Blow Fly

10

AN AIR-CONDITIONING UNIT rattles in a dusty window, the afternoon hotter than usual for April, as Jay Talley hacks meat into small pieces and drops them into a bloody plastic bucket below the scarred wooden table where he sits.

The table, like everything else inside his fishing shack, is old and ugly, the sort of household objects people leave at the edges of their driveways to be picked up by garbage collectors or spirited away by scavengers. His work space is his special place, and he is patient as he repeatedly adjusts torn bits of clothing that he jams under several of the table legs in his ongoing attempt to keep the table level. He prefers not to chop on a surface that moves, but balance is virtually impossible in his warped little world, and the graying wood floor slopes enough to roll an egg from the kitchenette right out to the dock, where some planks are rotted, others curled like dull dead hair flipped up at the ends.

Swatting at sea gnats, he finishes a Budweiser, crushes the can and hurls it out the open screen door, pleased that it sails twenty feet past his boat and plops into the water. Boredom gives pleasure to the most mundane activities, including checking on the crab pots suspended below floats in the murky freshwater. It doesn't matter that crabs aren't found in freshwater. Crawfish are, and they're in season, and if they don't pick the pots clean, something bigger usually comes along.

Last month, a large log turned into an alligator gar weighing at least a hundred pounds. It moved like a torpedo, speeding off with a trotline and its makeshift float of an empty Clorox bottle. Jay sat calmly in his boat and tipped his baseball cap to the carnivorous creature. Jay doesn't eat what he catches in the pots, but out here in the middle of this hellish nowhere he now calls home, his only acceptable fresh choices are catfish, bass, turtles and as many frogs as he can gig at night. Otherwise, his food comes in bags and cans from various grocery stores on the mainland.

He brings down a meat cleaver, cutting through muscle and bone. More pieces of foul flesh land in the bucket. It doesn't take long for meat to rot in this heat.

"Guess who I'm thinking about right now," he says to Bev Kiffin, his woman.

"Shut up. You just say that to get to me."

"No, ma chйrie, I say it because I'm remembering fucking her in Paris."

Jealousy flares. Bev can't control herself when she is forced to think of Kay Scarpetta, who is fine-looking and smart-plenty fine-looking, and smart enough for Jay. Rarely does it occur to Bev that she has no good reason to compete with a woman Jay fantasizes about chopping up and feeding to the alligators and crawfish in the bayou outside their door. If Bev could cut Scarpetta's throat, she sure as hell would, and her own dream is to one day get her chance. Then Jay wouldn't talk about the bitch anymore. He wouldn't stare out at the bayou half the night, thinking about her.

"How come you have to always talk about her?"

Bev moves closer to him and watches sweat trickle down his perfectly sculpted, smooth chest, soaking the waistband of his tight cutoff jeans. She stares at his muscular thighs, the hair on them fine and shiny as gold. Her fury heats to flashover and erupts.

"You got a damn hard-on. You chop away and get a stiff dick! Put down that meat ax!"

"It's a cleaver, honey. If only you weren't so stupid." His handsome face and blond hair are wet with sweat, his cold blue eyes bright against his tan.

She bends over and cups her thick, stubby hand around the bulge between his thighs as he calmly spreads his legs wide and leans back in the chair long enough for her to get started on his zipper. She wears no bra, her cheap flower-printed blouse halfway unbuttoned, offering him a view of heavy, flaccid breasts that arouse nothing beyond his need to manipulate and control. He rips open her blouse, buttons lightly clattering against wood, and begins fondling her the way she craves.

"Oh," she moans. "Don't stop," she begs, moving his head closer.

"Want more, baby?"

"Oh."

He sucks her, disgusted by her salty, sour taste, and shoves her hard with his bare feet.

The thud of her body hitting the floor, her shocked gasp, are familiar sounds in the fishing shack.