Then he saw what Enola was focusing on— not Kaveh himself but the sandwich in his hand, like he was afraid of the sandwich. But why? What was there to be afraid of? It was just cheese and meat . . .

Meat. Oh.

“Excuse me.”

He hadn’t even spared a thought to cultural taboos he might be violating simply by going about his day. He took the turkey sandwich outside and, a nice, safe distance away, horked down the rest of it. He wasn’t about to go hungry over this, but this was already starting off more poorly than he had hoped. Turkey flesh now safely inside his digestive tract, he went back inside. Before he retook his seat, he rummaged through his snacks and got rid of the Alien™ Fresh Beef Jerky (in hindsight, not the most sensitive of purchases in several regards). Then he sat back down on the bucket in front of the still-wriggling Enola.

“Okay, I’m here to clean you up. I want to make clear from the start: I don’t mean you any harm, I don’t mean your . . . Ampersand any harm. I also don’t want to make you uncomfortable. I didn’t realize eating meat might make you uncomfortable. Humans are omnivorous. You know that, right?”

“YES.”

“So most of us wouldn’t think twice about eating a turkey sandwich, but I understand why that might be kind of offensive to you. So if I do anything else that you don’t like, just tell me, and I’ll stop doing it. Do you understand?”

Enola didn’t answer, instead watching him with those shaking, luminous eyes. Kaveh got on his knees in front of Enola, who tried to shrink away but could not move enough to do so. Kaveh put on the thick yellow gloves, and ran his fingers over the dried black tar on the floor. Hardly any of it came off on the glove, and it had the texture of hardened caramelized sugar. He hoped it was water soluble. “What is this?”

“YOU MIGHT CALL IT BLOOD.”

He hissed in some air through his teeth. “Yikes.”

He drained two gallons into each of the buckets, starting with the organic dish detergent in the buckets and the organic floor cleaner on the floor of the cave, designating one bucket the clean water bucket and the other the dirty water bucket. He splashed a little of the clean, soapy water on the floor, careful not to get any on Enola himself. Fortunately, the “blood” on the floor was indeed water soluble. Kaveh secured permission to play his new iPod speaker, and could only hope that Enola didn’t have strong feelings about the Avett Brothers.

“Why did he . . . bleed you out?” Kaveh asked. There had been a point where he was careful not to get the dried alien effluvium on his clothes, but he was well past that now, practically kneeling in it as he scrubbed the floor like Cinderella.