Shriver by Chris Belden

Author:Chris Belden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

Chapter Nine

The current exhibition at the local museum of art was entitled Slaughter: A Meditation on Carnivorous Consumption and featured wall-sized color videos of various farm animals in the process of being butchered—a steer getting bashed on the head while gripped in a vise operated by men in cowboy hats; a hog hoisted by its hind hooves into the air and sliced from chin to genitals with a long, sharp blade—all projected above tables laden with trays of pigs in a blanket.

“I don’t know how you can eat that,” Zebra Amphetamine said. “You’re swallowing the murdered flesh of a sentient creature.”

“There’s nothing else to eat,” Edsel Nixon explained, waving toward the empty cheese plate and the tossed-out stems of strawberries.

“I’d rather starve to death,” Zebra huffed. “I’m a firm believer in evolution. I think it’s our job to move the human race forward and out of the carnivorous age.”

“Hear hear!” T. Wätzczesnam cried, a dough-encased wiener held high in his callused hand. “I have loads of faith in your generation.”

“If it were up to guys like you, we’d still be swinging from trees by our tails.”

“Wouldn’t that be fun!” T. said.

Shriver watched Simone standing among a herd of well-wishers and students over near the video loop of a headless, blood-spouting chicken hopping around a farmyard. She seemed so pleased by the reading that she may even have forgiven him for so rudely walking out.

Though he had considered confessing to Simone his real identity, Shriver was now wavering. He and T. had polished off a bottle or so of wine, and the booze, it seemed—as well as the sight of Simone looking so happy—had fortified his resolve to remain incognito. At least until Mr. Cheadem arrived tomorrow.

He watched her excuse herself from the group and enter one of several gallery alcoves.

“She’s not on the market, old boy,” T. whispered into his ear.

Shriver, caught, turned the color of pinot noir. “What do you mean? She has a boyfriend?”

“Not exactly.” T. laughed, showing wine-stained teeth, and moved off to find another pig in a blanket.

Shriver’s face still felt hot. Was he being that obvious? He barely knew this woman, and here he was mooning after her like a virginal schoolboy. And what did T. mean by “Not exactly”?

He finished his current glass of wine and followed Simone into the darkened alcove, where a video of a goose being force-fed through a metal tube played out across an entire wall.

“I came in here to catch my breath, believe it or not,” Simone said. She was the only one in the room.

“Oh, sorry,” Shriver said. “I can leave.”

“No, of course not. Stay, please.”

She said it in a way that sounded genuine, not just polite. Shriver suddenly didn’t know what to say or do. He realized only now how intoxicated he was.

“Feeling better today?” he finally asked.

“I was until I saw this,” she said. “I guess I’ll never eat foie gras again.”

Shriver stared at the floor, trying to think of something interesting to say before she ran from the room and the tortured goose.

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