Gristle & Bone

by Duncan Ralston

  "The saucise is veal, I believe, with, eh, wild boar." He appeared unsure, his dark plucked eyebrows knitting together in a slight scowl. "If you like, I will ask Jörg for you."

  June snickered, thinking he'd said Yorick, and covered her mouth with a hand. David raised an eyebrow, then turned back to the waiter. "That won't be necessary. Thank you." The waiter scuttled away, off to the next table, where Mr. You're So Vain raised and jiggled their empty water pitcher impatiently. "Alas, poor Jörg," David said in a hushed tone to June, indicating the slab of cooked bone, picked clean on the plate.

  June laughed a little too loudly, garnering more dirty looks from their snooty fellow gourmands. "I knew him, Horatio," she said. "Bit of a kook, but one hell of a cook."

  David chuckled. He sopped up some bone marrow grease on the last herbed roll, and stopped just shy of putting it in his mouth. "You want this?" He held it to her, eyeing it eagerly for himself.

  "I should save room for dessert. But thanks, sugartits."

  He laughed again. "You're on a role tonight, Ms. Dreese." And he plopped the savory bread in his mouth. "So is this marrow," he mumbled with his mouth full. "A delicious roll."

  "I THINK I'M gonna be sick," David groaned, and then, before he could close his mouth he spewed vomit out over his lap and pattered on the car seat.

  Once the sun had fallen behind the horizon, night drew its cold fist over the coast as they drove back to town, the ocean glittering in the moonlight.

  "Shit, honey, that's gonna stain," June said.

  "I'm sorry." He wiped his face with a fast-food moist towelette from the glove compartment, then used it to slop up the mess. "I didn't know I was gonna barf until it just kinda... came out."

  "Neil Patrick Harris came out," she said. "That ejected."

  She glanced at the mess, ropey with mucus, spotted with chunks of undigested meats, reds and browns and bright pinks. Seeing their dinner regurgitated, the smell of red wine thick and syrupy in the air, made her reassess her enjoyment of it. Had it really been as good as she'd imagined? Had she really placed it side-by-side with—even above—some of her favorites? With clam chowder in a sourdough bowl at Boudin Bakery? With traditional Chinese dishes served up in clay pots at the Utopia Café? With smørrebrød from Bar Tartine? The thought of having gorged herself at Ambrosia made her want to vomit in sympathy, the thought of photographing it suddenly felt loathsome, a sacrilege. She zipped down the window, sucking in great gasps of fresh air warmed by a sudden gust from the Santa Anas. "Forget it, David. We'll clean it up at the hotel. Just... just roll down your window, okay, honey?"

  David gave her a miserable look and zipped his window down. He tossed out the handful of puke he'd picked up in the towelette. A yellowish string of it, thick and bubbly with spittle, stuck to the half-opened window like a snail trail.

  "Gross," he remarked.

  "You won't get any argument from me, bub."

  He smiled at her, and looked sheepishly at the mess between his legs and on the floor mat. "It didn't taste as good coming up."

  "I don't imagine," she said. "I guess that preemptive strike didn't do the trick."

  "I forgot to take it," he said, and let out a belch. "I'll double-up on the antacids when we get back to the room."

  June caught a whiff of David's burp and made a sour face. It smelled of sickeningly sweet burnt sugar and a vinegary tang like spoiled pork. "Probably a good idea."

  David fell into a grim silence as the dark scenery passed by his window. In the rearview mirror, the mountains stood against the twilight like jagged, blackened teeth preparing to eat the sky, and June felt her heartbeat jangle—a loosened piano string, a long, drawn-out beat that seemed almost to quiver inside her chest. Rather than slow with it, her breathing hurried to fill in the gap as a sudden, horrific thought arose:

  Poison. They've poisoned us.

  The invitation to a secluded restaurant nestled in the mountains, so utterly charming and exclusionary, with absolutely perfect food—it was a trick the locals played on pesky tourists, the oldest trope imaginable. A few drops of saline in the food or drink to cause stomach cramps and violent bathroom expulsions. Or worse. Now, David was puking his guts out, and her heart palpitated like some woman of noble birth's in a Victorian-era novel. The desk clerk's bizarre choice of words—"overjoyed to have you for dinner" and "a couple, about your age, who came back simply raving"—seemed to be incantations to June's suddenly hyperaware mind. What exactly had they been raving about? June wondered.

  Her constitution had always been stronger than David's; she wasn't likely to feel the gastrointestinal effects until they were back at the inn. She would awaken in the dead of night, embers glowing in the fireplace, and clutch at the knife blade carving out her insides like a jack-o'-lantern, eyes bugging out as a scream caught in her throat. Meanwhile, David would be perfectly still on his side of the bed, bloody spittle crusted where his lips had parted, a chunky pool of vomit drying on his pillow.

  Don't be daft, Juniper. A lady doesn't think such things.

  Shut up, Mother. Shut up, you nasty, stupid witch!

  Focusing her rage and fear and frustration toward her mother—whom she had not forgiven, even in death—June's heartbeat evened out without her even noticing. She drew in a slow, deep breath, let it out just as slowly, concentrating on nothing but the darkened highway through the dusty, fly-specked windshield. She flicked on the wipers. The large bug directly in front of her smeared and streaked its guts across the glass. Each swipe of the blade erased more of it, until finally it was gone.

  Back at the inn, David rushed to the washroom, holding his belly, his face ashen, somehow gaunt. He'd managed to keep from vomiting in the car again, but he'd begun to sweat and murmur to himself, struggling to hold it in. Somewhere along Route 1, it had seemed as though his eyes rolled back in his head, the lids fluttering, and he'd muttered something that sounded like "Eedger hardow, Misser Morales," reminding her of the few times he'd talked in his sleep. Despite of the heat blowing in from the desert, it had chilled her to the bone. Concerned, she suggested driving him to a hospital—where she'd find one, she had no idea. "I'll be a'right," he'd groaned. Then he'd ratcheted the chair back to a steep recline and gone to sleep.

  The room was cold. June put a log in the fireplace and set it ablaze. She stood by the bathroom door a moment, listening for the sound of his retching. He spat, a hollow sound of his face hovering below the lip of the bowl. "You okay?"

  "I'll be fine," he shouted, but he retched again—ooooohWLEH!—and the retch became a fit of coughing, followed by another hollow spit into the bowl. She could almost see the translucent thread stringing from his lips into the water below, and she cringed at the image.

  June laid back against the heap of pillows. No sound came from the bathroom for a long while, and the warmth from the fireplace lulled her to sleep with the overhead lights still on. Popping knots dragged her back to consciousness twice. She felt David slip into bed some time later; he had already flicked off the light and had tucked her under the covers by then. She nearly nestled up against him when the smell of his sick-sweat prickled her nostrils. He leaned over to kiss her forehead, breath smelling of strong mouthwash, and she tried to ask if he was feeling any better, but before the words could come out, she was asleep again.

  She dreamed of a hideous creature living in a cave in the mountains behind Ambrosia. She and David were hiking, searching for something—she didn't know what, though it seemed of great importance in her dream. David was walking a little ways ahead of her when he suddenly dropped into the earth. June hurried to the place where he'd last stood and leaned over the pit. "I'm all right," he shouted up at her, lying on the ground an impossible distance below, somehow still spotlighted by the sun. "Just twisted my ankle, I think."

  The behemoth lumbered out of the darkness behind David then, a bedraggled and bug-eyed troll reminding her of Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son—and June found she couldn't speak to warn him. Her breath
passed her lips as empty as a hot wind blowing through the ruined archways of an ancient city. David waved cheerily as the colossal Thing's shadow fell over him, still smiling when it brought him to its lips. He let it swallow him in two quick bites.

  Not much more than an appetizer, really.

  III—The Altar

  DAVID SPENT A good half an hour in the shower, and during that time, June found the invitation to Americo Morales's 4th of July party wedged half under a table leg beside his suitcase.

  She'd been looking for Ambrosia's business card, her plan to give them a call during the lull between the wedding reception and the ceremony (she thought of the chef's strange monologue, his talk of ceremony and ritual), and ask if she could come by the following day to shoot during prep, or the dinner rush.

  She laid the card flat on the glass table and picked up the room phone. As she dialed the number, she noticed a shadow in the slat of rainbow-colored sunlight on the floor; the sun shining through Ambrosia's business card, magnifying the watermark. And it appeared to be words.

  June hung up the phone and got down on her hands and knees, bringing her face close to the carpet. Every little speck of dirt and hair and crumb was visible from here—did they ever vacuum?

  That was when she saw it, wedged under the table leg. "The envelope!" she said, and snagged it. She reached up to put it on the table, not watching what she was doing, trying to read the words in the watermark's shadow. The letters were blurry, but because she'd already had the phrase fresh in mind—if it was a phrase at all—she read it easily:

  Jakobi Uzh Ep a'Hethqa Est

  "Just like in the Mission," she said to herself. "But why?"

  June logged on to David's computer to look it up. No Wi-Fi. She tugged on a sweater and left the room while the shower still ran, and David sang "When I'm Sixty-Four." Which she found strange, since he wasn't a big Beatles fan.

  The lady with the red teeth stood behind the desk again this morning: this time, the teeth were pink, as if from a fresh meal of raw meat. "Hiya, darlin'! How was Ambrosia? Was it just to die for?"

  Again with the innuendos. "It was great, thanks for the recommendation."

  "Oh, it's no trouble. No trouble at all."

  Suddenly, the woman's saccharine friendliness made June want to wipe the smile from her face. "Actually," she said, "my partner got sick."

  The woman's features squeezed together unpleasantly. "You're part—? Oh, dear, I'm so sorry to hear that. Would you like me to give them a call?"

  "That won't be necessary. I wonder if I could get the Wi-Fi password."

  "Certainly." The clerk took a business card, flipped it, and scrawled on the reverse. She slid it across the desk to June, who snatched it with a cursory acknowledgment and began to walk away. Then she remembered the envelope, and the maid.

  "Did you speak to the maid the other day?"

  The woman blinked, clueless. "The—? Oh, Josefina. We spoke to her, yes."

  "You didn't—"

  "Terminated, oh, yes ma'am. With prejudice. You won't be seeing her around here anymore, I assure you."

  June waited until the woman finished ranting—she was giving June a headache—then said, "We found the envelope. You fired her for nothing."

  "Oh, dear." She looked sincerely displeased. "And she was such a good little worker, too."

  "You might want to think of this the next time you fire someone," June said, and stormed off without letting the woman reply. She felt vindicated, and hoped the gardeners at the Mission had received similar treatment from a kind stranger.

  Oh, yes, you're their White Knight, darling, Althea Dreese mocked from the grave.

  Back in the room, she typed in the password and searched Jakobi Uzh Ep a'Hethqa Est in an online translator. It detected Zulu, though it was only able to translate the first word, as James. Clearly it wasn't that.

  She searched the phrase, and found one hit, which appeared to be an entire page filled with gibberish, in which the words from the watermark were interspersed throughout a single paragraph that ran from the top of the page to the bottom, with no line breaks and very few actual words. It reminded her of the time she'd tried, and failed, to conquer Finnegan's Wake for her English Lit. class. June held the private opinion Joyce might have suffered from syphilitic dementia.

  She tapped the pen on the table. David had switched to Alanis Morrisette's "Ironic," singing a decent falsetto as water splashed heavily on the shower floor.

  Jakobi Uzh Ep a'Hethqa Est

  Delight, David had said. It was 'an Epicurean's Delight.'

  Ambrosia, she thought. Food of the gods.

  Adeos. From God.

  Could it be a code of some sort? A—what do you call it—a cipher?

  David came out of the shower, startling her. She closed the laptop and stood, pretending to be busy elsewhere. "What's wrong, hon?" he asked, his hair a wet tangle on his head, an impossibly plush towel around his waist.

  June didn't know what to say. In her hesitation, she spotted the envelope at the edge of the table and picked it up for David to see.

  "Oh, shit, June. Shit." Wet footprints trailed from the bathroom to where he stopped, dripping on the carpet. "Where was it?"

  "Under the table."

  "Under the table," he said, as if it had been the only place he hadn't checked. "Well, I'll have to go down and apologize."

  "They've already fired her."

  "Fuck," he said, genuinely bummed. "I knew I shouldn't have said anything."

  I told you not to say anything, she thought. She glanced at her watch. "And since you spent so much time in there, I don't have time to get showered."

  "Sorry, hon. Had to wash the sick off. Speaking of which, I'm all clean now..." He unwrapped the towel, exposing his neatly trimmed genitals, and tossed it on the back of a chair. "Care to get freaky, madam?"

  "Put your clothes on, dork," she said, and threw the towel back at him.

  DARREN SHINGLE STOOD alone at the altar for a good twenty minutes, looking elegant as usual in a classic black Gucci suit, wearing a newly whitened smile until finally he could smile no more. The gatherers had begun to talk among themselves, whispering concerns that Max had left him at the altar, and it was difficult for June not to suspect it herself.

  Of course, Max could have been late for many reasons. The idea that he'd left Darren at the altar (the man for whom Maximo Morales had professed his undying love on at least a dozen occasions where June herself had been present, with whom he shared a home in the Western Addition and not simply his bed, who had virtually planned their entire life together from marriage until they would die together as old men) was about the least likely scenario June could imagine.

  Darren passed words with the minister, a woman with the round and smiling face of a Buddha, who nodded, and said something conciliatory. He approached his parents, sitting front row left, speaking with them in hushed tones. Their mannerisms were diplomatic, cautiously optimistic. But Darren began to lose his temper, and waved his hands frantically.

  David belched, attracting June's attention, the couple sitting next to them peering over. The worst of his illness had passed, but a few symptoms still lingered. June had suspected food poisoning—and worse, last night—but she hadn't felt the slightest bit ill herself.

  Americo Morales took out his cell phone and dialed, stepping away from Darren and his wife to speak with whomever he'd called. When he hung up and shrugged at his wife, it was the final nail in the coffin of this blessed union. Darren plucked a champagne glass from the tower and sauntered off through the dewy grass toward the gardens, downing it as he walked. The country club—not quite as stuffy as the ones June had been dragged to as a child—had everything required of a wedding, including a view of the ocean beyond an archway smothered in impossibly green, blue-tinted gardenias. The only thing it didn't offer was a discreet exit. Darren's wilted form shrank into the distance, his polished Stefano Bemer shoes cutting two dark trails in the damp grass until finally
he disappeared behind a squared hedge.

  "Such a shame," the woman next to David said.

  Americo Morales took a glass from the tower and clinked his car keys against it a few times. The guests hushed their speculations and faced the front, awaiting word.

  "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced, "I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news on such a beautiful day, but... it would appear that my son won't be attending. He's not answering his phone." There were murmurs of discontent, though June suspected most of them were contrived. "I'm not going to speculate as to his reasons. He's a grown man, even if he doesn't always act like it. It would have been nice of him to explain himself in person, of course, for Darren's sake, if not for the rest of us."

  He placed the filled champagne flute back on the table. "You're welcome to stay. Eat, drink and make merry." Mrs. Morales winced. "Sorry," he said. "Poor choice of words."

  While Americo wandered off toward the reception hall, guests began to gather their belongings. Once the first person—one of the groomsmen—snagged a glass of champagne, the tower descended faster than the fall of Babel. David snagged two before they disappeared and brought one back to June, who stood with two of Darren's groomsmaids and a groomsman, his brother, Charlie.

  "I just can't see Max doing this," the girl in her early twenties said grimly, though the smile in her eyes betrayed a twinge of Schadenfreude as she adjusted the hem of her dress self-consciously. The dress looked great, even if she fit into it as well as a sausage fit its casing. Darren had picked them out; had it been up to Max, he would have put them all in pink crinoline, merely so they wouldn't upstage him.

  Charlie Shingle shook his head grimly. "Little shit," he muttered. His wife, the other groomsmaid, swatted him on the lapel, not at all playfully. He turned to her with gentle reproach. "Don't tell me you didn't see this coming, Gretchen."

  "Oh, please, tell me: why should I have seen this coming, Charles?"

  David swooped in with the champagne just in time. June sipped at hers, if only to avoid eye contact with the happy couple. Their six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, scurried around the archway, screeching and laughing, perfect little examples of why June didn't want children. Gretchen Shingle looked haggard, beginning to show at six months pregnant. Charlie Shingle was shitfaced.