Page 39 of The Secret Dinner

“She told me she used to help her father out at a slaughterhouse when she was a kid,” I said.

Cora stepped away from the corpse and picked up her bag from the armchair. “Well, you’re the boss … If you don’t want my help, I’m leaving.”

“I already told you we don’t need you!”

“Chill out, man. You said it yourself, you’re a chef, not a butcher. Cora might come in handy.”

“Cora fucking rocks!”

Hugo swallowed hard, refusing to accept defeat.

“Okay,” he said finally. “But I don’t want her using my knives.”

Every chef is overprotective of their knives and pans. Hugo was always complaining that we were dulling his knives or burning the bottom of his Le Creuset.

“So how do you propose I do this?” Cora pushed. “With my nails?”

“I don’t care, find a way.”

“I can buy you a knife, baby,” said Piglet, enveloping his girlfriend’s tiny body.

“Not a knife. Buy me a chainsaw. That’s what I like to work with. Makes it easier to split the carcass.”

“Deal.”

“Make it yellow.”

“Yellow?”

“Yeah … canary yellow. It’s my favorite color,” she said, grinning like a kid in a candy store. “I want a canary-yellow chainsaw.”

“You’ve got it.”

Piglet went to his room to get his wallet and left, promising he’d be right back. Cora asked to borrow some old clothes, and I offered her a pair of baggy shorts I no longer wore. While she was changing in the bathroom, I told Hugo to calm down and stop nitpicking. Cora was the perfect solution: She wasn’t judging us, she didn’t see anything wrong with what we were doing, and she didn’t want to call the police.

“I prefer to work alone,” she said when she came back to the living room. She was wearing the shorts as sort of a dress: one leg like a tube top that came down to her thighs and the other over her right arm, like a wide sleeve. “Can I use that butcher knife while we wait for Love Nugget to get back with my chainsaw?”

Reluctantly, Hugo handed it over.

“You’re fucking psycho.”

“Hey, I don’t care much for you either,” she said. “You think because you’re a hot, tattooed swinging dick that you’ve got the right to talk to me like that?”

Cora turned and sauntered toward the corpse. Hugo snapped and lunged at her, losing his balance as she ducked just in time. He crashed to the floor and Cora swiftly twirled the knife in the air and put the blade to his neck.

“You take care of yours and I’ll take care of mine, okay?” she said, pressing the tip of the knife against his skin. “I’m just going to wait here for my little Nugget to get back. Then I’ll do the rest on my own. Dante, you and this asshole are free to go.”

3

Piglet returned minutes later carrying a huge box from the hardware store down the street. It was a yellow Mac 740 McCulloch-brand chainsaw. Cora showered her lover with kisses and even shed a few tears as she unwrapped her gift. I preferred to keep Hugo company in the kitchen. He was outraged, cursing Cora while sharpening a knife. It almost looked like he was planning to go back into the living room and challenge her to a rematch.

“Don’t do anything stupid, dude!”

“I’m just going to slice the vegetables.”

The sound of the sharpener was obnoxious. I thought about turning on the radio or humming some tune to drown it out, but I knew it was useless. Soon, the sound I was really afraid of came from the living room: the roar of the chainsaw. I clapped my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the noise. Hugo put the knife down and handed me a piece of paper from his pocket.

“Go buy this stuff.”