Alissa Nutting: Unclean Jobs for Women and Girls

I am boiling inside a kettle with five other people. Our limbs are bound and our intestines and mouths are stuffed with herbs and garlic, but we can still speak. We smell great despite the pain.

The guy next to me resembles Elvis because of his fluffy, vaguely-pubic black hairdo. It may be the humidity.

Across the kettle a man is trying to cry, but his tears keep mixing with his sweat and instead of looking sad he just seems extra warm. For a moment, I have the romantic thought that maybe we are actually boiling in tears, hundreds of thousands of them, the sweetest-true tears of infants and children instead of a yellowy, chickenish broth.

I am the only woman in the kettle, which strikes me as odd. I’m voluptuous and curvy; I can understand why someone would want to gobble me up. The men do not look so delicious. One, a very old man across the kettle from me, keeps drifting in and out of a semi-conscious state. His head droops down towards the broth then suddenly, just as the tip of his nose touches one of the surface’s bubbles, he snaps upright and utters a name. “Stanley” is the first. The second, “David.” We think he is saying the names of his children; we even continue to humor him after he gets to the fifteenth (perhaps he’s moved on to grandchildren?), but as he yells his fortieth name it’s clear that he is not poignant but nuts.

“He isn’t crazy,” the crying man sobs. “These are the last few moments of our lives. Shouldn’t we all be calling out the names of everyone we’ve ever met? Ever known? Ever loved?”

“Uh-huh,” agrees Elvis.

But the man to Elvis’ left is not as fond of this idea. A series of teardrop tattoos on his upper cheek indicate victories in multiple prison-kills. Ironically, he is tied up right next to the crying man. “I like quiet,” the tattooed man says.

The man directly next to me on the right, he isn’t really my type. His features are youthful and feminine in a way that makes him resemble a boyish Peter Pan. But he’s smiling at me through the spices and trimmings shoved into his mouth; undeterred by them he manages a nice, soft look.

Since we’re about to be eaten, I lower my standards and choose to be bold.

“I love you,” I say. It’s coming from a good-pretend place. I just want to pack as much into these last few moments as I can.

Yet when I watch the impact my words have on his face, the effect is very real. Maybe, I figure, since we are all cooking towards the finish line, things are kind of fast-forwarding. Maybe what I’d just said could actually be true.

And then it is. Seconds pass and love for him grows suddenly, like ice crystals or sea monkeys, all over my body.

We stare at one another and he scoots towards me as much as our fetters will allow, enough that our fingertips can touch. “I love you too,” he says. “If we weren’t tied up, I’d give you the softest kiss you’ve ever felt in your life, right on your steamy lips.”

From the corner of my eye, I notice the tattooed man, who up until this point hasn’t been very chatty, is suddenly showing variegated upper teeth. His lips pull back wide in order to verbalize the list of things he would do to me, were we not tied up. They are not romantic or legal.

“You’re a monster,” my lover says to him. “The rest of us shouldn’t have to boil in your juices.”

“Uh-huh,” agrees Elvis.

“We’re dying just like this criminal,” weeps the crying man. “It isn’t fair.”

Suddenly the old man raises his head. A drop of yellow broth falls from his chin. “Amanda,” he rasps, then his eyes roll back and his head falls down. I smile.

“That’s my name!” Glee fills me though I don’t know why. “He just spoke my name,” I tell my new lover, whose fingertips squeeze my own.

“Amanda.” My lover whispers my name into the hot mist.

“What if it’s some kind of death list,” the crying man snivels. “What if that old codger has been here for ages, been in pots with hundreds of people who’ve all been eaten, but he always gets left behind because he’s so old. It would drive a person crazy. It might make him repeat over and over again the names of people he’s had to watch die in a half-hearted attempt to bring them back.” After pondering this, the crying man lets out a long, shrill sob that is chirp-like. It reminds me of a parakeet I had when I was young. I try to remember its name.

“Dan,” the old man says.

“That’s my name,” my lover laughs, bouncing a little in the water. “He just said our names back-to-back. It’s like our love planted them in his head!”

The tattooed man makes a gagging noise.

For fun, I ask everyone to please mouth his name, just to see if the old man will say it next. I encourage them to hurry up and do it while the old man’s head is flaccid beneath a layer of broth.

“Hector,” whimpers the crying man.

“Sam,” sings Elvis.

“Fuck off,” mutters the tattooed man.

Dan and I watch the old man with anticipation. Finally his aged face surfaces, and he gums the taste of the broth droplets on his cheeks before saying “Lancelot.”

“See,” my lover coos. “Our names before; it was magic.”

I want this moment to stay. I want it to multiply on and on with the unnatural growth of things just before death, speeding off the pure fat of life’s last moments. I want the feeling of our brushing fingertips to breed like cancerous cells.

When the steel door opens, even the old man sits up and blinks his wet lashes. A chef walks in sharpening a long knife against a stone. “Who first?” he barks. We’re all silent, though I think I hear the old man whisper “Daisy.”

“Alright then.” The chef points his knife at me and moves it a little like he’s writing his name in the air. “I’ll take you, since you’re the meatiest.”

I give my lover a farewell glance but suddenly his screams fill the room. “No!” he cries, thrashing madly and fish-like. “Take me in her place. Please, I beg you, make her the very last one.”

“Okay,” agrees the chef. But first he twirls his knife at me a little more, like he’s casting a spell, just so I know who’s in charge.

Two men wearing long oven gloves come over and cut my lover’s ropes. He stretches his lips out to kiss me, but is too soon pulled away and carried from the room like a ladder — one man at his shoulders, one man at his feet. “Please,” he begs, “one kiss,” but the two men aren’t as permissive as the cook. They possibly do not speak English, or any language.

“That was so beautiful,” sobs the crying man. “Such love.”

Despite my grief, I try to live in the moment. “Do you sing?” I ask Elvis-Sam.