Her tone is light as her skin, still professional, but after fifteen minutes of urging me to leave this wheelchair, she’s getting impatient. She twists, nods at someone. A woman, her back to me, ducks through the glass double doors.
The nurse leans to block my view. “You need to be home resting, Mr. Mendez. Are you sure you don’t want me to call a ride?”
This is a high-end hospital, boasting state-of-the-art wards for cancer, family (ahem) planning, and lots of elective surgery. You know, things wealthy people want done right. After ten days of being fed and cleaned and cared about, I don’t want to let go. Setting my feet on the pavement will kick off six to eight weeks of pain and tiredness before I get to the sweet okay of healed.
Only to do it all again.
I finally peel my ass off the cushion. The nurse whips the chair away.
“Speedy recovery!”
I walk, sloshing slightly. Attached to what’s left of my liver is a money bag—a sleeve filled with stem cells and nutrients to grow back what’s missing. Like a condom, you can’t fill it all the way or it bursts, and no one wants a tsunami of stem cells running riot inside. Wouldn’t four stomachs be an absolute gas?
I like this part of town; it’s shiny and welcoming, like a toothy smile that reaches the eyes. The rich and super-rich won’t live next to sirens and a parade of hurt, but they’re conveniently close and do gather to shop and eat a few blocks away. I’d live here if I weren’t saving for my looming retirement. I’m financially comfortable at the moment, and that draining away of desperation has given guilt room to grow. I need to help my little sister, make up for what I did. Carla always took care of me, and I owe her for that. And I miss her.
I try her phone. I’m still blocked.
I feel a wash of helplessness. That nurse was right—I should go home and rest. But I have a plan, dreamed up over an opiated week and half of talk shows and endlessly shuffled commercials, and if I go home, I might just stay there. Run and cry, like the old days. At the moment, I’ve got that same thoughtless courage as the day I dared to abandon my sister and scribble my name on the contract with Ouroboros.
A block later, I rest on the bench at a bus hut where a Latina chick seductive-smiles at me from a poster. Ample thighs squirt from shorts as tight as a pastry bag, a crop top flashes underboob, and below her left breast, a V-shaped scar traces the rib line. “You know you want me,” the tag reads. In the bottom corner is a serpent biting its tail to form the O for Ouroboros, Inc. My healing body tells me I’m exhausted and to stop moving, so I pass the time peeling away the woman’s shirt with my eyeballs. I do want her.
A man sits next to me and his face lights up. We celebs know that expression: The fusiform face area in the man’s brain just fired, giving him a jolt of dopamine. Familiar faces do that—you work next to someone five days a week, but run into them on Saturday? You get happy. The man’s pleasure melts to embarrassment and he looks away. I’m used to that, too.
Against my body’s better judgement, I stand. My sister does not forgive easily, and I don’t dare just show up: First, I need Carla’s sympathy. But to get that, I need her attention.
Another block and I’m passing velvet-roped stanchions and brass-buttoned coats. I approach the entrance I want and the security guard sighs. Such are the consequences of a hospital bed decision: People dressed like I am right now only come to use the bathrooms or get arrested shoplifting.
Inside, menus and posters line the walls: Be the first to catch the eye; be the first to catch the money. Among them I spot me, staring back shirtless and muscular (I am required to stay in shape once I heal), fists on hips, head tilted with a today’s-your-lucky-day smirk, as if inviting you into my bedroom. My scar—never allowed to fully pale—drops short under my sternum, veers right, just like that Latina gal’s. Behind half-naked me stands a chesty white brunette in a dark blue top with a red collar—it never made sense to me why I’d be facing away from the woman I’m apparently seducing. Above the Ouroboros logo, the ad warns, “Watch out, boy, she’ll chew you up.”
I enter the dining area. Imagine a wide, Victorian-era restaurant for the upper crust: ceiling two stories up, window panes stacked almost as high, a busy carpet sucking a quarter inch off your height. Now imagine face-lifting that bitch into a food court by adding a border of kiosks, bright colors, and flashes of chrome. An environment to reassure both old and new money that they belong. The place is pretty busy for a weekday afternoon, but I suppose money buys time.
I locate Eat Cake and plod over. Recognition pops: The cashier, a teen girl in pastels and a cute paper hat, goggles, as if a talking pig had just bellied up to a rib shack’s counter. She sees my face every time I’m in season, and Eat Cake is currently serving me. She blinks, stammers.
“Can I help you, sir?”
I falter. This feels stupid now. A waste. But I can’t concentrate under the girl’s stare—surprise still sits there, with disgust creeping in, and here comes disappointment. I don’t look my best after surgery, and the corners of my eyes are starting to crow. She must think I am a lie, that my poster has been touched up. But Ouroboros won’t do that—we’re required to look just as good live: Fresh, firm, wholesome.
I point to the specialty section on the digital menu. “The Glace au Foie Fraise, please.”
She gawps, recovers, and rings me up. Thank God I have money saved, because after this even Ouroboros’ generosity won’t stretch the whole six months to my next paycheck. She places a table number stand on the marble counter, takes several tries to insert the round laminated picture of my face. When I back away, she breathes an audible sigh of relief.
I find a table in the center, place the stand on the table, and sit. Oh, God, to sit. I’m so tired. Should have gone home. What was I thinking? No, going home would be like trying to just rest your eyes; you open them and now it’s dark and you just roll over and shut them again.
Around me, recognition—my lobby poster did just refresh their brains—flips from dopamine-pleased to curious. Stares. Whispers. From staid corners, the generationally wealthy mutter. Around me, their sons and daughters, and hot new entrepreneurs, half rise and crane. To all I am a celebrity, but not the sort they expect or want here.
A server brings a reddish mound of ice cream perched on a shortbread disk, a glass of water, an embossed paper napkin, and a curved, long-handled spoon. He lingers, fussing with their placement. Later, he’ll search for posted photos that include him.
I glance at the dessert. Normally, a patron would post a pic of the food with the donor’s laminate photo in the background: Look at me, I’m eating this person. I am rich. I am trendy and powerful.
People are recording me, snapping photos. Not even subtle. Come on, big boy, their faces say, take a bite for my post.
I lift the spoon
By now, I feel the frantic heat on my neck and the crawling on my spine. The eyes. The cameras. I’m used to being recognized, stared at, but not at this level. Affecting calm, I swoop the spoon into my ice cream, crack through the cookie. The spoon trails a metallic smear across my tongue, but as soon as I pull it away that taste is smothered by ecstasy. The shortbread is perfect: Liver done right has a sweet, nutty flavor, and the hazelnut enhances my organ perfectly; butter complements liver and they didn’t hold back. Blended and chunked, strawberries spark bursts of a slightly tart sweetness through the prominent meaty taste, followed by a delayed aftertaste of reduced merlot. It’s delicious, but nothing they couldn’t have gotten from beef or pork or chicken. I’ve just blown a lot of money to be disappointed in myself.
Still, the point is for people to post. This is so singular the news will spread. Because my sister has blocked me out, this is how I reach her. She must see it. She has to hear about it, will see me and know how desperate I am. Carla’s the younger of us, but somehow she ended up looking out for me. She will reach out.
I take a second bite. I will finish this—it’s so goddamn expensive.
The crowd thickens. People from other parts of the food court are migrating; workers flit near and slow down, polishing, bussing, tidying. Lunch hour is fading but more people enter—all here to watch me eat my own body, one spoonful at a time. Their gazes become physical things that push and crush and burrow.
I close my eyes for privacy. The tastes become sharper without distractions. And then there is something I missed before, something so slight but, now that I can identify it, is overwhelming: power. That is what they are eating. Power over people. Killing killers, withholding food from the poor or leaving them to freeze on the streets, and pricing heath care to exclusivity: Those things just didn’t do it for them anymore. The glow of legalized murder faded and they needed a bigger high, and after the uprising they found it: eating their enemies, the vast, fecund poor. I knew all this, but this is the first time I’ve experienced it.
Eat a man, take his power—an ancient, ultimate rule.
I do feel stronger. Beyond. Is this what the rich feel? Why they pay so much to nibble at me and others? I like it.
I open my eyes. The crowd’s gaze is no longer passive, it’s expectant. They are waiting for something from me. What? Then I see him: a middle-aged white man in a black suit alone at a nearby table. He deliberately lifts a spoon to his mouth. In front of him is a flat-bottom bowl of Glace au Foie Fraise. His stare is cold, angry. I have trespassed, and he is reestablishing order. I feel the crowd’s mood shift. They are on his side.
The maître d’ appears beside me. “Sir, if you are done, perhaps you should vacate the seat for another’s use?”
Of course. Now that I’m done, I am just a pile of cheap meat. I could ask for coffee, justify my presence, but if I stay, the crowd, and this horrible man, will tear away the glorious surge of power I still feel. I want to hold onto this. I leave the dish and napkin at the table. They can bus it. That’s what they are paid for. I swing by Eat Cake, point to the menu. “Take this,” I tell the crowd, “for it is my body.”
Carla will definitely hear about this, as surely as if our president declared an emergency or a famous actress turned eighteen.
~~~
I tap the card reader on the wrong bus: I should be going home, to recover, but I still feel that surge of dominance from the food court, that churn of daring from the hospital. Finally, I will go to my sister’s house—our house. Carla always took care of me, fixed things. Ouroboros expects classy behavior from their donors, and I just risked everything. Sis’s protective instincts will kick in and she’ll talk to me, finally.
I just hope she can come up with how to save my career. But she’s never been short of ideas, my sister.
I sit in one of the handicap seats. Two stops later, an elderly lady approaches.
“May I have that seat?” Thick Russian accent, thin compassion.
I look up. “I just had surgery.”
The dopamine flash, then contempt. She tightens. “Is that my fault? I certainly didn’t choose to be old.”
She’s right: I signed up for my discomfort. And much as I’d like to keep my ass planted, the echelon of people who ride buses doesn’t think much of me. I carefully rise and shuffle toward the first vacant seat.
“Keep moving, meat puppet,” snaps a bald Asian in shades.
Further back I settle, sigh. Window seat, at least. The bus trundles out of the upscale area. I transfer. At the border of our city’s riots district, the more well-to-do places have been rebuilt, repainted. Others reopened but still have burns, and a few have boarded windows and maybe always will.
I see a poster for another meat puppet, a Pacific Islander who sells a chunk of his rump for an exclusive ragù barese sauce. Loopy spray-painted letters say, “Eat the poor.” We’re not poor, we edibles, but it’s a hard world to live in: We have to monitor our diets and keep fit so our meat and organs remain tip-top. We compete with one another for mouths; and then there’s the cheap eats. People can donate their bodies to cuisine and the proceeds go to their next of kin; the Chinese have been harvesting organs from executed and unclaimed criminals for transplant since 1984 to the tune of over six billion yuan a year, but here, we eat the healthy ones. Wish I could die in China: I’d be a godsend, not someone’s dump.
Will my reputation tank and Ouroboros drop me? Maybe. That’s more atonement than I want. Still, how many years do I have left before looking less tasty? A competing company would snap me up, but at a lower salary. A couple more years, down the ladder I go again, until I reach the break-even cheapskates at ChefMart. I need a new path, but I don’t know what.
Deeper we go: more and more blackened brick, more recovering businesses, shiny marts selling overpriced goods and food that tastes just like meat, some even shinier financial advice services outlets that help you pay off debt and set budgets—for a fee plus personal info, which they’ll sell to companies so they can better take your money away. Not much different from before the riots, really.
My stop. Sitting did me good. Five blocks. I can do this.
Not many people are out. Sullen is how I remember things, then the excitement of riot and fire, first one city, and then in every fed-up hellhole neighborhood. What were we thinking? We burned targets in our own areas first, our rage too immediate for travel, before moving to the richer neighborhoods, where we learned money is adrenalin to cops and pols. We got hit bad. Then we were back to sullen, with a vengeance.
I see a faded “Unite or Die” stencil from after order was restored, a last desperate plea to not give up. But after the pacification, the elite needed us just calm enough to stay put. A universal basic income came first, enough to be okay but not thrive. No one has to go hungry, at least physically. Other laws followed. Amnesty, which kept a shitload out of jail. Abortion became legal again, subsidized this time, probably mostly to keep down the number of poor. Selling our bodies became allowed. Just enough: We’re angry, but not riot-level angry. Precisely where we’re supposed to be.
Home. We torched the marts and the money stores, but houses near them caught, too. Sis and I got lucky, that’s all. Not the guy who molested her in high school; his place burned to the ground. I asked my sister about that, and she just smiled.
I climb the wood steps, ring the bell. I have keys, but she has to invite me in or it won’t work. I hear her. The peephole darkens, the deadbolt clacks, and she’s there in the chain-lock’s gap. She’s older but well fed, wearing a sweatshirt with fraying cuffs, sweatpants with a shiny smear over one knee, and worn sandals.
“What, asshole?”
I’m not sure how to respond. I’m a bad taste in her mouth, a house that deserves to be burned. I try to look as remorseful and worn as I feel. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you alone. I know it was hard. I was scared.”
“You took most of our money! Half, I might have forgiven. I worked so hard. Me! I had plans for that money. My life was fucked up. For years. And after all I did for your weak ass.”
I need to try harder. “Did you see what I did today?” She says nothing, but I can see she has. “I might lose my job. I hurt myself to show I’m truly sorry.”
She snorted. “Suffering is only noble if you can’t avoid it. Otherwise it’s fucking pathetic. You did this to feel better about yourself. It makes no damn bit of difference in my life. Now go back to your nice apartment in your nice neighborhood and leave me to stew in this slum.”
Door slam. Deadbolt.
I sit on the steps, exhausted. A low moan comes from the emptiness inside me. The power in me from the food court fades. It was an illusion. I can’t even influence my own sister.
The railing against my cheek is flaking white semi-gloss and wood that will rot if not repainted. I should offer to do that, when I’m feeling better. Maybe do it unasked. She’ll come out, see me fixing it. Her heart will thaw, just enough.
A man approaches. Everything about him is tight: his white tee, his faded jeans, his muscles, his jaw. When he notices me, I see the dopamine flash, then anger. “What are you staring at, meat puppet?”
I shrink. I am too weak for this.
“Think you’re better than me?” He slaps his ass. “Want a piece of this? Huh? You’re in the wrong neighborhood.” Red in his cheeks spreads up his head, through the pale, blond buzzcut. He’s strutting, circling, shoulders pulled back to plump his chest, like bird in heat demanding intimacy. Because what is a beating if not intimate? He jerks off his sunglasses. “You gonna do something?”
I will. I just have to think how. Anything I say he will twist into an insult. If I don’t get this right, I’ll wake up in a cheap hospital. Or not.
The door opens. “For Chrissakes, get inside you, dumb motherfucker.”
Carla supports me into the living room. “Sit your ass on the couch until I tell you to get up.” She peels off her top on the way to her bedroom. Before she heels the door closed, I spot a camera and a ring light.
Alone, I inventory. The furniture is the same, but the curtains are new. Photos are missing from the wall. Will she put them back if we reconcile?
She comes out in a clean black T-shirt and new jeans and heads into the kitchen. I hear a refrigerator and a cabinet open, and she returns to drop a plate on the on the coffee table. Slice of cold frittata. No fork, no water.
“Thank you.” I nod toward the bedroom. “What’s that?”
“Side gig. Needed to build up my cash after you bailed.”
“Living here was harder for me,” I say. “I got picked on. People respect you. I—”
“Dtch-ch-ch-chuh! You eat, I talk.”
I nod. This is a start; we’re talking. I lift the frittata with my fingers. Imitation meat—good enough to almost taste like pork—onion, red pepper, coconut, and a ton of eggs. She used to make something like this, but with real chicken. She is pinching pennies.
“People respect me because I’m not some weepy cunt who lets people eat my liver for kicks. We all could see it in your timid eyes and the way you looked hunched even standing straight. So I protected you. But I should have fucking watched my back. Cowards are the worst. You can’t count on them.”
I force the mouthful down. “I’ve put money away. I can help you.”
“Oh, you’ll help, all right. And shut the fuck up, by the way. I only let you in because seeing you on my porch, I started thinking. I got ideas. You know me and ideas. I decided we could work together again. See, just like you, I wanted out of this neighborhood. Bunch of bitter bastards who failed at taking over the world and settled for lying on the dining room floor licking their balls and hoping for table scraps. After you took your share of the money and most of mine, I had to watch you live my dream. But I did things. I started rebuilding. You will get me there faster. I just have to figure out the details.”
She stands, walks to the bathroom. “And part of me missed you a little, I guess.” She doesn’t close the door. Probably adding makeup. Is she going out? It would be a huge show of trust to leave me alone, and that gives me hope.
I continue eating, wishing she had brought water. I think of the man outside, how easy it would have been for her watch what happened next through her peephole. Or to let me stagger down the street and maybe collapse. Even through the anger and bitterness, she’s still driven to look out for her older brother. And she’s a person who lives by the belief that failure to take vengeance is an invitation to get dicked over again. I remember that mysteriously burned-down house, and what she did to the—what if she isn’t going out? She wouldn’t bother dressing up for me. Someone is coming. Oh, you’ll help, all right. She is going to sell me on the black market. I need to leave.
I check the peephole. A different man is outside, obviously waiting for another. Should I call a ride? Could I even make it to the car? For this neighborhood, the police wait to see if you call back again before deciding it’s worth the bother.
No. I need to stop freaking out. This is my sister. She wouldn’t betray me like that.
The pain is edging back. I need water for the meds. And I’m thirsty.
I enter the kitchen and see that Carla has added a heavier rug to the floor to tame the curled linoleum, installed a dishwasher, and replaced the old fridge we kept repairing with a larger one, but the old microwave lingers, as do the chairs, table, and framed photos of our parents. I shuffle to the back door and pull aside the curtain. The fence is even more ruinous than when I left, and a riot of blackberry vines wraps it like razor wire.
I shake out a painkiller and grab a glass from the same crappy cabinet. Inside the fridge I find the carafe of water, twenty snap-lid containers of frittatas, and two jars of fetuses.
Carla shoves the fridge closed. Her hair is brushed and her face is made up. Not dressed to kill, but maybe for some serious damage. “A fuck monkey who eats himself is not allowed to judge.”
“What?” I ask. It’s all I can think of.
She drags a chair from the battered table and nods. “Sit down before you fall down.” She returns to the table, straddles a chair, folds her arms over the back. “You didn’t take me with you, bro. Sure, UBI meant I have enough to live on, barely, but don’t you think I wanted more, just like you did? Being a camgirl in a crowded market just wasn’t doing shit. And I kept seeing you, all successful with that handsome face and hot bod, and I thought: I ain’t doing that. ‘Goodbye, Mr. Mendez. See you in six months.’ Think I want to be treated like goddamned vending machine?”
I lean against the counter, dizzy. “You were there today?”
She laughs. “We both know hospital food is where the money’s at. You were dropping off, I was picking up.”
I sink into the chair, feeling every inch of it against my skin. I’m cold in a way I haven’t felt in a long time. The night I deserted Carla. The days after. The chill took a long time to fade into regret, but now it’s back full force. “This, though. It’s not you. It’s wrong.”
“You know what’s wrong? Feeding the rich their own fucking grandkids.” She grins. “But it feels so good. Listen, meat puppet, I’ve socked away enough to leave this neighborhood, but upscale places would pick up on my unsavory activities. People with money don’t want this shit next door.”
“No…”
“If I live with you, my income draws less attention from the neighbors: You sit comfortably smack between respectable and despised. They expect you to have money, but they avoid you. Perfect. Also, if we pool our earnings, we can do bigger things.”
I’ve heard about women growing babies right up to the twenty-four-week viability limit—and beyond—to maximize profit. Illegal. Monstrous. This is not my sister. Or it is—a horrid parody of her at her worst: fed up from taking care of my many tormentors or extricating me from another jam, slapping me around, screaming. But she was never a monster. Left alone, she has become one. But back when she loved me, I could calm her. I struggle up from the chair. “I love you,” I rasp. My stomach twists. Too much happening at once, all of it terrible.
“Just like your job, this will become legal, dipshit. Behind the scenes, they’re pushing. Why do you think abortion came back? How else could I get product from a richy-rich hospital? I’m in on the fucking ground floor, and fetuses are cheap. When it’s legit, I can be like you, out in the open. You are what inspired me. Sure, assholes will sneer at how I got rich, but we both know of a lot of the monied patriarchs did things just as awful: Living kids died in their factories, parents coughed to death in their coal mines. And my kids will do fine, just like theirs. Each generation the shame will fade until my descendants are admired.”
She’s tasted power, and she likes it. She protected me because she loved me, and this is what I did to her. I should have stayed. “I’m so sorry.”
She stands. “Don’t be. I’m surviving, and without people nibbling scars onto me. Listen, obsessing about you while I was in the bathroom made me think of something else. The rich get jaded. So when they do, we mix my gig and yours, offer family meals. Maybe—stay with me—whole neighborhoods or small towns. Can you fucking imagine the rush of eating a whole village of people like you were some goddamn prehistoric monster? How much would you pay for that if you had too much money? The rich drop a hundred grand to fly into space just to say they did it. And the super-rich build yachts so large they don’t fit under bridges, so they tell towns to tear them down—and the towns fucking do it! This will happen. And I will be there. But I need money. A shitload of money. But if I could pay everyone in this shit neighborhood to cough up meat, can you imagine what we’d rake in? And they’ll do it, because most of them are spineless fucks like you.”
The front door lock rattles and people walk in, chatting, unhurried, comfortable.
“You in or what? Better decide fast.”