Posted by PK on February 01, 2002 at 19:04:55:
"Call me Dave."
It was then, just before she left, that he handed her the meat.
Afterwards, he saw her to the outer door with old fashioned courtesy, spoiled only by the
bluntness of his parting remark. "Oh, one more thing. That suit. You don't need to wear the
usual office uniform. Got it in an Oxfam shop, did you?"
Alicia had to smile. He was close enough.
"Not bad, mind you, it nearly fits. And I really admire the way you walk in those shoes. The
fact that you can at all, I mean. Bet you'll be taking those off the minute you're home, right?"
"Right."
"Just wear what you're used to. Jeans and sweater if you like, so long as they're clean and
tidy. All clear?"
"All clear."
"Good. See you Monday, Miss Featherstone-Sitwell."
"Alicia," she said.
"Thank God for that."
She had been aware of the contents of the package all the way home on the bus. Now,
having changed out of the dreadful shoes and suit into her usual clothes, she unwrapped it.
'Top of the thigh' he had said. It looked like meat. A nice piece of steak, slightly bloody, about
half an inch thick, with a slight edge of yellow-white fat. Not refrigerated. The woman it had
been part of had been walking around on this today, she may have been killed during the
interview. A mental image of the one she had seen being processed crossed her mind. Was
this her?
Well, here's to you, 'Thea', she thought. She opened a half size tin of baked beans, tipped
them into a pan and stuck a double handful of frozen chips in the microwave. Sorry, Thea, it
should be something fancier but I'm out of mushrooms and wild garlic. She heated some
olive oil in a frying pan as the small saucepan of beans warmed up. She seared the steak on
both sides and decided to give it five more minutes on a lower flame. Any more and the
chips would be overdone. Medium rare would be fine.
With a pinch of salt for the chips and some rather suspect horseradish on the side (how long
HAD she had that jar?) her feast was done. She carried it into the main room and switched
on the TV, eating as she watched the news. The steak was excellent. It didn't taste at all like
pork and it certainly wasn't chicken. Afterwards she felt comfortably well fed and not the least
bit sick. I'm now officially a cannibal, she thought and yawned. She'd had little sleep the
previous night and the interview had left her drained. With the meal inside her and the
pressure off she was getting sleepy. How did she feel? Satisfied and drowsy like a gorged
predator - she smiled at the thought - and slightly aroused. She thought about masturbating
but couldn't be bothered to take her jeans back off...
An hour and a half later, she woke up on the couch. She glanced at the clock. It was Friday
night and she was meeting Jeremy later. She had plenty of time to get ready as long as she
didn't dawdle.
As she showered and changed, half her mind was on the events of the day. In retrospect it
almost seemed unreal. She had toured the Eastern Foods processing plant - human
processing for meat - seen women being slaughtered, eaten human flesh, and now she was
off to meet her boyfriend as if nothing had happened. Oh, yes, and she had got a job. She
wasn't sure how Jeremy would react when he found out. Would he be turned on by it?
Sickened? Morally outraged? It wasn't something they'd ever discussed. He knew she was
looking for work, but he didn't know about this.
She selected a sleeveless blue dress, low heeled sandals, a light leather jacket. Finally, she
remembered to brush her damp hair. She regarded the mirror. Not bad, hair still bushy and
uncontrollable as ever. Braid it? Too much bother. Tie it back? Nah. Maybe she should get it
cut short.
Watch, handbag...underwear or not? She glanced down. Not. It was warm, the dress was just
long enough and it would get him going in a pinch. She'd tell him if things got awkward, that
should distract him. Out of the door, it wasn't far, she'd walk.
The problem with Jeremy, she reflected, was that he was such a ...a Jeremy. He didn't
actually wear the old school tie in his free time but it hovered there in the background like a
ghost. Still, he was gorgeous. Tall, handsome, great bum, reasonably bright and enthusiastic,
if a little primitive, in bed. She was cautiously optimistic as she entered the restaurant bar.
There he was, long, blonde and mouth watering as ever. She went through the fond
greetings, waited for the first drinks to come, made a little small talk before the subject of the
job came up. He listened with a kind of paralysis creeping over his face. He looked flushed.
This was not a good sign.
"You're doing what?" The voice was quiet but strained, like a steam boiler making an
ominous hissing sound where it shouldn't.
"Accounts, mostly."
"But you can't. I mean.."
"Yes I can. City and Guilds certificate, top in my class."
"If my father finds out about this...."
She should have foreseen this but she hadn't. Jeremy's father was Something in the City.
High society, financial mandarin. Jeremy wanted to be one too.
"Your father? I'm not going to marry him."
Jeremy looked nonplussed. He was unaware that Alicia was going to marry him, either. In
time, perhaps...
"Figure of speech."
"Oh. Look, Alicia, I know you want your own job, fine. But this? Tell me you're kidding."
Alicia stared at him. "I see. It wouldn't look right for your girlfriend to be involved in
something like this." Her voice was deceptively meek.
"Exactly. You can't take it. I'm sorry..."
"I can't? Really? I wonder how many of your daddy's high society friends go to 'special'
restaurants on the quiet."
"Alicia, that's not the point."
"Oh yes it is. It's exactly the point. I wouldn't have minded if you'd really had an issue with it,
you know. A moral one, I mean. I'd have argued, but I'd have respected you, even if you'd
been disgusted with me. I might even have changed my mind."
"Oh come on, Alicia, surely you can see..."
"Yes I can." She smiled sweetly. "Fuck you, Jeremy. Call me when you grow up. I might still
be there but don't hold your breath."
She left with the final fading call of 'Alicia!' behind her. Oh bugger it, she thought. So much
for getting laid tonight. Then she brightened. The night was young and she was single again.
Three hours later she staggered home from the bar empty handed, opened a bottle of cheap
wine and turned on theTV to see if there was anything decent - well, indecent - on the regular
Channel Friday night porno slot. Yep, so much for getting laid. She'd had three offers, easily
refused the first two times. When she seriously considered accepting the third she realised
she'd had far too much to drink, summoned up a heroic effort of common sense and went
home.
The rest of the weekend passed normally enough. Slight hangover Saturday morning, mostly
gone by lunchtime. Alicia had the constitution of an ox, as the saying goes, though it's
doubtful if any ox would recover quite as fast from the relative toxicity regularly absorbed by
a human on a night out. Afternoon saw her stocking up on groceries. After that she vegged
out in front of the TV after a brief yoga session and she was back to full strength by Sunday,
which passed uneventfully. Jeremy did not call and tearfully apologise. She did not call him.
On Monday she went to work, kitted out as Dave had suggested in jeans and a sweatshirt.
She arrived as a delivery was being made. A line of slightly dazed looking women were being
helped out of a van and guided through a door in the rambling complex of ugly industrial
buildings that comprised the plant. She wondered what it had been before. Another business
gone broke and sold off cheap, she assumed, it certainly wasn't new.
Five minutes later she was lost. She must have gone in the wrong door. She was up one
storey, or was it two? The rooms weren't all the same height, the place was worse than an
Escher drawing. She went back down and ended up not far from where she'd come in. It was
no good, she'd have to ask somebody. She finally found somebody in a dismal looking room
where the women from the van were lining up to have their hair cut off by a hatchet faced
matron who worked with more speed than delicacy. They looked less dazed and more dully
resigned. one looked frightened and one was crying, but there were no hysterics. As one girl
was finished, she was directed through a door by a younger woman in a language Alicia
didn't understand a word of. She was of Asian stock by her looks but obviously British, by her
manner. She looked the more approachable of the two so Alicia approached her.
"Can I help you, love?" she said in broader Yorkshire than Alicia's own. Leeds or Bradford, at
a guess. "Lost, are you?"
"Yes I am," said Alicia.
"Not surprised. Bloody labyrinth, this place." She turned and rattled off another
incomprehensible burst of language. "Look at the poor sods. Half of them have never seen a
shower before. I have to go in and show them."
"You're the translator, then?"
"Right. Folks made me learn it. Always wittering on about the old country" She pronounced it
'allus'. "Bloody good job they left, I reckon or that might have been me. When I've had
enough of it I tell 'em I don't see them in any hurry to get back there but they just get mad."
She stuck out a hand. "I'm Roxy."
She shook it. "Alicia. I'm the new accountant."
The matron finished shearing another lamb and glared at the two of them. Roxy made an
obscene gesture, turned to the girl and said something. They both smiled. The girl was thin
and graceful, her nudity didn't seem to bother her. She went through the door.
"Don't mind the old bat," said Roxy. "You'll want the offices. You're in the wrong building. Out
there, turn right. Right again at the corridor, all the way to the fire door. Push it, it sticks. Up
the first flight on your left to the top. You'll see it, the offices are all up there."
"Thank you," said Alicia and left.
She found the offices without further difficulty, where Mr. Harding made light of her being a
few minutes late. "Got lost, did you? Not surprised. Bloody labyrinth, this place." It must be
the standard description, she thought. He showed her to her office and left her to get on with
it. Yes, she had her own office! Of course, with a small staff in a building this size office
space was hardly at a premium, but she liked the idea of it. It was small and sparsely
furnished but it was hers, complete with her own desk and, of course, a computer. For the
rest of the day she worked her way through the accounts. This entailed knowing a bit about
every aspect of the business. She had to know what came in and what went out in order to
understand what the figures meant. Effectively, it put her finger on the pulse of the whole
concern.
There were some surprises, of course, due to her ignorance. A degree in Anthropology was
not the best possible preparation for a job in meat production. She was surprised to learn that
whole roasters, which were sold by weight and not at a standard charge, cost so much less
per pound than cuts of meat, even the cheaper ones. She had vaguely thought of them as
luxury items. After a moment's thought, of course, it made sense. Not all of the carcasse was
edible. Add to that a discount for bulk and the lesser degree of processing involved - cutting,
packaging and distribution - it was perfectly obvious. The live roasters were individually
priced. Presumably looks counted as well as size. The most expensive ones were advertised
on the Internet, the modern cannibal's version of picking a live lobster from the restaurant's
own tank. Why did they cost more than ready slaughtered ones? Hmmm - a premium for
choice, possibly, plus upkeep and advertising costs. Then there was the value of the wasted
entrails. It all added up.
What also became obvious was the amount of work and responsibility the job entailed. The
company had a very small administrative staff, and she was a significant part of it. It seemed
a pretty big load for the glorified accounts secretary the job description had hinted at, and her
little C&G certificate added to zero experience made her grossly underqualified for it. Some
people would have felt out of their depth, overwhelmed and underpaid. Not she. Alicia saw
this as an opportunity. She would learn on the job and make herself indispensible. Once she
had proved her value, she could talk about pay rises. Not qualified? Not important. She
summoned her considerable powers of concentration and got down to it.
Each day she went home tired, but with that smugly virtuous satisfaction that comes with
honest hard work. She hardly thought about the human implications of the business, she was
too busy during the day and at night she was too worked out to be bothered with soul
searching. She wasn't the type to indulge herself in pointless breast-beating anyway. She
didn't have much contact with the shop floor, though she didn't struggle to avoid it. It simply
wasn't her her job to get her hands dirty.
By Friday, she had started to get a grip on things and was ready to do some real work, but
Monday would be soon enough for that. She wanted a night out. Accordingly, she rang her
friend Jane, who was conveniently unattached at the moment, and arranged a meeting for a
few drinks at a local pub.
The problem came, as she had known it would, when she told Jane what she was doing for a
living. Jane skipped past 'you're doing what?' and went straight to...
"You're kidding. Tell me you're kidding."
"I would, but I'd be lying."
"But you can't...."
"Yes I can," Alicia repeated her line to Jeremy wearily, "I did an accounting course."
"How can you live with yourself? 'Licia, you can't.."
Alicia passed on the straight line and answered seriously. "Why not?"
" 'Licia, those are real people being killed in there. How can you be part of it?"
"I could say I just do the books, but we both know that's not the point, right?"
"Right," Jane nodded. She was getting through.
"Remember those aid appeals and documentaries on famines in Africa, Asia and whatever
you've been watching since you were born?"
"Of course.."
"Horrible, weren't they? Didn't they upset you? Didn't you feel sorry for all those poor people
starving? They were real people too."
"Of course I did, any normal person would."
"Of course. So did I. Well, what did you do about it? Volunteer for VSO or the red cross?"
"No, but..."
"Send them your own dinner? Or did you buy a couple of knick knacks at Oxfam, if that, and
forget about it till next time?"
"I give to charities," said Jane stiffly.
"Peanuts, when you can afford it and if you remember. You don't lose sleep over it. They're
dying by the thousand and like most of us you do bugger all."
Now Jane was looking both uncomfortable and angry. "I don't see how that's the same."
"I'm not getting at you. People weren't designed for it. You can't break down and cry every
time disaster strikes in another country, you couldn't live like that."
"I still don't see how that's the same as what you're doing. It's exploitation."
"Bollocks. It's a business transaction. Nobody makes them do it. Every one who does is one
less mouth to feed, and more money to feed their relatives. It's a cleaner death than
starvation or cholera. I know, I've seen it, you haven't. And at least they go out knowing they
helped."
Jane shook her head while Alicia got more drinks. When she came back Jane started up
again.
"It's still not right. There has to be a better way.."
"There is. It's called education and contraception. Or what, should we keep propping up an
endlessly growing population for ever? We couldn't if we wanted to. And they might try
spending what aid we send on books instead of bullets to shoot their neighbours with."
"That's a fascist argument. Their problems were caused by Western exploitation in the first
place."
"Bollocks again. It''s a logical argument and you haven't answered it, and slapping kneejerk
slogans about Western exploitation on it doesn't help anything. Even if it was true, and I
doubt it, we're not going to go on feeling guilty and responsible forever. PC is passe, and not
before bloody time if you ask me."
"And this is your ideal solution to the world's problems? Slaughtering helpless women?"
"It's a lousy solution, but we can't impose a better one. Enforced family planning? That would
be fascist and 'inhuman'. Take their popguns away? Western Imperialist arrogance. We can't
win, can we? Like Churchill said about democracy, what we're left with is the worst possible
system apart from all those other ones."
"It's still not right."