"Well, I mean, if it's good enough for us, it's good enough for them, right?"
"Them?" David inquired.
Charlie glanced around himself. "Look, I'm not a homophobe. He's my brother, for Christ sakes. I just mean, they can get married now, so they should have all the problems that come with it, right?" His wife gave him a reproachful look that was far from gentle, her white Lee Press-On nails resting like talons on her round belly. "It only makes sense they should leave each other at the altar now, too, am I right?"
"I guess so," David said, and slugged down his champagne. Ever the diplomat, June thought with a smile. "Hey, uh, you two been to any restaurants yet? There's this nice little out-of-the-way joint—"
"Where he got food poisoning," June chimed in.
David flashed her a glare. "You don't know that. It could have been anything. Besides, you didn't get sick, and we ate the same things."
She shrugged. "It was great, though."
"Oh yeah?" Charlie said, not really interested. He would have been happy eating prepackaged sandwiches from a gas station. "What's it called?"
"Ambrosia," they both said at once. David squeezed her hip, amused by the jinx.
"Sounds a little..." Charlie said, and shrugged. "You know."
Gretchen shook her head, exasperated. The other groomsmaid chuckled to herself, took a large gulp of champagne, and peered around for single men.
"Expensive?" David suggested.
"Exactly." Charlie extended a finger beyond his beer bottle to point at David. "This guy gets it."
"It wasn't too expensive. Probably not the best place for kids. Spanish tapas."
Charlie pulled a face. "Can't eat Spanish. Gives me gas somethin' awful."
"Everything gives you gas," his loving wife said.
Charlie laughed. "Everything she cooks, anyway."
June made eye contact with David, who made a subtle motion with his head to skip away from the younger Shingles. "I should see how Darren's doing," June said, spotting his signal. "It was good to catch up with you."
"Oh yeah, real good," Charlie said. "Catcha later, Dave."
"David," he corrected.
"Yup."
Gretchen shook June's hand. "Really nice to see you again, June. You should come out to the house when the baby comes, hey?"
"Wouldn't miss it," June said with a warm smile. And she wouldn't, if she happened to be scouting locations in the Reno area sometime in the next year. The chance of that happening was unlikely, but it wasn't a direct lie. She waved at the sausage girl. "Nice to meet you, Dakota."
"Yeah, mm-hmm," the girl said, flashing June a glance before returning to the hunt.
David took her hand and they wandered off. "Well, that was awkward," he said under his breath.
"Oh? I didn't notice."
He laughed, then bent to kiss her cheek. "Did you see the smile on that blonde girl? You couldn't wipe it off with a chisel."
"No kidding," June said with a laugh.
"Hey, you don't really mean to try and comfort Darren, do you? I think I saw Max's sister head off that way. Weren't they friends before Max and Darren?"
"Good memory." She shook her head. "I've got a feeling he'll be pretty inconsolable, anyway. We'll talk later, I'm sure. I've got those photos for him to look at, anyway. I think outside the Mission would be perfect for the love scene in Just Swell."
The two lead actors were fossils, and the thought made David shudder theatrically. She laughed again, but the laugh died when she realized they had stopped under the flowered archway. He looked up at it. She followed his gaze, and an awkward smile passed between them, like strangers under the mistletoe. "Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce," David said, breaking the silence. "At least Max and Darren beat the odds."
June laughed, a little anxious. For a moment, she'd thought David might spontaneously drop down on one knee and pop the question. And would it be that terrible to get married? Just because her parents' marriage had been a train wreck didn't mean hers would be. David's parents had been together for 36 years, longer than she and David had been alive.
Would it be that terrible?
A horrible cackle shook her from her thoughts. June and David turned to its source: Gretchen Shingle's braying laughter at her husband, who was wiping the beer he'd spilled down the front of his rented suit with a mortified look as the children circled, circled.
It could always be worse, she thought.
JUNE PARKED OUTSIDE Ambrosia's stone gateposts and stepped out. Somewhere distant, a chainsaw roared—somebody felling trees or cleaning up a mess in the road, she couldn't quite tell by where the sound arose from. She snapped a few photos with the Nikon: of the mossy stones, silhouetted against knife blades of sunlight through the clouds, the blood-red AMBROSIA on the signpost. She switched to a wide-angle lens, and snapped a few shots of the restaurant and the hills beyond. Smoke rising from its little thatched roof, Ambrosia looked more surreal in the daytime than it had last night. The clouds had broken, giving the scene a golden, godlike tint, one she could easily punch up in Photoshop.
The air had turned brisk, but with the sun shining and the view so spectacular, she decided to shirk the car and walk down, to get some better angles of the cottage. Aside from the chainsaw, and the gravel crunching underfoot, the afternoon was silent. Not a bug, not a bird. June sauntered down the hill, snapping shots, when something struck her, and suddenly she stopped in her tracks, her heartbeat quickening.
Barely ten feet from where she'd stopped, a deer was grazing. June raised her camera, ever so slowly, as the animal flittered its tail, and continued nibbling at the dry grass. They'd seen deer the other day at the cove, but not this close, and not alone. It seemed as though everything had come together to create this special moment between June and the deer, and she wanted—needed—to capture the feeling with a photograph.
Click! She snapped a shot off from her chest and wound the film forward. The deer rose from its business in the dirt to regard her, hobbling slightly on its left front leg, which appeared to be an old break, gnarled like an old tree branch, but long-since healed. June brought the camera up to her eye—
The deer stumbled off, bobbing up and down on its crippled leg as it hurled itself toward the darkened woods.
"Shit," she muttered, the magic dispelled. The chainsaw grew louder as she approached Ambrosia. Someone cutting wood out back to keep the fire burning, no doubt. Must go through a lot of it, she thought, burning day and night like that.
She stood in front of the door and used the knocker. As she waited, she saw an old stone well she hadn't noticed last night, its cover mossy, the gray wood bucket swaying in a light breeze from its frayed rope.
Click! Click!
Nobody came to the door.
June jiggled the handle. It turned in her hand, startling her, and the door swung inward.
The vague scent of last night's meal hit her nostrils, making her salivate—until she detected an unpleasant sour smell beneath it, reminding her of David puking in the car. She gagged and covered her nose. The chainsaw doubled in volume once the door fell shut behind her, as if the back door were open, focusing the sound through the kitchen.
"Hello?"
The saw revved and roared. June stepped further into the room. Her reflection in the warped mirror was pale and stretched; she looked like a gaunt giant as she moved past toward the tables, toward the kitchen, and all the while, the roar of the chainsaw grew louder, as though someone was using it inside.
Ice sculpting, she thought. Don't ice sculptors use saws sometimes? Probably carving a swan for someone's wedding.
Leftover food in pots and pans at the chef's station between the tables coagulated, going to rot. A fly lighted on a thin slice of rolled white meat and buzzed off toward the kitchen. She snapped a photo.
Health code violations all over the place. This is turning out to be more of an exposé than a photo essay.
The chainsaw growling, June stepped through
the darkened vestibule and into the kitchen.
Her heart stopped.
The head waiter, the Frenchman, stood with his shirt off, his pale skin glistening with sweat and spattered blood. He held the chainsaw in both hands, poised to make another cut. And what he was carving... June staggered back in unimaginable horror.
The Frenchman raised his eyes from his work and caught sight of her. For a long moment, he stood as frozen as June. She kept staring, unable to look away from the plump, naked woman strung above the table, her flesh hanging in ragged strips, yellow clumps of fat oozing from chainsaw cuts in her belly and hips and breasts. Josefina. Even with her damp black hair stringing down in her face, and the gag tied in her mouth, June knew it was the maid from the Seaside Inn & Gardens. This was her punishment, for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Eyes closed, breathing slow and ragged, Josefina still appeared to be alive after all the cuts and the spilled blood, had only passed out from the pain.
The chainsaw rumbled. A fly buzzed on Josefina's nose and another in her hair.
Unconsciously, as if in a dream, June snapped a photo.
The effect was immediate: the waiter's eyes came alight, his thin mustache curled upward in a snarl, and he stepped around the galvanized steel tub filled with Josefina's fats and juices.
June turned and ran, screaming through the darkened hall. Behind her, impossibly close, the chainsaw roared back to life, and as she stumbled out into the dining hall the front door burst open, Jörg tromping in with his hands full of bulky grocery bags.
"Armand," he called out, "whose car is that parked out front?" The large chef's head rose, and he took in the sight of June sweating and breathing heavily in the kitchen doorway. "What are you doing here?"
The chainsaw shrieked against something—stone or drywall—rattling the objects on the walls, and a grin spread across Jörg's unshaven face. "Looks like we have a guest for dinner, Armand!" he said, delighted.
Running past the tables, the Nikon beat and bounced forgotten against her breasts, she saw there was nowhere to go. Nowhere.
Wrong. A third doorway lay beyond the fireplace, across the large room from Jörg, who dropped his groceries and stepped away from the front door to meet her. If she could make it to the door before he did—
Her darting eyes fell on the pitchfork. She stopped to grab it, trying to tear it from the wall. But it wouldn't budge. She saw the grin widen on Jörg's fat face, the snarl spreading on the Frenchman's, and June placed a foot against the wall, pulling with all of her strength.
The rusted clamps holding it in place snapped, and June stumbled back, the pitchfork held in a death grip. Once she regained her balance, she spun on her heels, swinging the weapon toward Armand, who halted his approach, letting the chainsaw rumble. She swung it in Jörg's direction. Rather than stop, he stepped closer to her with his hands raised.
"Look at her!" the chef said. "The tenacity!"
The waiter only snarled.
"Put the fucking chainsaw down, asshole!"
"You heard her," Jörg said. "Put it away. It is unnecessary. Isn't it, dear lady?"
June panted heavily as Jörg crept closer. "Don't you fucking move another step!"
He stopped, the smile disappearing from his face, and his bristly wattle fell slack. "Dear lady, you have absolutely no idea what you are doing," he said soothingly. "Please, put down the trident. You look as though you've just seen Frankenstein's monster!"
Armand snickered, and in her peripherals, June saw he was moving forward again. She jabbed the tines at him. He stepped back, the pointed ends missing him by mere inches, clanking instead against the stilled saw blade.
Jörg scowled. "This has gone on quite long enough." He nodded at Armand, jowls quivering. "You may kill her. But leave the head untouched."
Armand flashed the chef a sneer, then took another step toward June. She swung out once more, grunting with effort—
—and bolted for the door by the fireplace.
Behind her, Jörg laughed. "Oh that's lovely, isn't it? Perhaps she'll—"
But June had jerked open the door and slipped into the darkness beyond, cutting off his words as she pulled the heavy door shut behind her. The sound of her breathing filled her ears, the hurried beat of her heart. She kept moving forward, swinging the pitchfork in front of her like a blind man's cane. Behind her, the chainsaw screamed against something metallic, and sparks brightened the long, stone hallway in which she'd found herself. In the brief illumination, June glimpsed a wooden door at the far end, with no obstacles in between. She ran for it, and when she reached it, she slammed against it headlong.
Locked.
Armand scraped the whirring blade against the walls, more sparks lighting the hall as June threw herself against the door again. On her third try, the lock gave with a groaning snap, and she hurtled forward into a small, candlelit chamber.
Pushing the door shut, she scoured the room for something to block the way and found nothing but an altar decorated with cream-colored candles melted down to the nubs. They lighted a glass jar containing a lock of silver-gray hair tied in a yellow ribbon, a desiccated finger bone, and something brown and gnarled which she recognized as a human tongue. Stood against the face of the altar was a photo of a glowering, robed Father Merced, and beside this lay an amorphous sculpture, a million-eyed, bulbous creature in place of a crucifix, or a Buddha—and as she puzzled at these bizarre religious artifacts, she realized she had stumbled into a shrine, but could just as easily have stepped into the foyer of Hell.
The chainsaw bellowed, echoing down the hall and in her skull. She moved alongside the shrine and shoved it forward. Grunting with the effort, she pushed back against the wall and the altar tipped. June watching it hover precariously in mid-air with her heart in her throat. Then it toppled over with an impossibly loud crash, smashing up against the door.
The candles snuffed out—ssshhhhhh! Darkness again, black as pitch. The chainsaw rumbled outside the room. The door rattled. The altar had barred the way.
"Go 'round the back," Jörg said, his voice echoing. "Mrs. Addison? That is your name, isn't it?"
"Fuck you!"
"Dear dear," the man clucked. "Would you prefer I call you June?"
June said nothing, only felt along the floor for the pitchfork, crawling on her hands and knees in the small room, six feet at its widest. Her fingers touched stone and mortar, sifted through every grain of sand and smoothed over every hardened drop of wax. Still, the pitchfork was missing. Desperation squeezed her insides, making her panic.
He knows my name. How could he know my name?
But he didn't, did he? He'd called her Mrs. Addison, and that was worse, because it meant he'd likely called the front desk at the Seaside Inn & Gardens, since she and David had checked in under Addison. The two men could easily have sent somebody to the room to kidnap David—
God, no...
"What is wrong with you people?" she cried.
"Wrong?" Jörg wondered. "There is nothing wrong with me, Mrs. Addison—"
"That's not my fucking name!"
He paused for only a moment. "—something is wrong with society."
"You're a fucking monster. Cannibals! You made me—" She gagged at the thought of it, the delicious cured and salted meats, the confit, the tartar... No wonder David had gotten sick. How much of that meat was what it appeared to be? Any of it? How much of it was human?
At long last, she threw up, vomit splashing on her hands and the thighs of her capris. While she retched, she heard Jörg chuckle. She wanted to burst through the door and plunge the pitchfork right through his ribcage. She wanted to twist it and throw herself against it and tear his goddamned innards out, to shove them back down his throat so he choked on them. Buoyed by the spirit of revenge, she wiped the puke from her chin with the arm of her sweater, and felt again for the weapon.
"Cannibalism is such a detestable term," the chef was saying. "The Chinese eat everyth
ing from the trees to the oceans, and yet we do not fault them for it. We do not call them names such as cannibal."
"They aren't eating people, you maniac!"
Her roaming fingers grasped a stone in the wall. It seemed to have dimension, not just a bumpy flat surface. It had depth. She slid her hand up to the rocks above it, found the same depth there. And suddenly she felt a cool breath of air, dank and musty and somewhat salty.
Around the back, he'd told Armand.
It was an opening.
She traced the contours. The passage rose maybe three feet from the floor, two or more feet across—the altar had hidden it, but now it was exposed. An exit. Freedom.
"June? What are you doing in there?"
"Jakobi Uzh Ep a'Hethqa Est!" she said, trying to divert his attention, hoping she'd pronounced it right. "That's your credo, isn't it?"
She sensed him smiling beyond the darkness, and, having distracted him, crawled into the opening. The passage seemed to slant downward at a shallow angle.
"Your pronunciation's a tad off, June," Jörg said, his voice beginning to recede. "Would you like to know what it means?" Without waiting for her to answer, he told her: "It's written in an auxiliary language the priest Antonioni Merced created to speak with the Yuman Indians—a little joke, really. It means 'We are what we eat, we eat what we are.'" The chef chuckled to himself. "You know, I sincerely believe you and your husband would make excellent Associates to the Order. And why not? You've already gorged yourselves on the forbidden fruit. There is nothing left to..."
His words were finally lost to the darkness. The further she crawled inside the cavern, the louder her own hurried breath and thrumming heartbeat became, but soon these were drowned out by heavy, constant drips from the cold ceiling and walls, and a rush of wind from somewhere deeper inside the passage.
Gristle & Bone Page 20
