Cleaving (14 page)

Have you ever had a food-related orgasm? It's much like the traditional variety--uncontrollable, accompanied by unseemly moans,
somewhat embarrassing to experience in public places. Upon letting the pig-heart bonbons melt on our tongues, Jessica and
I achieve simultaneous ones.

"Holy Christ..."

"Oh my
fuck!
"

Jessica throws her head back. I growl and beat my open palms on the tabletop. Our eyes meet and it's magic.

Five seconds later, still a little flushed, we have our heads together and are mapping out strategy. Because once you've had
your first pig-heart bonbon, you can spend the rest of your life trying to get more.

"So it can't just be heart in there. The texture is too smooth. I'd think some liver in there, and cream..."

"Right. But still very meaty and dark. And then the wafers or cookies or whatever were so thin and crisp, almost like just
a crisp chocolate candy coating."

"But only just the tiniest bit of sweetness..."

The ride home is quiet, both of us trying to stave off the soporific effects of fifteen courses of macho-host food. I lean
my head against the cool glass of the window, stare absently out. "You know, I wonder if he would even have liked that meal.
Wonder if he would have noticed it."

"Who? Eric? Or, no... whatsisname, the other guy?"

"Yeah. He never seemed to really care about food. Actually, he never seemed to really care about anything I cared about. It
was always this fucking polite interest."

"Well, that doesn't sound fun."

"But it was always such a thrill when he really appreciated something. I remember I showed him this film short I like one
time, and he loved it."

"That's big of him," Jess sneers. I shrug. "Would Eric have liked it? Would he like pig-heart bonbons?"

"Are you kidding? He'd have gone bananas. He'd have made himself sick on all that food."

"Well. You share things with the people who want you to share them. Who get it. Otherwise, where's the fun?"

"I guess."

By the time Jessica drops me off at my apartment in Rifton it is nearly midnight. "Thanks for the dinner and the ride and
everything."

"Thanks for being my wingman. I'll see you tomorrow. You want a ride, since you left your car at the shop?"

"That'd be great, if it's okay."

"Great, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Great." I slide out of the van, start to slam the door shut, then pause. "Oh, and... this is weird, maybe, but could you not
mention all the stuff we talked about tonight? I kind of don't want it being known around the shop."

"I won't if you won't." Jessica waves, then pulls a U-turn and heads back the way we've just come. I fumble for my keys in
my pocket.

Not there. I open up my purse, fumble there. Nothing. Wait a minute, wait a minute... How can this
be?
I go through everything again. Still nothing. I don't get it, I just don't--

Blinding insight. My key ring. I gave it to Josh so he could move my car out of the day-only parking lot. My key ring, you
know, the one with my keys on it.

It is remarkable how many times this has happened to me. In the two-plus years since things started with D, I have locked
myself out probably half a dozen times. One of the times, I tried to climb through the second-story window of our Queens apartment
by standing on two stacked milk crates. The resulting bruise to my hip when I smashed to the pavement was so enormous and
dark that not even Eric, with his fevered, angry imagination, could think to attribute it to rough lovemaking with another
man. I'm pretty sure there is a fairly complex system of guilt and self-punishment at the bottom of all this.

I have a downstairs neighbor, but repeated knockings and doorbell ringings do nothing but awake a yappy dog. Giving up that
tack, I walk around the house, looking for some mode of entry. I find a rickety ladder that gives onto the eaves, and having
picked my way up it, I see I can get to my kitchen window from there.

Too bad it's locked tight. I tug and tug and tug, but it's useless. I think about breaking it, even, but I can't get out of
my head the horrid vision of somehow slashing my wrists to the bone on the shards, and I can't go through with it. Meanwhile,
my fear that I'll awaken my neighbors and that they'll shoot me before I can explain what's happening has faded, and I've
stopped tiptoeing. I even stomp a little. But not a single light blazes on, not a voice speaks. The dog doesn't even bark
anymore.

I sit down on the roof. It's getting cold. Quite cold. I pull my BlackBerry out of my coat pocket, and I am surprised to see
that I have a stairstep or two of service, though the battery is nearly dead. It's twelve thirty. I scroll through my address
book, punch Call when I get to
ballnchain
. Get voicemail. "So guess where I am? I dare you to guess. I'm on the roof of my apartment. Locked out. And--oh, hey, look--it's
beginning to snow. I'm not sure what I can ask you to do about any of this, but if you get this give me a call?"

I pull up another number from my address book, a West Coast area code. It rings only once before going to voicemail. I know
D's awake; he never goes to sleep before two or three in the morning. His voice is no longer even on the message; it's just
an automated voice telling me the person I'm calling is unavailable. I murmur a few words into the phone, sounding tearier,
and probably drunker, than I actually am, about being locked out, on a roof, cold and tired and so lonesome for him. I know
he will not call back, of course, though every time I find myself in one of these sorts of situations, I think,
Is
this
the circumstance that will move him?

Eric calls back when I'm halfway down the teetering ladder. I sigh. His timing is always so inconvenient.

"Hey, babe, why don't you just go to a hotel?"

"I don't have a car. Left it at the shop. Now you're cutting out. My phone's about to die. Fuck."

"Okay, look. I'm going to call you a cab. What's your address again?"

"How are you going to call a cab?" I'm now standing in the street in front of my house, in a glittering circle of snow lit
up by the streetlight, scuffing petulantly at the thin but increasing accumulation. Not a car passes, and there's not a soul
out.

"They have this amazing thing called the Internet? I'll find a company, call you back. If you don't hear from me--"

"I won't. Phone's dying, I said."

"Okay. Well, I'm ordering you a cab. Call me when you get to a motel. I love you."

I hang up without saying good-bye, as if this entire debacle is his fault.

The cab is over an hour late; he's had to come all the way from Kingston. "Hey there," he asks as I climb in, "get stuck?"

"Locked out."

"Jeez. So where you headed?"

"Isn't there a hotel over toward New Paltz? By the thruway?"

"Motel 87, yeah. We can do that."

"Great," I say, lying back against the seat in utter exhaustion. "That would be perfect."

So this place is just about what you'd expect from a thruway-side motel, murky yellow light in the bathroom and graying carpets.
But there's a bed, and heat. By the time I unlock the door to my room and fall onto the bed, it's after two. I pick up the
phone receiver, call my husband. When he answers, I can tell he's been sleeping.

"It's me. I'm all tucked away."

"Good, baby."

"Thank you. I'll call you in the morning."

"Okay..." He's got that breathy, drifting tone he gets when he's not really awake at all. "Sleep tight, babe."

"You too."

I manage to get my clothes off, but not my contacts. I sleep with them in, naked under the sleazy coverlet. When I wake up
the next morning, I shower, finally washing off my carnivorous smell with motel soap and no shampoo. Then I call Jessica.

"So a funny thing happened last night after you dropped me off..." I go through the whole story in as little detail as possible.

"You idiot. Why didn't you call me? You could have slept at our house."

"I didn't want you to have to turn back so late at night." In truth, it had not occurred to me to call her. Why hadn't it
occurred to me to call her? Why did it only ever occur to me to call those same two faraway men, rather than the nearby woman
who could most plausibly have helped?

"Well, that's incredibly dumb. You're at Motel 87, right? Off Exit 18?"

"That's the one. I'm so sorry."

"It's totally fine. I'll be there at around nine."

"Thanks, Jessica."

"Not a problem. I'll see you in a bit."

I'm back in the store by ten that morning, breaking down lambs. My hair still isn't clean. I'm wearing all the same clothes
I had on yesterday, tired to the bone. The cutting is all that's keeping me standing.

A
ARON IS BREAKING
a pork loin down into chops for the case, and I'm at the table peeling off spareribs when he calls over to me, "Hey, Jules,
you want to practice on the band saw?"

The band saw is a machine about seven feet tall, with a thin, serrated metal blade stretched taut, vertically, the serrations
facing forward, at the juncture of a stable metal surface and a sliding plate, all of it at about counter height. "Um..." I'm
still a little nervous around the thing; power tools and I are not necessarily friends. But I can't let myself wimp out around
Aaron, so I say, "Sure."

Not for the first time, he walks me through some basics. Unplugs the machine, then opens up compartments at top and bottom,
points out how the blade is actually a large band of flexible metal, threaded around two wheels. When the blade is removed
to be washed every day, it can be spread out into a circle so large I could stand inside it with arms and legs spread wide
like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Aaron shows me how the blade locks in and out, how to tighten knobs and click levers
to make sure everything is safely in place.

(Aaron is nothing if not a completist. His demonstrations on breaking down a cut of meat, making the perfect roast beef, or
using the sharpening stone are dizzyingly detailed. He has been known to correct my stance for stirring soup in front of the
stove.)

Once he's checked everything, and made absolutely sure I've committed to memory each detail of the machine's workings and
the entire process for breaking the saw down and putting it back together (which of course I haven't), he walks me to the
side, plugs the machine back in, and points to a big red button at the upper left corner of the apparatus.

"So when you pull this red button here, the blade starts going around. You stand like this, at the side here.
Never
stand in front of the blade--something happens, you catch on a bone or it goes faster than you're expecting, you fall in,
it's all over. So you stand to the side, right?"

"Right."

"Now, get yourself up against the sliding edge here. Really push your hips against it. Anchor yourself." He has the short
end of a rack of pork loin chops wedged against the metal lip of the sliding plate. "Make sure whatever you're cutting is
resting in the most stable way possible, with the flattest part of the meat down." He demonstrates, rolling the rack back
and forth, up onto the tip of the rib bone. "If you cut it this way, balanced on end like this? It's gonna catch on the blade,
roll over, your hand is going to go flying, and something is going to wind up getting cut off. So--flat, like this."

With the machine still off, he shows me how he can use the pressure of his hips to move the plate from front to back, holding
firmly onto the meat at a respectful distance from the blade, lining up with it to slice right between the ribs and through
the backbone. "Leaning away all the time, smooth movements, not too fast or too slow. And when you want to stop, just push
the red button down again. Got it?"

"Got it." Not entirely sure that I do.

"Okay, give it a try."

"Um. Okay. A little scared." But as he moves aside, I take his place at the edge of the machine, press the tips of my pelvis
bone to the lip of the plate, take hold of the rack and press it down flat.

"Don't be scared. Respect.
Respect
the band saw."

"Done." I take a breath, pull the button out. The saw starts up with a whine, and I start cutting. In a matter of moments
I've cut off half a dozen chops. The smell of singed bone is sharp in the air. My fingers are getting awfully close to the
blade. I don't have the guts to cut the last few. I push the button and let the saw whir to a stop. Aaron cuts the remainder,
demonstrating a far more casual attitude toward the machine than he has tried to inculcate in me. But I guess when you're
teacher you can take shortcuts.

Aaron really fancies the idea of having an apprentice. And I, unreformed honor student that I am, fancy being one. One thing
I think both of us enjoy best, though it goes unacknowledged, are his poker-faced attempts to gross me out, and my resistance
to each attempt, iron-stomached and staunch. The pigs' heads that come in a cardboard box with the rest of the usable offal
every time we receive a few sides of pork provide him with various opportunities to break my resolve. The first time we get
some, he pulls them out of the boxes and lines them up on the table.