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In the lecture halls she sieves through jars of molasses. She holds them up to the light of the projectors, making out the specks and dark shards that could be something solid. The liquid, so aged and overpowering, trickles between gaps in the mesh at an agonising pace. It gets everywhere—on her hands and clothes, her lecture notes, the floors her listeners tread on their way out from whence they spread the contamination into the streets of their city. On occasion she may catch a grain of tangibility in the sieve, and have the opportunity to observe it. A fraction of Bedelia Du Maurier. There are infinite jars of molasses. She is working her way through them at a steady pace.
Academics have insatiable appetites for the gore of it all. She has come to know this detail intimately over the course of recent years, as the offers from the colleges and institutions and societies of curiosity continue to arrive. Members of law enforcement tend to be disappointed by the character of her talks. They do not provide the playbooks of heroism their careers have left them in anticipation of, they are not even psychological. Psychology does not account for art, it only suggests a method for dissecting it. And she is talking about creation, not theory.
In her public addresses she describes this as the creation of Lydia Fell, though no such woman existed except in the mouths of others. Whilst Bedelia Du Maurier bathed in the sticky black pools of sugar extraction, Lydia floated on the surface. Her structure was compromised by liquid earth. If the police officers and prosecutors come in hope of learning how to recognise a serial killer, they will only be let down. If they have met this man and spoken to him and looked into his eyes, then the process has already begun.
“The room with no exit,” she says—whether previously enraptured or bored, the psychoanalysts and sociologists lean forward in their seats, if nothing else, they will remember that she referenced Sartre-“with mirrors affixed to every wall.” She rests one hand on the lectern beside her; her gravity is never a stunt, but a spectacle. Completing her doctorate abroad, her colleagues had been disturbed by her melancholy, and that was before him. She moves and talks in the treacle which tastes of pomegranate. Cauliflower, figs, lamb glazed ruby: the question was whether it was tender pink backstrap or shank so soft and rich brown that it fell off the bone. She has few words and must be precise with their use.
“He transformed me into a person only he could see—perception is not a mere opinion anymore, it is prophecy.” She ends every lecture the same. The audience must be reassured of retribution, and self-castigation delights them. “We cling to the reflections we feel most closely imitate the vision of others. I can never not look into the mirror and see… him. I am myself for only as long as he chooses to stare back.”
When they applaud, she finds herself thinking of lunch. It was provided by the college. Toying with the visitor pass they had pressed into her hands upon arrival, she had sat in an empty staff room and picked away carefully at the plate of supermarket-origin sushi. It was fresh, at least. The sashimi was of medium quality and the ratio of rice to filling in the maki created an unbalanced textural experience. Forgoing the imitation crab and no doubt bland cooked tuna, she satisfied herself with an inoffensive plain inari and selection of salmon-cucumber rolls.
In some ways, its unrefined quality was a comfort. She has developed something of a distaste for kaiseki and luxury victual as of late.
Dr Bedelia Du Maurier. Guest Lecturer. A male professor of approximately her own age had approached her while she was examining a sachet of commercial mock wasabi and asked her whether she had ever been nicknamed Rebecca. She did not laugh. Rebecca was the paragon, not the incommensurate substitution. As with the bitter horseradish paste and the pureed and reconstituted seafood remains, she was not a functional alternative. Neither of them had been.
She was conscious of Alana Bloom’s presence in the theatre from the beginning. It could not be ignored. Doctor Bloom came in a startlingly red coat, red in the way one would not be able to get away with in Tuscany as they could in Rome, and it appeared expensive. Bedelia must admit that her grip on the personhood of Alana Bloom is not entirely solid. They could never have met, they could have spoken every day for a year. The sludge was sticking to Bloom like a second skin—oh yes, it was a fresh coat, almost the same colour crimson. She could smell it.
It disturbed her a great deal. Does Alana Bloom realise which side of the bars she inhabits? Perhaps not. Throughout the course of her lecture she found her eyes drawn to the seat in the front row her interloper so boldly occupied, considering how ill-fitting the title of prison warden seemed on such an unsinister individual. There was nothing about her that, to an outsider, could appear so twisted as the truth. Had she broken her skull against the wrought iron as well as her pelvis? Had she killed?
No, how could she have done. Something about her was yet unconsumed.
“Doctor Bloom.” She says it slowly, not raising her eyes from the lecture notes she is busy filing away for the next public penance, seeing only the blur of red in the periphery.
“I was in the area,” Alana Bloom replies in her crisp voice, not quite cold but more alive than Bedelia knows her own to be. “I have to say, Doctor Du Maurier, you hold a captive audience.”
“Really?” she asks vaguely. In the captivity of academic rapture or not, most of her listeners seem to have fled the scene. If they linger it is only to gaze from afar, to examine from beyond fence posts and cage walls. She practiced approachability for decades and possesses a close familiarity with its opposite. The point was to make the most of a sluggish drowning. “Allow me to return the favour of honesty and admit I did not expect to see you in it. Especially this far from Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.”
“Why not?”
“I know how you and the FBI feel about my decision to… share my story.”
A small furrow appears on Alana Bloom’s brow, something Bedelia is looking at now, although she would prefer not to. She is gauging for contempt rather than gullibility. People in glass houses, budgerigars in marketplace pet shops. Disdain bothers her little more than it would a lamb waiting outside a slaughterhouse.
“I’m not the FBI,” Alana says. “I came on recommendation.”
“And whose recommendation would that be?” She thinks she understands what they saw in Doctor Bloom, aside from her beauty, which she remembers first perceiving in sketchbooks left on sidetables beneath the light of Venetian glass chandeliers. It was fairytale beauty and not very well disguised by an air of violence. “If he wanted you to see me,” she points out. “It was only to remind you of what he is capable of inflicting on another person, even when they are still alive, and whole. In some sense of the word.”
Alana inclines her head. On its crown there are a few grey hairs growing in, just by a mere quarter of an inch, in this light almost beyond notice. “I have to admit I was curious, though. About you.”
“Oh?”
“I was worried I’d find you were telling the truth in the essay of yours I read in The American Journal of Psychiatry last month. You claimed to have been swallowed.”
“You may prefer to think of it as an act of mutual consumption,” Bedelia offers.
“I prefer not to think of it at all. Unfortunately in my line of work, I don’t have a whole lot of choice.”
“My writing is not instructional,” she says, seeing the dean of the school hovering in the distance and wondering how long she must expect the ordeal to last. “In fact I would advise with force against every act which brought me here. You are still waiting in the larder. I’m afraid I don’t provide the most useful guide to defeating corruption.:
Reaching into the pocket of her coat, Alana a slim silver case that clicks open to reveal a row of identical card. “No,” she agrees, “but you survived it. There must have been a reason. I’m curious to understand.” She removes a piece of card, cream-coloured, and transfers it into Bedelia’s hand. Her becoming is illustrated all over the artfully cut edges and simple, elegant typeface—he talked about her often, the old Alana Bloom never would have owned this. There is no phone number declared but there is an email address printed in small letters beneath the name and credentials.
“I’m sure you know as well as I could myself,” Bedelia replies, distracted by the card and the sense of transience which emerges in holding it. She expected to feel him in the grain of the luxury paper but Alana Bloom’s gaze is too piercing and present in the physical sense to be swayed by anything else.
“We should have lunch,” Alana suggests. “The next time you’re in Baltimore.”
“That would be unlikely for me.” There are buildings there whose walls are too reflective, and she maintains a thread of instinct that insists on distance, so when it is unleashed at least time may kill him before she is quartered and presented. It is inevitable and she is living the tale he allowed her to make sincere in the meantime.
“We’ll see.” When she turns to walk from the lecture hall, still affected by a slight limp, Alana Bloom leaves behind a sweet-smelling weight in the air. Infectious while not oppressive. The calling card iss making its way into Bedelia’s coat pocket, the blue coat she cannot recall coming back from Italy but remains in her possession nonetheless. Cornflower blue. Blossoming in the brown and grey lecture hall, a prize of European taste unappreciated by the transatlantic aesthete. Not warm enough for the winter of the east coast, but she has always preferred the state of being too cold above being too warm. Hot sugar sticks, and burns.
*
They eat in a Spanish tapas bar situated in an alleyway that breaks away from the central street, littered with abandoned plastic crates and the butts of cigarettes. Although many of the tables remain unoccupied throughout the afternoon, the place is evidently a local institution of sorts—Doctor Bloom is on familiar terms with the accented waiter who brings their aperitivos and glasses of apple-crisp white which compliment the rich flavours of each dish.
She received her birthday card by post on Monday, Many Happy Returns of the Day printed beneath a woodland scene depicting hares and bright red cardinals. Enclosed was a guide to arroz con cordero, written by hand on specialist recipe card. She had stowed it away in the folder where she keeps the rest of them without much thought, having no interest in handling the dissection of a leg of lamb as the concept makes her nauseous. Now she wonders about the conversations and initiations which led to this moment in which Alana Bloom plies her with anchovy crispbread and small goods served alongside a generous slice of manchego.
“This is delicious,” she says, swallowing a mouthful of white fish with effort. “You come here often?”
“Of course,” Alana replies. Bedelia watches as her companion cuts away a slice of her own tender braised beef cheek and eats it with only a moment’s examination. Beneath a thin cast of make-up, Bloom’s skin is bright and warm—she must eat well, even now. It is hard not to see her at that table, devouring monstrous spoils at the same time Bedelia had sat forcing spoonfuls of chickpeas in a plain tomato sugo, distracting her thoughts with the day’s newspaper. Every gruesome headline a plate that this woman had put her hands on. We are aware even as we praise the animal that the flesh we sustain ourselves on is more than fellow beast, but fellow man.
“You should try the tartar,” Alana suggests. “It’s a personal favourite.” She pushes the plate across the table. Pearls of glistening pink meat peer upwards, arranged on the cracker with an adornment of slivered radish pickle. This manner of dining is not her preferred style. Eating with the hands was considered superior in the philosophe circles they had inhabited as it avoided potential contamination of the food from imperfect or unclean cutlery. Some claimed they could taste the mass-produced stainless steel, that it soured their meal. But she finds that her fingers transfer a far more acrid metallic flavour.
Surveying the table, she is a little shocked by how ravaged many of the dishes now appear to be. She is far from satiated. A pit has reopened in the depths of her stomach that gnaws as the rats of Florence gnawed on rubbish bags cast out into the street each night by sweating and spitting kitchen hands. The grime of that city is persistent.
Bedelia lifts the little mound of raw meat to her lips, breathing in deeply the cool butcher’s scent. “Since you have such excellent taste,” she murmurs, “I would be a fool to refuse. Wouldn’t I?” The first bite draws her into a field of fog, her eyes incapable of focusing on all but the smallest present detail. The second bite lifts the blur with the splitting crack of the bed which bears the flesh. Particles of crumb cascade from her fingers to the share plate in front of her.
“It’s rare that the flavour of something is improved by being in an unaltered state,” Alana comments. “It’s why people turn up their noses at Michelin-starred gastronomy in New York. The food here isn’t science, it’s art.”
“But this has been altered,” Bedelia argues. “Its purity is an illusion.”
Alana shrugs. “I don’t go in for clean eating. Can’t afford it.” She does not seem to mean money. Her lipstick is Tom Ford and thus far Bedelia has seen two of the slim gold cylinders. One in a blazer pocket, one in a black leather laptop bag.
“Doctor Bloom, why did you really want to see me?” she asks. The wine has dulled her intuition. The wine, and the kahlúa, and the sip of Alana’s Moritz she was obliged out of politeness to try after expressing curiosity about the gold can dripping with frosty condensation. She rarely drinks from bottles but for cases of Sanpellegrino—she arranges the green glass in rows out the front of her house for recycling, a posterboard of particular tastes.
“Because there are only two people in this world who know what it is to be regurgitated. To be…” Alana considers for a moment, the smile returning to her red lips. A dry smile, behind which all manner of organs are no doubt bleeding internally. The broken bones pierce their membranes and muscular walls and allow corruption of the blood to seep through, to embody. “...Burned.”
Bedelia looks around at the massacre of dishes. Scrapes of sauce, the stalks of guindilla peppers, a single piece of crisped potato in a pool of salsa brava. “Discoloured and half-digested,” she says. Something in her stomach which feels alien and intrusive twists, squelches, settles. She has not eaten so much good food in a long time, and her body is unaccustomed to the kindness. “Only two?”
“Some were never fully spat back out.”
“And you believe that you were?” The lightness she felt in the aftermath of the sweet tartar recedes back into its basement crypt where other memories of pleasure are kept in crystalline stasis. “Forgive me if I don’t share your optimistic view of the disgorging process.”
“I believe in trial and error,” Alana answers. “I clawed my way back. Maybe I am different from how I was before, but aren’t we all with age? Like you say, nothing’s pure.”
“I’ve yet to come to terms with a linear experience of the world. Or perhaps reintegrate, would be the more appropriate term. I can never wake up entirely in the present time.”
There is something of a disquieting look of comprehension on the porcelain face opposite hers, more confident and salubrious than it should be; Bedelia senses she has been won, even since the moment she accepted the first mouthful of fat and spice-spotted chorizo, caramelised in its own salt grease drippings. Alana smiles again as she gestures to their server for the bill. “Only stupid people do.”
By the time the cheque, which Bedelia makes no move to approach, has been settled at the bar, it is misting with rain outside. Alana retrieves their coats and scarves from a waiter by the door. Her palms graze the back of Bedelia’s neck while she helps to put them on—not sticky, but warm and dry, rough against the delicate material of the person-suit Bedelia tears and repairs with each passing day. Her body is a canvas of stitches. She breathes in Alana’s perfume and tries not to recall where she has smelled it before. It is a low and woody floral and it reminds her of flowers drying, hanging in bunches from ceilings, their petals turned paper-yellow and just as fragile. Alana’s exhale is caustic on her skin.
“You should be careful,” she warns softly. “Not to become too entangled.”
“Thanks for the advice,” Alana says. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
If only she would. Bedelia cannot help the oppressive, preemptive guilt, even after all these years. Knowledge and anticipation manifest painfully. It will not stop her from picking up her cell phone tomorrow and answering a call from an unknown but expected personal number, and making an appointment.
It would be impossible for her to dislike Doctor Bloom. She has good taste.
*
“They’re from the pins they had to stick into me to keep my bones in place during the healing process,” Alana explains. “Well, less like pins—more like rods or spears. Have you ever broken a bone?”
“No,” Bedelia answers. “Though given the genetic predisposition to osteopenia in my family, I should have done by now. Statistically.” She runs one hand over the soft hip and scarred navel, across which a row of circular marks plot the course of the fracture. Gooseflesh rises to the surface of the skin where her fingers brush against it and she withdraws her hand. “You fell out of the window?”
“It was a long time ago now,” Alana says, as though they were discussing a childhood incident.
“He doesn’t push people out of windows. At least… not people such as yourself.”
“And what does he do to people like you?”
“People like us,” Bedelia near-whispers. She tightens her grip on the mattress cover in an effort to keep the bed from slipping away beneath her—a force of habit, far less grounding than the fingertips Alana presses against her chin and between strands of her hair—she is bare-faced today. “He takes pieces. You don’t notice it at first, by the time you do, he has already removed the foundations of your previous self. You wear the same face, but the interior has been remodelled into something more suited to his tastes.”
“I took mine back,” Alana states. “Or I made new ones.” She gestures for Bedelia to come closer, a dangerous prospect there is no point attempting to avoid now. They are intertwined. The distinction between their perfumes has been lost and subsumed in the sandalwood of expensive scented candles, a small one embedded in every second room. The kitchen surprised her when she first saw it. No meat, not even tinned fish or slices of packet ham. The blue and white china fruit bowl is overflowing with the apples of the season. “You’re still afraid of him.”
“It is a pointless exercise to be afraid of the inevitable,” she replies. “I expect you ought to be afraid of me.”
A soft laugh escapes Alana’s lips, a breath that sends shivers down Bedelia’s aching spine. “How do you make that out?”
“You know what he made me into.” She raises her head from Alana’s bare chest, away from the heart beating steady beneath a warm and unshattered ribcage. She looks into Doctor Alana Bloom’s eyes and imagines them staring with blank paleness at the ceiling above, as blood and saliva drips in lethargic trails from her hand onto the white sheets. With her hands, being swallowed, swallowing. Completing her own design. “What I became, under his influence.”
“I also know how to use a gun,” Alana jokes.
“So do I.”
“Well, glad to hear it. Together we might actually stand a chance.”
*
When Alana’s phone begins to ring, she is in the shower. Bedelia watches the device buzz and chime ceaselessly for several minutes, flashing notifications of missed calls, voicemails, urgent texts. She goes into the bedroom and begins to pack her bag.
She cannot remember when she came here—her speaking tour came to a muffled conclusion months ago, she only writes in private now, she drinks espresso and eats amaretti, she waits.
“Bedelia.”
Her hand is on the handle of the front door, about to push and pull.
“Bedelia, where are you going?”
Alana wears only a robe of white towel, clutched around her pale shoulders. Even when wet, her hair appears perfectly arranged around the heart of her face.
“I…” Back. To home. Into molasses. Into… back. The words come to her in a collection of collapsed thoughts and images, tinged with the odour of chargrilled meat.
“I think you should stay,” Alana tells her quietly.
“If I stay,” Bedelia says, “then the… reckoning to follow will be your reckoning as well.”
“We’ll reckon it together.” Alana abandons her grip on the robe to reach out, her fingers in the light, her eyes unhardened. “Please.”
But it is the sound of the alarm going on the oven—their lunch, an indulgent vegetable bake enriched with lentils and tins of sweet legumes—which makes her put down her bag, and fall there in a crumpled heap in the arms of Alana Bloom, there, on the floor—untethered.