Chapter 2: Dinner Feast
The maid’s room was a closet with a cot. It smelled of old bleach and, faintly, of the gardenia perfume that seeped through the mansion’s vents like a nerve agent. Barney lay staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked disturbingly like a screaming face. He’d been there for six hours. His suit jacket was folded over the single, wobbly chair. He could still feel the ghost of her damp, powerful handshake.
A gong sounded, not from a clock, but from some hidden speaker system. Delilah’s voice followed, booming and tinny through an intercom grille he hadn’t noticed. “Dinner, Barnaby! Dining room. Five minutes. Don’t be late. The foie gras waits for no man.”
He scrambled up, smoothed his wrinkled shirt, and followed the sound of classical music that seemed to be fighting a losing battle against the pervasive smell of air freshener and gut.
The dining room was a crimson nightmare. Blood-red carpet, walls the color of raw liver. A table long enough to land a small plane on dominated the space, polished to a mirror shine. And everywhere, on every wall, were paintings of her. Delilah as a space vixen, Delilah as a jungle queen, Delilah reclining on a bear-skin rug with a look of sultry defiance. The eyes in the portraits seemed to track him.
She was already seated at the head, a leopard-print caftan swapped for a crimson silk robe that gaped alarmingly at the front. A mountain of glossy hair was piled precariously high. “Sit, sit. Over there. Across from me. I like to look at people when I eat.”
A silent, grim-faced man in a white jacket—the chef, presumably—emerged from a swinging door and placed two plates before them. Barney’s held a normal-looking fillet of salmon, some asparagus. Delilah’s was a geological event. A T-bone steak the size of a catcher’s mitt, a heap of truffle mashed potatoes that could have insulated an attic, buttered carrots, a loaf of bread, and a side of pâté that quivered like a flesh-toned jelly.
She didn’t eat. She commenced an excavation. The knife and fork became tools of industry, sawing, scooping, shoveling. She forked the entire steak, lifted it, and tore into it with a sound that was all cartilage and gristle. Butter gleamed on her sausage-lips. A piece of bread was dunked, whole, into the pâté and consumed in two bites.
Barney picked at his salmon. It was like watching a nature documentary on a particularly efficient predator.
“Good, yes?” she grunted around a mouthful of potato. “Manuel is a genius. Used to cook for a silent movie star. The man could eat, too. Died on the toilet. Tragic.”
Barney watched, mesmerized and horrified, as she cleaned her plate, then used a chunk of bread to mop up the remaining juices and fat. The silent Manuel appeared and replaced it with a slab of chocolate cake the dimensions of a brick.
“How… how can you eat all that?” The question slipped out, high and tight.
Delilah paused, a forkful of cake hovering near her lips. She looked at him, not offended, but analytically, as if he’d asked a fascinating scientific question. “Metabolism, darling. Rocket fuel. This,” she gestured with the cake-laden fork, “is just pre-loading. My system is a marvel of efficiency. In one end, a brief, glorious party in the middle, and out the other. Doesn’t stick. Can’t afford to let it stick.” She tapped her taut, distended belly with a manicured nail. “The plumbing has to be clear for the art. The body is a temple, Barney. And sometimes you have to make a spectacular offering at the altar.”
She demolished the cake. When she was done, she leaned back. The silk robe strained. A low, deep gurgle echoed through the quiet room, a subterranean shifting of tons of rich food. She sighed, a sound of profound satisfaction.
“Tomorrow,” she said, picking a crumb from her cleavage, “we start your real work. The injections first. The needle is quite long. You’ll have to get over any squeamishness.” She smiled, her eyes glinting in the candlelight. “Then Manuel will show you the colonic system. It’s in the pool house. The hoses are a bit stiff; you’ll need a good grip.”
Barney’s own food sat like a lead weight in his stomach. The screaming-face water stain in his room suddenly seemed like a portent, a silent scream he now understood completely. The portraits on the walls leered down. The air was thick with the smell of chocolate, beef fat, and the inevitable, gathering storm within Delilah Diamond.
He looked at his empty plate. He looked at her serene, contented face. The gurgle came again, louder, a long, liquid roll of thunder.
“See?” she said, her smile widening. “The process begins. It’s all about flow, Barney. You’ll learn.”
The momentum of the day, of his own desperate decision, carried him forward into a tomorrow that was no longer an abstract horror, but a specific, tactile reality of needles, hoses, and the relentless, digesting machinery of the woman before him. He was trapped, not by the gold-plated gates outside, but by the sheer, unstoppable force of her will, and the terrifying intimacy of the duties she had so casually outlined. The dinner was over. The real work was waiting.