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Nothing. The room is dead silent except for the shuffle of his feet and the tink-tink of the wedding ring he wears against one of the bars. Not his ring; he and Freddy aren’t married. At least not yet, and maybe never, the way things are going. Jorge slipped the ring off his father’s finger in the hospital, minutes after Papi died. He has worn it ever since.
How long has he been here? He looks at his watch, but that’s no good; it’s a wind-up, another remembrance he took when his father died, and it has stopped at one-fifteen. AM or PM, he doesn’t know. And he can’t remember the last time he wound it.
The Harrises. Emily and Ronald. Or is it Robert? He knows who they are, and that’s kind of ominous, isn’t it?
It might be ominous, he tells himself.
Since there’s no sense shouting or screaming in a soundproof room—and it would bring his headache back, raving—he sits down on the futon and waits for something to happen. For someone to come and explain what the fuck.
5
The stuff they shot him up with must still be floating around in his head because Jorge falls into a doze, head down and spittle slipping from one corner of his mouth. Sometime later—still one-fifteen according to his Papi’s watch—a door opens up above and someone starts down the stairs. Jorge raises his head (another bolt of pain, but not so bad) and sees black lowtop sneakers, ankle socks, trim brown pants, then a flowered apron. It’s Emily Harris. With a tray.
Jorge stands up. “What is going on here?”
She doesn’t answer, only sets the tray down about two feet from the cage. On it is a bulgy brown envelope stuck into the top of a big plastic go-cup, the kind you fill with coffee for a long drive. Next to it is a plate with something nasty on it: a slab of dark red meat floating in even darker red liquid. Just looking at it makes Jorge feel like vomiting again.
“If you think I’m going to eat that, Emily, think again.”
She makes no reply, only takes the broom and pushes the tray along the concrete. There’s a hinged flap in the bottom of the cage (they’ve been planning this, Jorge thinks). The go-cup falls over when it hits the top of the flap, which is only four inches or so high, then the tray goes through. The flap claps shut when she pulls the broom back. The meat swimming in the puddle of blood looks to be uncooked liver. Emily Harris straightens up, puts the broom back, turns… and gives him a smile. As if they are at a fucking cocktail party, or something.
“I’m not going to eat that,” Jorge repeats.
“You will,” she says.
With that she goes back up the stairs. He hears a door close, followed by a snapping sound that’s probably a bolt being run.
Looking at the raw liver makes Jorge feel like yurking some more, but he takes the envelope out of the go-cup. It’s something called Ka’Chava. According to the label, the powder inside makes “a nutrient-dense drink that fuels your adventures.”
Jorge feels he’s had enough adventures in the last however-long to last a lifetime. He puts the packet back in the go-cup and sits on the futon. He pushes the tray to one side without looking at it. He closes his eyes.
6
He dozes, wakes, dozes again, then wakes for real. The headache is almost gone and his stomach has settled. He winds Papi’s watch and sets it for noon. Or maybe for midnight. Doesn’t matter; at least he can keep track of how long he’s here. Eventually, someone—maybe the male half of this crazy professor combo—will tell him why he’s here and what he has to do to get out. Jorge guesses it won’t make a whole lot of sense, because these two are obviously loco. Lots of professors are loco, he’s been in enough schools on the writer-in-residence circuit to know that—but the Harrises take it to a whole other level.
Eventually he plucks the packet of Ka’Chava from the go-cup, which is obviously meant for mixing the stuff up with the remaining bottle of Dasani. The cup is from Dillon’s, a truck stop in Redlund where Jorge and Freddy sometimes have breakfast. He would like to be there now. He’d like to be in Ayers Chapel, listening to one of Reverend Gallatin’s boring-ass sermons. He’d like to be in a doctor’s office, waiting for a proctological exam. He would like to be anywhere but here.
He has no reason to trust anything the crazy Harrises give him, but now that the nausea’s worn off, he’s hungry. He always eats light before running, saving a heavier caloric intake for when he comes back. The envelope is sealed, which means it’s probably okay, but he looks it over carefully for pinpricks (hypo pricks) before tearing it open and pouring it into the go-cup. He adds water, closes the lid, and shakes well, as the instructions say. He tastes, then chugs. He doubts very much if it has been inspired by “ancient wisdom,” as the label says, but it’s fairly tasty. Chocolate. Like a frappé, if frappés were plant-based.
When it’s gone, he looks at the raw liver again. He tries pushing the tray back out through the flap, but at first he can’t, because the flap only swings in. He works his fingernails under the bottom and pulls it up. He shoves the tray out.
“Hey!” he shouts at the glass eye peering down at him. “Hey, what do you want? Let’s talk! Let’s work this out!”
Nothing.
7
Six hours pass.
This time it’s the male Harris who descends the stairs. He’s in pajamas and slippers. His shoulders are broad but he’s skinny the rest of the way down, and the pajamas—decorated with firetrucks, like a child’s—flap on him. Just looking at this old dude gives Jorge Castro a sense of unreality—can this really be happening?
“What do you want?”
Harris makes no reply, only looks at the rejected tray on the concrete floor. He looks at the flap, then back to the tray. A couple more times for good measure: tray, flap, flap, tray. Then he goes to the broom and pushes it back in.
Jorge has had enough. He holds the flap and shoves the tray back out. The blood-puddle splashes one cuff of Harris’s PJ bottoms. Harris lowers the broom to push it back, then decides that would be a zero-sum game. He leans the broom against the side of the stairs again and prepares to mount them. There’s not much to him below those broad shoulders, but the deceitful motherfucker looks agile enough.
“Come back,” Jorge says. “Let’s talk about this man to man.”
