Donor

by Elena Hearty

  She threw her pillow down on the floor. “Thanks, Paul. Wow. That really cheered me up. You have a gift.”

  He opened his mouth to speak.

  But Lenore interrupted him. “Don't pretend to care. I find it insulting.”

  Paul looked around the small room for a place to sit down, but could not seem to find one. He leaned against the entertainment center instead. “Fine. But you shouldn't pretend to care either. It doesn't become you.” Lenore raised her eyebrows. “I don’t think for one second you give a rat’s ass about that girl. And I know I’m right. Do you remember the first thing you did on the night that I met you—when you walked into Rich’s living room and saw the dead guy on the floor?”

  “No. What does this have to do with -”

  “You turned the fuck around, that’s what you did. Most people would have been concerned or offered to call 911, but not you. No, you made straight for the door, and you can blame it on the medicine, but the more I get to know you, the more I think that‘s just who you are.”

  “Seriously? Is this how you’re trying to comfort me?”

  “Who said I was trying to comfort you? I don’t think you need comfort. I think you need to realize how tough you are. You need to turn on some of that wonderful detachment from the other evening.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s pretty hard to feel detached when I know I‘m probably next. I felt horrible for that girl. I empathized, and that’s something you couldn't possibly understand.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Empathy again?” Paul threw his hands in the air. “Let me tell you a little something about empathy. Empathy is an inherently selfish emotion. You didn't feel sorry for Stacy when you heard her screaming. You felt sorry for yourself. I'm probably the only one here who actually felt sorry for her.”

  “Oh really? Is that why you killed her?”

  “No, but it's why I brought that stupid game to an end.”

  “You could have ended it a lot sooner.”

  “You're right, I could have.” He let out a deep breath. “Believe me, I regret the game. That's part of why I'm here. I wanted to apologize to you. If I'd known Rich was going to pull a stunt like that, I wouldn't have asked him to call you out of your room in the first place.”

  Lenore closed her eyes and nodded.

  “You were right, though. Rich wasn't thinking of a number.”

  “Yeah. No shit.”

  “You weren't ever in any real danger.”

  “It was still degrading.”

  He smiled, shaking his head. “Not the way you played it.” He shifted his weight back onto his feet. “Hey, you want to get out of here for a while? It's pretty early. Let me buy you a cup of coffee somewhere.”

  Lenore unconsciously reached for the catheter in her arm. “Why? You've already fed.”

  “Oh no. It's nothing like that I swear. No ulterior motives this time. I feel pretty bad about what happened this evening. Charles still isn't speaking to me and I could use someone to talk to.”

  “It isn't my job to make you feel better.”

  “I'm not asking for you to make me feel better. Just distract me for a while. Couldn't you use a distraction too? If you sit in this room you‘re just going to mope around.”

  She squeezed her eyes together and then glared at him. “What are you trying to pull here? You think you're going to walk in here with blood all over your face and pretend to be my friend?”

  Paul scratched at his cheek and smiled. “That was pretty much the idea, yeah.”

  “No thanks. I’m lonely, but I’m not lonely enough to think that you're my friend.” She pointed him toward the door. “Thanks again for getting me those pills. I'm sure I'll be paying you back later.”

  Paul frowned, walking toward the exit. "Hmm, that was unexpected. I thought we got along."

  “Well, maybe that’s part of the problem. I don't want to get along.”

  “No. That’s not the problem,” he said, stopping at the door and turning to her. “I’ll tell you what the problem is, though. You’re overthinking this. Did it ever occur to you that you were trapped before you even came here? That you’d thought yourself into a corner and were scared to leave? Look, we both know what's eventually going to happen to you. For all I know I'll be there. But you aren't going to die tonight. If you don’t feel like getting coffee, then at least walk up to the street and smoke this pack of cigarettes with me.” And, like a magician raising her chosen card from the deck, Paul produced a pack of Marlboro Lights.

  It had been a while.

  ✽✽✽

  Paul blew awesome smoke rings, like the caterpillar from Alice in Wonderland. They stood next to each other on the street in front of the apartment building, backs against the wall, like two kids skipping class.

  “Hey you’ve gotta be freezing,” he said, handing her his jacket.

  “Won’t you be cold?” she asked. “Do you even feel cold anymore?”

  She transferred her cigarette from one hand to the other as she slipped her arms through oversized sleeves. There was something strange about the way his jacket felt against her torso; the fabric contained not a trace of body heat; it felt cold as if it had come off a hanger instead of a man.

  “Not really, actually. I think I operate at a much lower body temperature than you do.”

  “So, what makes you the way you are? Do you know? Is there a medical explanation?”

  “No clue.”

  Paul watched Lenore try to blow a smoke ring. The experiment failed miserably, resulting in an amorphous white cloud. He disapprovingly shooed it away with his hand. "No, you're doing that all wrong, kiddo. You need to get your tongue into it." He demonstrated.

  “So what’s Rich up to tonight?” Lenore asked. “He’s never around.”

  Another failure wafted toward Paul.

  “He’s in the building. We’re renovating all of the apartments on the second floor. He’s tiling a bathroom tonight. You know that he and I run this place, right?”

  "Yeah, Charles told me."

  “We own the next building over too.” He pointed to one of the faceless apartment complexes along the street. “I should probably be helping Rich out up there, but I'm irritated with him right now.”

  “Over dinner theater?”

  Paul nodded. “Yeah. He knows how I feel about dinner theater. He knows I don't do that type of thing anymore.”

  “But you used to.” Lenore did not phrase this as a question.

  “Yeah. I wasn't always such a nice guy.”

  She smiled at him. “You don't say. Did you know that girl?”

  “Who? Stacy?”

  “Who else would I be talking about? Had you met her before tonight?”

  Paul narrowed his eyes. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to get a feel for how much you play with people. Did she think you were her friend?”

  Paul opened his mouth to speak, and then closed it again. “That is a loaded question. I think you're trying to make me feel guilty, and I don't like it.”

  “Just tell me if you knew her,” Lenore said, tapping the ashes off her smoke.

  He jerked his head in annoyance. “I’d met her a couple of times, yeah. But I wasn’t friends with her or anything. Jesus. If you want to know if I tricked her, the answer's 'no'. I don't trick people. I play fair, remember? She was Charles's friend. Either way, it's over and I'm not sorry about it. I enjoyed it." Paul took a step toward Lenore, starting to smile. "Especially when she started to struggle. Her heart was racing.” He placed his hand over her chest. “I’d enjoy killing you too. That‘s just what I am.”

  Lenore recoiled, dropping her cigarette on the pavement.

  “Is that the answer that you wanted?” he smirked. “Because I can keep going.”

  “Are you trying to scare me? Because -”

  “I know I’m scaring you, Lenore. I can hear your heart. Not to mention you're doing that jaw thing again. What’s funny about you is that you’re so used to be scared, you’ve actually got
a pretty decent poker face. But I know better. I don’t want to scare you, though. I honestly don’t.”

  “Yeah, I think you did just now,” said Lenore, who realized she was still retreating only when the heel of her foot touched the wall.

  Turning his back to the wind, Paul lit a cigarette to replace the one that she dropped. “It’s not like that, you know,” he said, handing it to her. “I’m just being honest with you. But it was a loaded question. Did you want to know the answer or not?”

  Biting her lower lip, she nodded. “It really bothered me that you fed off her.”

  “I know it did. But she was already dead.”

  Lenore wondered if she fell into that category.

  “Does Charles do that a lot?” she asked. “Bring people over, I mean. I thought you said Rich mainly goes after people who wander into the basement.”

  “It depends. Charles has to find someone who meets the right criteria, and that doesn’t come by too often.”

  “Do you usually…participate?” Lenore looked at her companion apprehensively, hoping that he would not interpret this as another loaded question.

  Thankfully, Paul did not seem offended. “You know, I was thinking about it, and if Charles brings someone by I usually do. I hadn’t given it much thought until tonight. But I think the reason is that if I’m tagging along—and I have to tag along, because Charles doesn’t ever come by without me, in case you haven’t noticed -”

  “I’ve noticed.”

  “Anyway, if I’m staring at the person for all that time, just knowing they’re going to be dinner, knowing they‘re already dead, I get hungry and want a piece. I know how shitty that must sound to you.”

  “What are you guys doing with the bodies?”

  “Why would you want to know that? It’s just going to upset you.” Lenore would spend many nights crying alone in her bedroom, staring up at the carcass infested lighting fixture on her ceiling, thinking that Paul was right.

  “I can handle it.”

  "Have it your way. So get this… This is ingenious: Rich has a walkway that leads straight from the laundry room to the furnace for the entire building. As Rich would say, ‘no mess'."

  That's not so bad, Lenore thought, but could not have anticipated the ways in which this fact would seep under her skin and eat at her from the inside. Later, much later that evening, she would look down at her body and think with no small amount of self-pity that it would soon be reduced to a pile of ashes. Awful questions would gnaw at her the next morning as she stood in the shower. Why bother taking care of her body at all? Every hair on her head, every tooth in her mouth, every memory that remained of her mother, all destined for the furnace.

  Paul turned the pack of cigarettes over in his hands, eying the Surgeon General‘s warning under the streetlamp. “Did you ever worry about cancer? With smoking, that is? I’m surprised anyone smokes anymore, to tell you the truth.”

  "When I started, I was fifteen -"

  “And you still can‘t blow a smoke ring?”

  “- and you just don’t worry about cancer when you’re fifteen. I always meant to quit, though, but after watching my mother die as young as she was, I didn’t see the point. I mean, she never smoked, ate healthy, and something still got her. Something’s gonna get everyone.”

  “I think that is an enlightened point of view.” Paul ran his nails along the wall. “Dammit. I can't believe I made Charles pick a number tonight. He won't even look at me. He won't even let me apologize.”

  “You really care about him, don't you? You aren't playing with him. Not the way you're playing with me.”

  Paul nodded. “He's like a little brother to me. I shouldn't have put him on the sofa with you and Stacy. It was wrong of me to look at him that way.”

  There was an unspoken corollary to this statement that Lenore found unnerving: she belonged on the sofa with Stacy.

  “He deserved it,” she said finally.

  “Oh? Well, he certainly doesn't think so. He's going to blame you for this, you know.”

  “So what? He's had it out for me since I came here.”

  “No. It's different now. You've made him your enemy. For instance, you're out of food, right?”

  “Oh yeah. I'm supposed to make a list.”

  "Well, you can forget about giving that list to Charles. Do you think he's going to get your food now? Think again. And do you think Rich is going to do it? Why would he bother? Why wouldn't he just replace you with someone else, and get Charles to go to the store instead?"

  Lenore was silent. None of these consequences had occurred to her, and she wondered if Paul could discern her apprehension. Would Richard kill her immediately, or let her starve for weeks on end before finally finishing her off? It was time to ask for help. “Will you go to the store for me?”

  “Of course I'll go to the store for you. You've got a raw deal as it is.”

  Lenore let out a sigh of relief.

  “But that isn't the point,” Paul continued. “You don't want me to be the only person who's keeping you alive because—no offense—I'm not getting anything out of this relationship. Pissing Charles off wasn't a wise move. You should have thought twice before dragging him into that game.”

  The memory of Charles crying on the sofa brought a smile to Lenore's face. “I would have pulled you in too if I'd thought I could get away with it.”

  Paul blew another smoke ring and grabbed at the center like a child chasing a bubble. “I would have played, you know. I think I enjoy playing with you.”

  Chapter 6

  Low

  Paul raised his glass. “I propose a toast,” he said.

  Lenore looked up from her scrambled eggs and smiled. “You're going to toast me with my own blood?”

  Paul shrugged. “I'm open to alternatives. Want me to bleed that waitress over there? You distract her and I'll slit her wrists with this butter knife.” He wielded the blunt object menacingly.

  “That's okay,” Lenore grinned, readying her cup of coffee. “What's the occasion?”

  “Haven't you guessed? Rich isn't supplementing tonight. Didn't you wonder why I was getting you out of the apartment anyway?”

  “I just figured you were hungry.”

  Paul frowned. “No. Jesus Christ. You know, I actually do like hanging out with you. Do you really think I'd do this every week if I didn't like you? You aren't that tasty. I didn't even feed on you last time…or the time before, now that I think about it.”

  Somehow, Lenore did not remember it that way, but what was the point in arguing? “Okay, okay. So what's the fuss about?”

  “It's your birthday, stupid. May 16th, right? Happy birthday, Lenore.”

  Lenore raised her cup but did not feel like celebrating. This meant that she had been at Richard's for over three months, and freedom was starting to feel like a distant memory.

  ✽✽✽

  Once again, Lenore siphoned her essence into a glass on the counter. And once again, she stood back, waiting for Richard to signal the next round. He surprised her by taking the glass over to the sink and rinsing it out instead.

  “I guess you're letting me off easy today?” she asked, puzzled. “You usually have three.”

  “Not this time,” Richard said abruptly. “You're low.”

  It had been a few weeks since Richard's last supplement, but Lenore felt fine.

  “How long can we go on like this?” she asked, alarmed. She thought back to her birthday dinner with Paul, where he requested that she fill his cup three times.

  “Not long. You're in trouble if I can't find a supplement. I hate to do it, but I'm going to have to ask Charles for help. Fuck. This is going to be so awkward.” He said the last part to himself.

  “Maybe someone will come down to the basement,” she offered helpfully, but who was she trying to reassure? Richard would be fine, regardless. Fine enough to drag her to the laundry room and burn her remains in the furnace.

  “That's tricky this time of year. I
t isn't as cold as it was when you came here. People aren’t coming down the way they were.”

  Sometimes, Richard would lure cold stragglers into this clutches by placing a space heater near the basement steps. Lenore wondered if he might be willing to explore more aggressive options; like a house made out of gingerbread.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said, drying the glass and placing it back in the cabinet. “I’ll talk to Paul and he’ll set it up with Charles. I’m sure he’ll work it out. I’ll email him about it right now. Relax. Stop grinding your teeth.”

  ✽✽✽

  Paul stopped by a few hours later, interrupting Lenore's thrice-daily coffee routine in the parlor.

  She looked up as he entered, shaking three sugar packets into her cup. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said.

  “Yeah I’m pretty sneaky like that,” he replied, pulling up a stool. “How are you feeling?”

  “Just fine. Why do you ask? Is this because Rich said I‘m low?”

  “Jesus. Can’t I ask how you’re doing without you getting all weird about it?”

  “You didn’t ask how I was doing. You asked how I was feeling.”

  “Hah. Good point.” Paul swiveled in his seat. “I haven‘t even talked to Rich yet, as a matter of fact. I came to see you first. He wouldn’t need to tell me you’re low, though. I can just tell. Like how vultures know when something’s dying, pardon the comparison. You’ve lost a lot of blood. You’re in trouble.”

  But she felt fine, maybe a little tired. “Rich needs a supplement.”

  Paul laughed. “Get ready. I’m about to blow your mind. YOU need a supplement. These people are no longer dying for Rich; they’re dying for you. You’re practically one of us now.” He shot her a smug grin.

  “Are you going to help me or not?” she asked, ignoring him.

  “I don’t know,” he said, looking down at the counter, tracing granite patterns with his fingers. “I’ve just about run out of favors with Charles. He told me flat out that he won’t get you any more medicine; the last two bottles came directly from me. Making matters worse, he’s been pushing to replace you with his new girlfriend. He isn’t going to bring someone in here if he thinks it’ll buy you more time, not when he wants you out the door.”