Page 79 of This Vicious Hunger
Olea appears beyond the fountain. I smell her before I see her. Rage fills me, and then terror.
“Go away,” I snarl.
“What’s going on?” Olea climbs through the crumbling, empty fountain, her hand trailing the statue as she passes its centre.
“I said fuck off.”
She pauses, her eyes growing wide. She’s seen the hare, and the state of my gown. I try to cover myself with my hands but there’s too much blood.
“What… Thora?” she asks. “Are you all right?”
“Do I look all right?”
“What happened? What did you do? Is that—”
“Fuck. Off.” I infuse my words with as much venom as I can muster, and the sound is a low vibrato.
“We can talk about… whatever this is.” Olea waves her hands, continuing to edge forward. She climbs over the rim of the fountain and past the broken glass and the bottles, and then into the long grass. The garden doesn’t bend away from her as it did from me, long stalks swaying to touch her legs, a gentle caress.
“No, we can’t. This is all kinds of wrong. It’s unnatural. I’ve been trying to persevere, I have, but there’s something so, so deadly wrong with us and you’re too busy playing pretend and using me to satisfy your needs to see it.”
Olea stops, her hands dropping to her sides. It is too dark for me to read her expression, but I can tell from her body that I’m pushing my luck. I don’t care. I don’t want her here.
“You’re one to talk about using people to satisfy needs,” she says coldly.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me, Thora. You’re storming around as if you’re the only one this affects, yet you’re just as guilty in all of this as I am. It takes two for a consensual tango.”
I laugh, a caustic, bitter sound. “Oh, really? I’m guilty?”
“You brewed the goddamn antidote. We’ve been over this. And you’rejustas guilty, using me and your precious Leo however you see fit so you feel better about your reckless choices.”
“Why do you keep bringing him into this? Leo is—was—my friend,” I growl. “Not that you’d know anything aboutthat. He’s a good man, and his wife, thanks to you, is gone. And I don’t think he understands why! He was right to be suspicious of you. You’re manipulative, do you know that? Why do you only mention him when I’m unhappy? I’m sorry I thought it was appropriate to be a shoulder he could cry on, when he was there for me in return. Leo isn’tlikeyou. He doesn’t think of me that way.”
Olea’s laugh is just as dark as mine. “Oh, come on, Thora, isn’t it time you stopped lying to yourself? You were using him, stringing him along while playing house with me. You’re so caught up with ideas ofproprietyand what’s the done thing. You pretend you flout the rules of society, yet here you are because you were too afraid to sack them off entirely. Your dead father has the same hold over you that my… that Florencia has over me. Only you’re too blind to see it. You talk about me being scared to leave even though it’s what I truly want—isn’t that what you’ve done your whole life? When I met you, you were still wearing your wedding band—why? Was it because it meant something to you beyond your marriage? Or was it because you were afraid to exist in the world without it?
“Admit it. You were half in bed with Leonardo before you ever fell into mine. If he’d asked you to marry him, and let you stay at the university, you would have done it—forpropriety. Wouldn’t you? Whether or not he wanted other things from you.”
“That’s not true!” I exclaim, ignoring the roaring in my earsthat says she’s right. Olea thinks she knows everything, but she doesn’t.
“Believe what you want, Thora. At least I acknowledge that what we have is only possible because of our stupid choices, and I don’t want to be so quick to just throw that away.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that you’re obsessed with the idea of freedom but you’ve never stopped to consider that the sort of freedom you talk about is a privilege. It shouldn’t be, no woman should have to choose between safety and love, between safety andanything, but wedo. You’re so focused on the details that you haven’t stopped to consider that this, what we have now, is what others like us can only dream of.”
“You think women dream of this?” I lift my bloody nightgown and point at the dead hare. I don’t like the way she sayswomen like us. Are we so different? “This is killing us, Olea. I don’t know if you can sense it like I can, but we’re falling apart. My strength is failing, and I’m so, so hungry. It’s not sustainable. It’s not worth it. What kind of life are we selling to Petaccia? What if she takes the cure elsewhere? Do you think anybody wouldwantto be poison like this?”
Olea takes one step forward, so I can finally see her face. Her eyes are hollow and they glitter dangerously. And then she says something I have never considered. It freezes me cold. “Poison,” she says, deadly serious, “is the only thing that has ever kept me safe. I thought you of all people would understand that.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
In the days that follow I resume my vigil by the gate. This time I try the padlock, but either I’m wrong and I’m not as strong as I thought I was, or I’m tired, because the metal doesn’t even bend. Olea barely acknowledges me as I come to and go from the tower. She doesn’t go so far as to leave the room when I enter—the tower really isn’t big enough for that kind of petulance—but she might as well since she refuses to speak. It is simply easier for me to spend my days and nights sitting amongst the weeds, deadheading the purple-veined yellow flowers of Olea’s henbane and thinking.
I think a lot. Where the first days after the cure left me able to consider carefully the conundrum before me, even if Iwastoo busy to do so, now my brain is slack and uninterested. The same thoughts circle round and round. I start to spend even more time by the gate. I could cut the padlock, maybe. Climb the walls. I do neither.
I feel like a rabbit caught in a trap. No amount of wiggling will set me free. It is a feral, animalistic kind of fear that sets in. Every sound, every distant caw of a bird, every imagined rustle amongst the grasses, sets my teeth on edge.
