Chapter 2 - cookies

"Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Act so . . . polite."

"I'm polite because I want them to feel comfortable with me."

He chewed another bite and swallowed it. "But you don't need to be."

"You don't think I should be polite anyway?"

"Listen, I've been here more than three months," he said. "I know what it's all about. I've seen people come and go. They always get fat in between. You're only here to make them gain weight, so why do you need to act nice?"

"Maybe some of them will be here longer than others. I want to have good relationships with the people I'm looking after."

He smirked. "Like me?"

"Well, yeah, I suppose."

"I'll definitely be here longer. The others get fat and leave, but me, since I'm so god-damn-skinny?" He sounded for a second like he was imitating the senior liaison. "I stay."

"Eventually," I said, "if you become more of a burden than an asset to them, they'll get rid of you."

"So I've been told."

"You should just do it," I said softly. "Don't keep fighting."

"Just give up and do what you say?" He laughed. "Sounds like a plan, keeperman."

I glanced down at his bowl of macaroni and cheese involuntarily, then wondered if that was a bad thing to have done.

He swallowed the bit he'd had in his mouth, smiled, and calmly but deliberately picked up the spoon and scooped out another lump for himself. "Yeah. You got me. There are only a couple things I really, really like to eat, and this is one of them." He clean off his spoon with his tongue, and I realized he'd finished the bowl already.

Wordlessly, I reached out to take the bowl of caramel off the counter and extended it. His mouth quirked. "And that's another." He came forward and exchanged dishes with me. My breathing sped up, just a little. I was going to win. I'd broken through. How could no one have figured this out before? Staggered meals and caramel--

He used the same spoon to eat the thick golden sweet, but paused. "This would taste better with some more of the apples you gave me earlier." I hurried to oblige him. "Thanks." He leaned against the counter and dipped the apples into the caramel like carrots into salad dressing.

"What else do you like?" I asked, offhand.

He raised his eyebrows. Two more apple shards went into his mouth before he answered. "Oreos," he said, "salmon, honey mustard pretzels, and tater tots. Got any of those?"

"They could be acquired," I promised immediately.

Just shrugging, he ran his finger around the inside of the bowl to get the last of it and set the bowl down on the counter. "Go ahead, but I'm just telling you," he said, "I'm not going to eat them. I'm finished with that now, back to normal tonight. And your reverse psychology shit won't work anymore either."

I felt my face fall. Damn. Scrambling, I proposed, "What if you just let me bring you a dessert every night? I won't bother you for the rest of the day."

He squinted. "Really?"

Nodding, I said, "I promise. Let me bring you something every night, whatever you feel like, and I'll leave you alone for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You can even refuse the dessert if you don't feel like eating it that day."

That sounded a lot like a good deal for him. I was counting on his sweet tooth to make it a good deal for me.

He considered. "All right," he said. "You can start with those Oreos."

"Deal," I said.

"Deal, dogboy." He shook my hand and, mockingly, patted his stomach, knowing ahead of time that I'd be unable not to watch it. He wasn't heavy enough to look like a treat, but he was still human, and I looked. "Want to make me even happier?" He asked it like a challenge.

"Yes."

"Br ing me some tranqs," he said.

My face tightened. "You know I can't."

"Ask the boss lady," he said. "Ask her if it's worth it to see me eat willingly, if I can have tranqs." Although I would have put it the other way around, I understood his meaning. I nodded. He waved a goodbye and said, "My tummy's full, keeperman. I want to nap today."

"Please do."

He laughed and left, presumably to go lie down.

***


The next day he was another two pounds up. I wondered if it was just water weight, since I knew from my training that humans metabolized excess calories into fat over the course of two to four days, so whatever he'd gained was either temporary and caused by too much salt or too little sleep (neither of which seemed likely), or gain from previous days before our breakthrough. As he had asked, I'd requested permission from Eras to get him more sedatives. She'd narrowed her eyes warily and said, "You don't carry more than one to him at a time, understand? Tell him it's one a day until he's ten pounds heavier. Then, if he's good, he can have two. And if there's ever a loss, he gets none." I agreed with her thinking and promised to do just that.

He widened his eyes when I entered the TV room and held out my hand with a small capsule in a foil-backed plastic skin. Instantly, he took it out of my hand and broke into it, and the pill was gone. "More?" he asked. I explained the rules. His face fell.

"I asked Eras," I said hesitantly. "She said that the drug isn't physically addictive."

"Obviously," scoffed the young man. "Or I'd have been climbing the walls, wouldn't I?"

"So . . . what's with you, then?" I meant the behavior I was seeing.

"Doesn't make me want it any less," he said. He narrowed his eyes slyly. "One a day isn't going to do me much good. I might refuse to eat your dessert."

"Then you'll lose weight," I said, "and lose your pills."

He frowned.

"Gain ten pounds and keep it, and we'll talk again."

I could see him considering it--and deciding against it. But there was time.

Ten minutes later he was bleary and unconcerned, lounging across the couch. I got a good deal of both breakfast and lunch into him, but not everything, and I was as good as my word when he asked me to stop pestering him and take the things he didn't want away. By two o'clock he was completely over the effects of the drug and sought me out--I was with the piggy, Luke, in his room, sitting next to him as he lay moaning with pain, gently massaging his engorged belly because it helped relieve the pains of overeating.

"Keeperman?" Charlie asked hopefully, already wearing a request in his voice.

Pleasantly, I replied, "What, Charlie?"

"If I eat all the lunch you saved and promise to eat all my dinner and dessert, plus anything else you say, will you go get me another pill?"

If it hadn't centered around the idea of him promising something in advance, I would have jumped on the idea, no matter what Eras said. But that was no guarantee. "Are you ten pounds heavier?" I asked, as Luke sighed contentedly and belched. "Should we go weigh you?"

He grimaced.

"Never mind," he muttered, and left.

He skimped on dinner, but that night, as close to when he usually went to sleep as I could, I brought him a box of Oreos I'd gone out of my way to find. The cooks in the farm's kitchen didn't generally have Oreos, but the assistant who acquired snack foods from human settlements was amenable to the idea of buying up a few boxes for me while he shopped. Charlie made a face remembering his promise, but I sat down next to him on the couch and opened the box and the first of its interior packages for him, putting the first cookie directly to his lips. His eyes widened. "Here," I murmured. I wasn't sure, when he opened his mouth, whether he meant it as acceptance or intent to protest. I popped the cookie in. He closed his mouth around it and chewed, humming quietly.

"Haven't had one of these in a while. You know, normal food."

"We feed you normal food, don't we?"

"Yeah," he said, "but I don't eat it." Whatever that meant.

I had the next cookie at his mouth immediately. He accepted it. The next one waited for him while he swallowed. Frowning, he took it out of my hand and placed it between his teeth himself, and bit off a smaller bite of it. I relinquished the box of them, too, when he tried to take it from me. Whether I fed him or he fed himself, what was important was that he was fed.

Half the package and a glass of milk later, he burped quietly and told me he was finished. I took the box away into the kitchen but left it out on the counter so he'd see it, and quietly found each of the others to order them not to touch it. I didn't want anyone interfering with my plans for Charlie.