A Carnivore's Inquiry

by Sabina Murray

  “And he was in love with her?”

  “It happens,” I said. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

  I thought of Martin listening to the awesome groan of wood down the hallway, his anxiety as the door swung open.

  Martin’s breath catches in his throat.

  Justine Lafayette stuns him in that first and fatal moment. His eyes trace over the breadth of her generous, drooping lips. Her eyes, round in loose, wrinkled sockets, are a winsome shade of green. Perhaps, once, these eyes were sunk deep in flesh, but as if strained by the very heft of her face, a tremendous sighing effort has given up and the flesh, rather than pushing—like leavening bread—beneath the skin, is loose and dimpled, hanging in pouches from her large skull. She has taken effort with her makeup. Her eyes are kohled and her cheeks rouged in outrageous diagonal slashes. This, with the thickly applied lipstick, makes her appear ready for war. She thrusts this great head out at Martin.

  “Quoi?”

  “Une chambre?”

  She retracts her head and nestles her great jowls into the stiff, grimy lace of her collar.

  “Nom?”

  “Dummolard.”

  “Premier nom?”

  “Martin.”

  She nods as if she has expected this, the name, and the man. She turns and Martin holds his breath as she executes a perfect 180-degree turn within the confines of the hallway. The stiff fabric rustles as she moves and deep within the folds of her skirt, Martin hears another rustle, which must be the inner legs of her linen bloomers rubbing together, pressed and crumpled by her thighs. He follows her down the darkened hallway (as she blocks most of the light that struggles through it) and sighs in joy. He will follow her to this room. He will follow her anywhere.

  “And they killed for love?” said Malley.

  “Martin liked blood and Justine had a passion for human flesh.”

  “She was a cannibas?”

  “Cannibal, Malley.”

  Who knows when Justine and Martin first realized the form of their symbiotic desire? Who knows when Martin first prowled the streets for the first of the eighty young girls he would murder, or when he first returned home smiling with the package of meat, bled with his own lips? What went into the stew, other than the flesh of those poor virgins and prostitutes who were unfortunate enough to encounter Martin on their way back from chapel or the champagne parties of light-hearted, well-shod men?

  “Well, how did they figure it out?”

  “Figure what out?”

  “That she was a cannibal, and that he liked drinking blood.” Malley pondered the much-diminished joint. “I mean, you just don’t ask someone, ‘Are you a cannibal?’”

  “No you don’t,” I said. “But when you’re in love, you find someone’s faults more interesting than their virtues.”

  I plotted the whole thing mentally in my terrible French:

  Justine: Je suis une cannibale. Je voudrais manger les hommes.

  Martin: Non! Ce n’est pas vrai? C’est bon! Je suis un vampire!

  Malley was still contemplating the last smoky effort of his joint. He finally threw it into the water. “Martin and Justine,” he said. “That’s intense.”

  “They killed almost a hundred people before they were caught.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Martin died in a lunatic asylum. Justine was guillotined.”

  “How do you know all of this?”

  “Marty Neuberg. I dated him in the eighth grade. He thought he was a vampire and so he read all about them.”

  “Was he?”

  “Was he what?”

  “A vampire?”

  “God, no. He was more into comic books than blood.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Malley got up and came to sit beside me. The damp had gotten into his sweater and he smelled a bit like a wet dog. “I got back from Belize a week ago,” he said. “I lived in a hut with this guy named Salvador. He grew his own and we smoked a lot. He showed me how to spear fish. I learned to stand in the water so still that the fish didn’t notice me, then I’d spear it. We’d grill it.” Malley sighed.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “Because I didn’t feel bad about killing the fish because I ate it.” Malley seemed very proud. “I was living in nature, you know.”

  7

  I woke up on the pier. I’d been in a deep sleep and the shock of being awake brought me quickly to my feet. The sun was still cold, so I knew it was early. The air smelled fishy and I realized I had slept on a pile of nets sheltered on one side by a stack of lobster traps, on the other by the rotting boards of a building. I could hear the waves splashing beneath me. I stood up and looked around. There was a seal bobbing in the water, its large eyes questioning, and then it dove. I checked my reflection in a dirty windowpane. I looked all right. I didn’t see Malley anywhere. My shirt was gone. I still had my bra on. The cold air swept upward and under my jacket.

  I felt remarkably well-rested.

  I had to get back to the bed-and-breakfast before Boris woke up. Lucky for me, it wasn’t far—only a few blocks. I found the last of my cigarettes flattened into my back pocket yet somehow not broken and the matches, which were damp but after some effort flared into life. I inhaled deeply. Portland was still asleep, although the fishermen were up. One, missing teeth, smiled at me broadly and I guessed he’d seen me sleeping. I smiled back and zipped my jacket up all the way up to my chin.

  The bed-and-breakfast lights were still out, but as I entered the dining room, I could hear noises in the kitchen—cooking noises—the slam of bread dough and the whir of a coffee grinder. Although I had left the door unlocked, someone—Boris—had bolted it. The television was on and strains of the local news were coming through the door. I knocked in a state of dread.

  “Who’s there?” Boris called.

  “Boris,” I said. “It’s just me.”

  The bolt slid and the door swung open. Boris was wrapped in a towel. His anxiety was impressive. “Oh my God!” he said, and wrapped me in a suffocating hug.

  “How long have you been up?” I inquired over his fleshy shoulder.

  “An hour.”

  “That’s funny,” I replied. “I could have sworn I’d only been gone forty-five minutes. What’s the big deal?”

  Boris pushed me back and looked at me at arm’s distance. “What were you doing?”

  “I went for a walk. I wanted to see the sunrise.” I tilted my head to better gauge Boris’s mood. “It was spectacular. What on earth is wrong?”

  Boris’s eyebrows descended. “It’s not safe.”

  “Portland?”

  “I have been horribly worried about you. He’s struck again.”

  “Who?”

  “William Selwyn. They are still looking for him, and now . . .” Boris sat down.

  “And now what?”

  “Just two blocks from here, he attacked and killed a young man. He killed him . . .” Boris was pale, sick. “He bit him. Tore a huge chunk of flesh right out of his throat. The man went into shock. He bled to death.”

  “I thought Bad Billy was into women.”

  “He was,” said Boris nodding thoughtfully. I noticed that Boris’s hand was on his throat.

  “Do they know who it is?”

  “Not yet. They think the victim was heading back to his car at closing time.” Boris pushed me back. “What are you wearing?”

  “My jacket,” I said. “I didn’t want to wake you up and I couldn’t find a shirt.”

  Boris shook his head then brought his hands to his temples.

  “Boris,” I said, “are you all right?”

  Boris thought for a moment. He shook his head. “I feel mortal,” he said.

  Had he felt immortal before that? A long moment passed. “I’m going to wash my face,” I said.

  I suppose I should have felt lucky but instead I felt a lingering, smoldering dread. Boris felt it too. Even though the weather had turned, no more rain,
the brilliant sun seemed to find fault in everything. The charming buildings seemed more decrepit and the cheery store signs tacky and false. I was happy that Boris wanted to get out of Portland. He’d suggested we do some exploring and I agreed.

  Boris and I spent Saturday driving up the coast. I was smoking like a fiend, something I’d not been able to do in a while, because Boris didn’t let me smoke in the apartment.

  “You seem upset,” said Boris.

  “Not at all,” I said. “Deliriously happy. It’s so beautiful.” I gestured to my right with a cigarette, indicating a bombed-out Sunoco.

  “How about we go off this beaten path?”

  Boris veered right dangerously—I felt sure we balanced on two wheels—and headed down a dirt road that was actually a private drive. I could smell salt and knew that had it not been for the dense forest, I would have been able to see the water. The road offered two options, one chained off, so Boris and I continued to the right. At the end, on what seemed to be a narrow point, was a small cottage. The windows were boarded over for the fall, but the last of the sunflowers and a dried-out bed of assorted petunias told me that it had recently been occupied. There was a sign out front—for rent—and a phone number.

  Boris smiled at the cottage. The house itself was not impressive, but the views from all sides were stunning. There was a creek on one side and a shallow bite on the other. The property came to a point, then dropped sharply to the water. The tide was going out, leaving mudflats. A heron, its wings beating in reverse, gingerly set its feet in the mud.

  “I bet there are clams there. I could make us clam chowder,” I said, as if clams were the only ingredient.

  “Interesting,” said Boris.

  “Funny how you just drove down here.” I took Boris’s hand in mine and leaned against his shoulder. “Seems like fate.”

  “Fate?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. This house, it being for rent and all.” I began leading Boris down the point. “Is that a dock? How wonderful.”

  “I suppose no one will mind us looking, since this property is available to rent,” he said.

  Boris was having fun walking around, but I was beyond that. I had already imagined the layout of the house, pictured myself on a blanket on the lawn reading a book. I wondered where the nearest store was, how much the rent could be, and what kind of heat—if any—the house used. Strategically, what I needed was alcohol, something to smooth Boris’s edges. Something to numb his intelligence. “Let’s go have lunch,” I said.

  “All right.”

  “But I want to come back here.”

  I ate a good burger at a restaurant set on the muddy inlet. Boris had another lobster. I’d ordered Bloody Marys for us both. When Boris was on his fourth, I introduced the idea of renting the cottage. He had the money, after all. He’d lived in the same apartment since 1972 and each month paid a mere five hundred dollars of the three thousand it was worth.

  “But who will live there?”

  “It’s for the weekends,” I said. “For you.”

  “That’s what you want?”

  “No.” I rested my head on the table. “I thought maybe I could stay here, to keep it up.”

  Even through the vodka, Boris was suspicious. “Out of the question,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want you living here.”

  “What you’re saying is that you can’t let me out of your sight.”

  “Don’t be so outraged, Katherine. You can’t expect me to pay for this, for you, to stay here, away from me...”

  “You could move here with me.” I only said this because I knew Boris couldn’t. His rent-controlled apartment had become an obsession with the building committee and any time he spent away—even a long weekend—would result in various letters shuttling between the lawyers.

  “Katherine, why that cottage? Maine is nice on a weekend, but I’m sure there is nothing here for daily life. There’s no culture, only restaurants like this—burger, Bloody Mary, chicken finger,” he said, consulting the menu. “How will you live?”

  “How indeed.” I regarded Boris with my head tilted to the right. “I don’t know. But I tell you this. I’m not going back to New York.”

  “Katherine...”

  The situation was getting desperate. I decided to gamble. “Maybe I don’t need time on my own,” I said, smiling as sweetly as possible. I reached across the table and arranged one of his curls behind his right ear. “Maybe we need to spend more time together. You work all day. You could spend more time at home. We could do things together. You said you wanted to improve your Italian. We could take a class. And maybe sign up at a gym, get some of your extra pounds off. I’ve always wanted to do a yoga class, but not on my own.” I nodded to myself, a person making peace with a new situation. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I don’t need time to think. Maybe I just need more time with you.”

  After some thought and another drink, Boris decided that it probably was better for both of us if we spent some time apart. He made me promise that I’d get a job, nothing too involved, maybe some bookstore work. He’d noticed that I read a good deal. I must have played the situation right because Boris thought that renting the house had been his idea. This sounds like an amazing piece of luck, but I was benefiting from good timing. Boris had not written in a couple of days, which made him jittery. Soon, my move made perfect sense. He could visit on weekends; he could finish his book in peace.

  Also, the thought of having a vacation home appealed to Boris, although he preferred staying in hotels. A vacation home would bounce well off other people (“It’s just a cottage really, but it’s my castle”), would make a charming segue in cocktail conversations (“The Hamptons are nice, but if you really want to escape, I have a place in Maine”), would allow him to achieve the beleaguered, moneyed stance that he liked to cultivate (“I like to chop my own wood”). The house had recently installed heat. We could lease it as long as we vacated in June, when the place went from nine hundred dollars a month to nine hundred a week.

  We met the owner late that afternoon. She had grown up vacationing in the cottage. Her home was in Boston. She was in a hurry to get back to Massachusetts. She liked me, although she kept giving Boris funny looks. He was drunk and kept grabbing me in casual, sexual ways.

  “The deposit’s one month’s rent,” she said. Boris had slung his arm across my shoulders and his hand had come to rest on my breast. “You can move in whenever you want.” She looked away. “I haven’t had a chance to turn off the water and electric.”

  I handed her a check. She handed me the keys. As simple as that.

  The house had a little floating dock and a red canoe. I could barely picture myself on the dock and the idea of me in the canoe seemed a distant possibility, but Boris instantly assumed everything. He was still wearing city rayon and Italian loafers, but his mind’s eye had already set him on the dock, khakis rolled, bare feet pressed to cold wet wood.

  Boris let me keep the car. He had accumulated just enough parking tickets to introduce the risk of towing and I think he was trying to distance himself from Ann, who gave him almost daily car reports. I drove him south to Portland so he could catch an evening flight back to New York.

  “Be careful,” said Boris. “This William Selwyn... he is no joke.”

  “Oh, Boris. How many people get killed every day in New York?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Lots,” I nodded confidently. “I’ll be very careful.”

  A stiff wind was blowing outside the terminal. Flaming leaves scraped along the sidewalk. Clouds of cedar smoke billowed out of chimneys and pumpkins set their handsome bellies on every doorstep. There were cornstalks lashed to pillars and doorjambs, cheery reminders of fall’s riot and summer’s repose, the harvest and the winter chill to come. Flickering candlelight licked at the teeth of a few jack-o’-lanterns. In a tree, a linen-closet ghoul floated in the evening breeze.

  I stopped at the d
rive-through at KFC for a bucket of chicken, got a six-pack of Harpoon, a newspaper, and some gas at the 7-Eleven, and headed back to the house. I needed some time to think. The moon was full over the bay. A dappled path of light extended to the water’s edge and night things cawed and whistled. I sat on the dock with my chicken bucket and Harpoon. This was the last of the warm weather. Soon everyone would be bundled up in wool, leather, and thermal drawers. Soon, only faces would peer up from the bundles, exposed and wizened, dried and windburned. Other animals were already done lining their dens. Other animals were already cozy in layers of blubber and thick fur, their sharp teeth retired for winter’s approaching deprivations, while in the dark alleys of Portland Bad Billy was searching for his next victim. People did not hibernate. The winter gave them no respite from their hunting.

  The light from the kitchen window shed just enough light for me to make out the headlines. I hastily ate another piece of chicken then looked cautiously at the paper.

  I was unable to move, staring at the paper, then realized I had stopped breathing. There, on the front page of the Portland Press Herald, was a picture of Malley. The photograph must have been taken for Malley’s college yearbook. I remembered him telling me that he’d just graduated the year before. He was wearing a tie and some kind of tweedy jacket. Poor Malley. People didn’t generally look that full of promise or excited about being alive. Pictures were false chronicles in that way, but Malley was genuinely excited by life. I thought of all those unclimbed rocks.