Morning’s light gently washed over the carved-up beauty in his bathtub and he collapsed, exhausted, onto his knees.
Delirious when he finally left the restaurant to the night cleaners - the meth heads - and the armed security guard (an ex-cop with ‘alcohol issues’ whose main job was to make sure the cleaners didn’t burn the place down while cleaning out the fryer oil or let their friends in while the early morning deliveries came to the back door), Rod took a cab uptown and spent an hour in his apartment doing cocaine and showering and remembering each and every dish he’d sent out with human meat in it.
And, Christ, how they’d loved it! The delicious whispers: You’re better than Sophie, Rod. Just don’t tell her I said that! And the praise from tedious customers who he’d gladly chuck into the next day’s tartare actually made him smile inside. Something clicked inside him. Something turned. Now he knew that the way to save Oral Pleasures from the banks was to get human fat into every damned dish, hike up the prices and they’d still be begging for tables, seven nights a week. Tonight proved that.
So, on to the club.
One of a dozen moths in the fast-burning flame of hangouts for New York’s richest to spend their dirty fortunes on over-priced Champagne and crazy delicacies, Verboten was club du jour for Rod’s circle.
Verboten hugged the East River, where the Lenape built their fishing camps, at the edge of dense forests, trapping the plentiful bass, bluefish, stripers, snappers and flounders, gathering clams, mussels and oysters from the pristine waters. Now, the Upper East Side was home to the Gilded Generations, was so since the city became a city. And the ghost of Holden Caulfield still hung around there, smirking on street corners.
A line of people waited outside the grungy, neo-urban facade. Rod ignored their stares and was greeted by the doorman, to whom he gave twenty dollars. This is how we play.
The music was 80s electronica, Kraftwerk mainly, and he found himself surrounded by his friends within minutes, a chilled glass in his hand, a magnum of Dom doing the rounds.
‘Hungry, Rod?’ asked Joshua, whose family once owned the entire block.
‘I could eat. What’s on tonight?’
‘Ortolan!’
‘Perfect! I feel like hiding from God.’
Rod savoured the crisp taste of the Champagne as his eyes wandered over the women in the club. She’d have to be beautiful, obviously. Well-maintained so her flesh would be supple and lean. Most importantly, she’d have to be anonymous, not a member of the wealthy families that genuinely mattered, in the eyes of police or media or anyone else. She would be his little Ortolan, that he could devour in secret, like the little European bird that was trapped alive, then kept in a cage with its eyes poked out, force-fed grains and figs until it swelled up to four times its natural size and finally drowned in brandy and roasted whole, to be eaten in one rich mouthful of flesh and guts and crunching bones.
Where are you, my little bird?
The waitress came to them and asked for participants in the Forbidden Feast. Six was the number of birds available and two hundred dollars per diner the fee. The chef was risking his license to cook an illegal meal with the endangered birds, who lolled in cages in the private dining room’s kitchen, aware of the smell of Armagnac from the vat nearby, but unaware of its meaning.
Rod eyed the waitress discretely. Yes.
‘Yes please. I’ve never tried Ortolan. Sorry, what’s your name?’
‘Katy. Yours, sir?
‘Rod. When’s dinner?’
‘2am.’
‘We’re all in. My treat.’ And my tip will get you back to my apartment, my lovely, juicy dish.
They drank and danced with all the other lovely things. Then it was time to eat.
The chef didn’t make the diners experience the drowning, so they all sat and drank and waited, linen napkins ready. The birds were presented, their feathers scorched off from the intense heat of the fan oven, plump lumps, swimming in scalding brandy. When every diner had been served by Katy, she asked that they place their napkins over their heads, to mask their shame and also to savour the aroma. The bizarre scene, six grown adults hiding from God with squares of linen, was seen by none, man or deity.
‘You may begin.’
Rod bit hungrily into his bird, almost overpowered by the rich, smokiness of the roasted brandy, the cloying fat of the engorged bird, the bitterness of its part-digested figs and the crunchiness of its fine bones as they tore the insides of his cheeks and made his gums bleed. The salty blood taste was beautiful, as it cut through the Ortolan and the swirling intensity of the flavour and the excitement and the hard-on and the woman now, lying across his glass dining table, legs spread, sushi on her thighs as a late night snack game that he loved to play with his bitches and then the single, deep incision into her heart when she least expected it so that she died quickly and without spilling so much blood and then it was all over and Rod had his hundred and thirty pounds of sweet, young meat and, oh, it was good.
So he spent the rest of the night at work in the bathroom, extracting fat, cutting out the choicest pieces of lean meat for mincing, bagging up the Atlas bone, the heart, the vulva, the pieces that his muti witchdoctor friend from central Africa would sell for maybe a hundred grand, for use in assorted ceremonies to boost the sexual prowess of his rich clients. You will perform!
Morning came, with its deliveries and collections. Fresh orange juice, squeezed on an overnight juice truck from Florida. Creamy milk from Jersey cows in Westchester County. The New York Times.
And collections. His muti friend came, dressed in the friendly, professional uniform of the mailman, oversized bag on a wheeled trolley. Special.
He worked quickly and efficiently, placing the bones and unusable organs of the waitress into a double-walled polythene bag, which was then ziplocked and clamped to keep all the odours and fluids inside.
‘If the air don’t get out, Rod, no smell goin’ get out. Science, yeah?’
This went into a two foot by two foot box fairly handily. A shipping address label was in situ and the box was taped up and back into the delivery bag. Same procedure for the muti parts. Rod already had his precious meats in the fridge. Amazing how a human being can be condensed.
The mailman gave Rod a genuinely-addressed and franked special delivery envelope, just so everything added up. Rod opened the envelope and the mailman put thirty thousand dollars in cash inside. He kept the other twenty purchase value for the disposal fee. The mailman sensed the change in Rod.
‘I do this for you any time, Rod. Thirty k, no mess for you, hear? A kid, a good, clean kid about ten years old, maybe forty k, yeah?’
Rod didn’t like the idea of butchering children. But he was in a new place now. So who knew?
‘I hear you.’
‘You need antin’ else, mon? Some buds, some coke?’
‘Maybe later. I’ll call you.’
‘Peace, brudda.’
The mailman left, whistling down the plush corridor, full of thoughts of muti ceremonies in plush 5th Avenue penthouses, while the bass and the bluefish in the East River had fish dreams of the human remains that would soon be theirs.
People never notice anything.
Rod cleaned up. Jesus, blood is such a frikkin’ pain! He resolved to pick up a lease on a food unit somewhere if he was going to get into this on any kind of a scale. A little slaughterhouse would be ideal.
Then he showered and filled his rucksack and made his way to the restaurant so he could make some mince for the one hundred percent human meatballs that would feature on Saturday’s lunch menu. He just wasn’t expecting Sophie to be there before him.