Pleasure
A hallway, the mid-afternoon sun slices through the gloom via the only window. It is a long and narrow hallway and Clarice Starling walks down it. There are doors to her left, many doors that lead to many things.
There is the door that leads back to the farm, to the barn and to Hannah. In the barn, there is no tack room like there was back in the real farm. She could come up to Hannah and touch and not be afraid of losing her. Here there is the silence she longs for.
There is also that door that brings her back to the Lutheran House, the door back to her small corner in the Behavioral Science Division and the door back to Jame Gumb's house. But she passes these doors because she doesn't need them now, she will come back to them in due time.
The door at the very end of the hallway, buried in the gloom, this is where she is going. She reaches it and touches the ivory doorknob; it is cool next to her fingertips. Clarice turns it and the faintest smell of something gloriously cooking reaches her. Her nose detects a hint of oregano and basil; there is thyme as well. Time, yes, she has all the time in the world.
She pushes it open and there it is, right out of her memory, a perfect reconstruction of the cell. "Ah, Clarice! So glad you could join us!" Dr. Lecter moves his head slightly to the left to point at the little girl sitting on his cot.
Clarice greets them, "Dr.Lecter, Mischa."
"So what do you have for us today, Clarice? Nothing gruesome, I hope." There is that metallic rasp to his voice, which he has long since lost. But she remembers it so vividly, like a drop of blood in a landscape of snow, that he has it here.
"Nothing at all, Dr.Lecter," she smiles seeing Krendler is still there, in a corner hanging by his legs. "I just wanted to check up on you two."
"We're fine, just fine, aren't we Mischa?" He addresses the little. She nods and turns to the sketch of Florence on the walls of the cell.
"Good," Clarice says before turning her back to them, ready to leave.
"Clarice."
"Yes, Dr. Lecter?"
"Why did you do it?"
"So you could be with Mischa."
"She had a place you know, she was going to take your place."
"Plans change, Dr. Lecter," she finally says as she shut the door behind her.
We cannot recognize her now but she was Clarice Starling and she is sitting in front of a fireplace. The fire burns the wood slowly, which pleases her. Many things please her; fine wine complementing her meal; a complete stranger coming up to her during intermission at the theater asking her for her number; the taste of the stranger's blood and come in her mouth, mingling.
But what pleases her most is knowing that she is here. That she can feel the warmth of the fire and that Dr. Lecter is no more than a figure in her memory palace, like the Pieta, grand but utterly lifeless.