Chapter 3
I spent the next few hours trying in vain to get some sleep.
My body had reached a breaking point, but my mind was still racing, trying to find someone to blame for the rotten meat.
It was shitty luck for the freezer to break down that night, of all nights.
Piglet always said: The best way to get out of something is to blame someone greater than yourself.
That’s why religions are so successful. It’s a sort of relief to imagine some higher power in control of our joy and our tragedy.
But not even God could be blamed for the mess we’d gotten ourselves into. The responsibility was all ours.
Lost in thought, I heard my phone vibrating on the nightstand. I glanced at the screen: Mom. That was the last thing I needed. I let it go to voicemail. The phone rang seven more times—Hilda wasn’t easily deterred. I was about to shut it off when Hugo called.
“I’ll be home in five minutes,” he said. He sounded tense. “Go out the back and meet me in the garage.”
I changed quickly and headed down the hallway.
Inside Piglet’s room, you could hear his heavy breathing and Cora giggling.
How could they be fucking at a time like this?
I went downstairs and double-checked if the building’s security cameras were still disabled.
Luckily for us, they were. In the underground parking garage, Hugo had backed Bukowski up to the service elevator.
He was wired, shifting from side to side, his eyes wide.
Hugo popped the trunk and half his body disappeared into the car, struggling to move whatever was inside. A limp arm dangled out of the trunk and I immediately recoiled.
“What the…?”
“Come on, help me out!” he shouted.
Inside Bukowski’s trunk was a body, covered in garbage bags—one over the head, the other over the legs.
As soon as I touched the corpse, my hands were soaked in fresh, still warm blood.
Clearly the person had only been dead a few hours.
A shiver ran down the back of my neck. Where did Hugo get this guy? When our eyes met, he looked away.
“Come on, hurry up!”
In desperation, I obeyed. We carried the body in silence to the elevator.
As we went up, I closed my eyes, pleading with God for it not to make any stops before our floor.
Once we arrived, Hugo ordered me to hold the elevator door while he got a rag to clean the blood dotted on the floor. We lugged the corpse to the back door.
“In the laundry room,” I said.
There was no way we could do the butchering in the living room again.
The dinner was in a few hours, and I still had to set the table and tidy everything up.
With my help, Hugo removed the plastic bags.
I stared down at a Black man, about forty years old, with shabby clothes and an unshaven beard.
His skin was filthy, and even with all the blood he gave off a strong odor of dirt and piss.
The left side of his face was completely disfigured, a flap of dead skin hanging from his cheek.
Looking down, I could see that his entire left side, from thigh to armpit, was covered in road rash.
“How’d you find this body, Hugo?”
He pretended not to hear me and shouted for Cora and Piglet. I stood in front of him and gripped his shoulders.
“Tell me … What did you do?”
Again, he let his head fall, sighing. He put his hand over his eyes, but I knew he wasn’t crying. It was just pretense.
“Hugo … did you run over this man?”
He shook his arms loose and turned his back to me.
“Of course not, Dante, are you crazy? I … I followed an ambulance. The accident had just happened, and the paramedics were busy helping the driver. The police hadn’t gotten there yet to file the report. No one was watching … I grabbed the body and ran.”
It was impossible to believe that story. Whenever any accident happens, swarms of watchful eyes always come to feed off the misfortune. Before I could press him further, Cora and Piglet arrived, celebrating the “fresh meat.”
“I’m going back down to move Bukowski,” said Hugo, disappearing through the back door.
I stayed there with Piglet for a few seconds while Cora fetched the chainsaw from the living room. She came back excited. She set the yellow machine in the corner and stood at attention.
“Ready to work, sir!”
“Very well, Captain!” said Piglet, grabbing her by the neck and planting a kiss on her lips.
“Can you help me turn it upside down?”
“Sure thing, baby girl.”
The laundry room was small, and it felt even tinier now. I left, saying I needed to start the evening’s preparations.
“Just bring me a bucket first,” Cora asked.
“A bucket?”
“Or a vase, something like that.”
I decided not to ask any more questions.
I grabbed the biggest bucket I could find, one Mrs. Dores had used back when she was still working for us.
When I returned, the man was already hanging upside down, held up by hooks.
I handed the bucket to Cora and she placed it under the body.
In one subtle movement, she turned on the chainsaw, which let out a long roar.
Vroommmm, vroom, vroom. Our eyes met, and she smiled at me, running the blade across the dead man’s jugular.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” she said as blood gushed like a waterfall, pooling in the container.