Mr. Charles, despite his shoes, walks like a man barefoot. His paunch quivers beneath his untucked shirt. I crane my neck towards the floor, to hear the gentle crack of old wood beneath his footfalls.
He pokes into the refrigerator like a bear into a trashcan, nosing around. I can see him barely: I am in the living room, but his home is open, dining room and kitchen declared not by walls but merely a shift in flooring, from that darkwood to light.
His massive feet, stuffed into expensive boots, tap as he examines his options. I blink. My eyes nearly drown when they reopen.
Eventually, he chooses a carrot, fishing the thickest from a hefty bag. I cannot see his other options, so I cannot determine if this would have been my same choice. It could have been; I have not eaten since dinnertime yesterday. A simple soup, split-pea, and a toasted sandwich with ham and Monterey and dripping pesto. A glob had fallen onto the plate, and I resisted wiping it with my finger. I felt a shame, despite being alone in my home. Now it has been thirty hours and I regret my wastefulness. I planned to go shopping today, to buy a sandwich for dinner. Now I am starving in Mr. Charles’s home. I take this ravenous feeling and shove it down my gullet; it bobs a moment, then pops back to my tongue, and I suckle on it.
Mr. Charles washes his thick carrot. Maybe a foot long and thicker than my thumb, he clutches it by the tip as the water runs. His other hand clutches the tall, curving spout. The hot-water handle is turned. He waits and hums something I cannot identify. I rub my neck, then glance at my fingers. They remain black with paint, but have not become blacker. It must have dried.
The water heats sufficiently. Mr. Charles massages the carrot beneath it, rubbing with his fingers the little hairs off into the drain.
Then he walks to the counter, still humming, and places down a cutting board. From the knife box, he extracts a cleaver. The knives more apt for carrots remain erect like porcupine quills stuck in backward.
He places the carrot delicately onto the center of the wooden board, adjusting it until perfect. Rocking back, he raises the cleaver to his forehead and swings down, flinging the blade onto the carrot’s hard flesh; his shoes tap hard on the floor, and the carrot cracks like bone.
The taps and cracks continue down the carrot’s length. Each cut exactly an inch from the last. My eyes are level with the counter. I blink again, and briefly drown again. My head throbs with a body’s worth of blood. Each labored pump of my heart bulges my eyes.
He takes his first carrot bit and cracks it under his molars. I clench my fists.
He takes the next, and cracks it the same, chewing each carefully. The whole process takes about six minutes, if the clock on the microwave is correct, and if my eyes read the digital numbers correctly despite their bulging, despite the blood pooling behind them and seeming to lap against my skull-bone. I keep suckling my hunger, but I begin to smell the carrot, and it smells like metal. I do not know if it is from the cleaver gleaming the light towards my neck or the blood in my mouth.
But Mr. Charles takes the cutting board and cleaver and washes them. He does not have a sponge, so he pumps soap onto his forefinger and rubs each clean. His hands turn red in the scalding water; he cuts himself and the water turns red, too, halfway down where his hand interrupts its flow. I expect him to bandage his finger, but he does not. He dries the cleaver, grasps it tight, and walks towards me, from darkwood into light.
His face contorted into the same placidity as always, or at least as it always has been since I saw him this morning, he takes his other hand and tugs upwards the rope hanging by the counter, so that, by the pulley system he gerryrigged and tied to my ankles, I am lowered onto the dining table.
My arm hits first, and it is louder than a gunshot to my blood-filled brain. Then I am lowered further, and the rope begins to droop against my leg but I cannot feel it, numb as I am.
Mr. Charles yanks me by the hair, and I am rendered flat with legs pulled tautly upwards.
He takes the cleaver, raises it to his forehead, and as he swings down I am certain it will land perfectly on the black line he painted clean and straight across my neck this morning when we met.
