After he swallowed the bite of eggs, he said, “I could taste you on the fork. Your saliva has a lovely flavor—except for a faint bitterness. No doubt that’s not a usual component, just the result of a sour stomach.”
She could find no escape by closing her eyes, so she watched as he devoured the remains of her breakfast.
When he finished, she had a question of her own. “Last night… why did you eat the spider?”
“Why not?”
“That’s no answer.”
“It’s the best answer to any question.”
“Then give me second-best.”
“You think it was disgusting?”
“I’m just curious.”
“No doubt, you see it as a negative experience—eating an icky, squirmy spider.”
“No doubt.”
“But there are no negative experiences, Chyna. Only sensations. No values can be attached to pure sensation.”
“Of course they can.”
“If you think so, then you’re in the wrong century. Anyway, the spider had an interesting flavor, and now I understand spiders better for having absorbed one. Do you know about flatworm learning?”
“Flatworm?”
“You should have encountered it in a basic biology course along the way to becoming such a highly educated woman. You see, certain flatworms can gradually learn to negotiate a maze—”
She did remember, and interrupted: “Then if you grind them up and feed them to another batch of flatworms, batch number two can run the same maze on the first try.”
“Good. Yes.” Vess nodded happily. “They absorb the knowledge with the flesh.”
She didn’t need to consider how to phrase her next question, for Vess could be neither insulted nor flattered. “Jesus, you don’t actually believe you now know what it’s like to be a spider, have all the knowledge of a spider, because you’ve eaten one?”
“Of course not, Chyna. If I were that literal-minded, I’d be crazy. Wouldn’t I? In an institution somewhere, talking to a crowd of imaginary friends. But because of my sharp senses, I did absorb from the spider an ineffable quality of spiderness that you’ll never be able to understand. I heightened my awareness of the spider as a marvelously engineered little hunter, a creature of power. Spider is a power word, you know, though it can’t be formed from the letters of my name.” He hesitated, pondering, and then continued: “It can be formed from the letters of your name.”
She didn’t bother to remind him about her mother’s precious spelling. Only spyder could be found in Chyna Shepherd.
“And it was risky, eating a spider, which added considerably to the appeal,” Vess continued. “Unless you’re an entomologist, you can’t be sure if any particular specimen is poisonous or not. Some, like the brown recluse, are extremely dangerous. A bite on the hand is one thing… but I had to be sure that I was quick and crushed it against the roof of my mouth before it could bite my tongue.”
“You like taking risks.”
He shrugged. “I’m just that kind of guy.”
“On edge.”
“Words in my name,” he acknowledged.
“And if you’d been bitten on the tongue?”
“Pain is the same as pleasure, just different. Learn to enjoy it, and you’re happier with life.”
“Even pain is value neutral?”
“Sure. Just sensation. It helps grow the reef of the soul—if there is a soul.”
She didn’t know what the hell he was talking about—the reef of the soul—and she didn’t ask. She was weary of him. Weary of fearing him, even weary of hating him. With her questions, she was striving to understand, as she had striven all her life, and she was tired to death of this search for meaning. She would never know why some people committed countless little cruelties—or bigger ones—and the struggle to understand had only exhausted her and left her empty, cold, and gray inside.
Pointing to her red and swollen index finger, Vess said, “That must hurt. And your neck.”
“The headache’s the worst of it. And none of it’s anything like pleasure.”
“Well, I can’t easily show you the way to enlightenment and prove you’re wrong. It takes time. But there’s a smaller lesson, quick to learn….”
He got up from his chair and went to a spice rack at the end of the kitchen cabinets. Among the small bottles and tins of thyme, cloves, dill, nutmeg, chili pepper, ginger, marjoram, and cinnamon was a bottle of aspirin.