Page 42 of The Secret Dinner

“We won’t have ten entrecôtes to serve,” Hugo said, wiping sweat with the back of his hand. “I’m trying to make do here with other cuts.”

Cora went back to the living room. Miguel was beside himself. “We’re harboring a psychopathic prostitute!”

“Hey, show some respect for my woman!”

“Did you see how calm she was? She just disemboweled a person like you would an animal!”

“You’re a pussy, you know that?” said Piglet, ripping open a packet of cookies.

“I should go to the police!” Miguel shouted.

He left the kitchen, fuming, right as Cora called me into the living room. The body—or what was left of it—was now divided into pieces and laid out on a sheet on the dining table, next to a meat mallet. The foul smell had died down somewhat, but the rusty stench of blood seemed to linger in the furniture. With the knife, Cora butchered and selected steaks. She’d separated all the fat, bones, and head, the useful organs from useless ones, into garbage bags.

“Some of those organs are considered first-rate. Heart, liver, pancreas, and kidneys,” she said, pointing with the knife. “There’s the lungs and stomach too, if you want to serve those for dinner.”

Cora was a hardworking woman. She was sweaty, out of breath, and a little smelly, but she held firm to finish the job. She handed me something unrecognizable.

“I threw away the head but kept the tongue. Did you know that in Laos the tongue is the most expensive part of the cow? It’s a delicacy. You can slice it up really nice and serve it like sashimi.”

“How are you going to get rid of the bones and the rest of it?”

“I asked my lil’ Nugget if there was a well or somewhere nearby to bury it.”

“And?”

“He suggested some woods over in Urca. Then I thought about the sand on Copacabana beach. The waterfront is huge and at night there’s no surveillance whatsoever. If we dig deep enough, nobody will ever find it.”

“That sounds risky.”

“I’m still deciding. If you have any suggestions, let me know. But leave it to me, this stuff is easy peasy.”

I chose to ignore her comment and, trying to sound as friendly as possible, said:

“Sorry, Cora, but … doesn’t this bother you? Doing this to a human being?”

She looked back at me perplexed as she carried some bags over to the corner.

“Don’t be stupid … That woman was already dead. After death, every animal is the same. You’re funny, you know that? If meat comes in a package covered in plastic wrap, you don’t care. You just grab it, fry it, and eat it without a second thought about where it came from. And now you’re over in the corner bitching and moaning. You know what? The only difference is I’m not a hypocrite like you.”

She handed me a plastic bag.

“These are the good organs. Give them to the asshole chef in the kitchen. Okay! Now it’s time to give this room a good scrub!”

The kitchen had a delicious smell, a mixture of vodka, lemon zest, and rosemary. Next to the stove, Hugo was marinating the meat in a bowl—the smell was so potent I was salivating. He massaged the tall, juicy steaks with his fingers mechanically. The meat looked so appetizing you could forget it was human.

Without a doubt, if that steak had been for sale in the grocery store, anyone would have bought it.

6

Lying in bed pumped full of Klonopin, I waited for sleep to come. It was nerve-racking to think that the very next day ten strangers would be arriving at our apartment for our outrageous dinner party.

What kind of person pays three grand to eat a human being?

Rich people, no doubt. I pictured them as eccentric, alluring, maybe a little dangerous. In the darkness of my bedroom, I imagined guests with alligator shoes, gold cigarette holders, fur coats, oversized sunglasses, wide-brimmed hats, and affected laughs.

Imagine you have money. Not the kind of money that pays the bills, that lets you order out on the weekend or take annual trips to Europe. I’m talking about real money. What would you do? If I had that kind of money, I’d be at a loss, I wouldn’t even know how to spend it. That’s exactly what happens to some rich people: They lose themselves, go crazy, and spend their money on bizarre things. They buy ugly mansions, stupid cars, private jets; they pamper their dogs with themed outfits, nannies, special kibble, and cool toys. They undergo a barrage of cosmetic procedures, lip fillers, Botox, microblading, laser hair removal, extravagant haircuts, designer clothes, exotic dinners.

The other day, I read a story in a magazine about a husband who spent millions to make his wife look like an inflatable doll. It wasn’t because he had a thing for sex dolls or because she was ugly. He did it because he had more money than he knew what to do with. In the US, a woman paid a small fortune to look like Jennifer Lawrence. And there was that guy who did the same to look like Justin Bieber. Justin Bieber, for fuck’s sake! Having money is nice, but having a lot of it might just suck.