish, a Hershey’s Pie, and a Coke. As she approaches the payment window, she reaches into her left pocket for one of her emoji gloves and only finds the bottle of Germ-X. She grabs a Kleenex out of the center console and uses that to offer her money and take her change. The girl in the window gives her a pitying look. Holly finds a glove in her right pocket and puts it on just in time to drive up to the second window and take her food. She has no idea what happened to the missing glove and doesn’t care. There’s a whole box of them in the trunk, courtesy of Barbara Robinson.