episode #5

[robling_t]

Tonight's homework involves two cornish game-hens, although I doubt that the part where Jason's got one in each hand making them dance to Girls Just Want To Have Fun is strictly speaking part of the prep for this dish. "Don't play with your food," I say.

Jason lays the birds down in the baking-dish with exaggerated tenderness and looks up to appraise me. Finally he lifts an eyebrow, and says, "T is for Trevor, who's not getting laid."

I turn to look at the poster on the wall behind me, pale Edwardian children coming to ghastly ends, and retreat to my wardrobe to look for something in warmer colours. The best I can do is brown. Sepia appears to be an improvement over pen-and-ink, though, for Jason nods when I come back into the kitchen. "You can just heat yours back up if you get back real late, dude."

I snort.

Everyone meets on neutral ground, these days. Even if we may have more reason. It's easy to find the woman in the coffeehouse watching the doors in a mirror; You must be Trevor, she says as I slip into the seat across a small table already nearly hidden by pastries and her teapot.

Jill the wendigo is attractive, actually. It's not cannibalism if you're not human, she says with a world-weary smile that suggests she's given the same sort of thought to her situation as I have mine. She's originally from Duluth.

Damn Jason, anyway.

My pocket buzzes:

u 2 eat any1 yet

I excuse myself from Jill's amused attention. (Flatmate's checking up, yeah. She allows it's exactly what she'd have arranged, were she in my position.) Type back:

Not on a first date.

When we both rise she just keeps going, until I'm looking at a dimpled chin. She makes a remark about wearing flats next time. Little brown bat.

Apparently there's going to be a next time.

Jason's been waiting up. "How'd it go?"

"You could have mentioned she's six foot tall," I say. Jason shrugs, as if it hadn't struck him as important. I suppose it wouldn't have, they'd have been looking each other in the eye. Modern nutrition.

One tiny chicken is sitting under a glass bowl in the refrigerator. Jason's plating skills are improving, but he's obviously made allowances here for the reheating. My flatmate isn't even trying not to hover. "I'd call this 'early', but within an acceptable range of hitting it off," he says, with an expectant look.

I shrug. "Nobody died," I say, and set the plate into the micro. "I suppose you'll see that as a disappointment."

Jason nods sagely. "Give it time."

I wonder if he's picturing riding shotgun on some Bonnie-and-Clyde spree. Or doing the catering for it. The microwave beeps, and I take my slightly-the-worse-for-wear supper to the table, as Jason gives up on drilling any further details from me and bids me good night.

The evening has disabused me of one notion, though. A wendigo's supposed craving for human flesh is a distorted metaphor, a gloss on the ache to fill that hole within with food or drugs or sex or anything that holds out the promise of not having to listen to one's own voice echoing back again. I can respect that. We're both ridden by spirits of lust.

Not that Jill wouldn't eat someone if it came to it. It's just that she prefers not to live her life so literally.