answer the question truthfully, as I knew Dr. Martin would not understand. I don’t think Pepper-Man changed to suit my needs, as he himself would have me believe. I think he changed because I changed. That is the curse of the faeries, you see, they are ever changing, evolving, adapting—struggling to hold on to a core of self. They are like air, in a way, or water: they react to shifts in temperature and environment, and, of course, to what they eat.
The key is in the diet. Always.
He changed because he’d fed from me for so long and adopted traits of humanity through his nourishment. Through me, he learned to be a man again, but let me make one thing clear: Pepper-Man is ever self-serving, just like any other faerie. My well-being is his well-being; my path is his path—he needs me more than I need him. Back then, when he was Tommy, I was still the source of the experience he craved—as well as his source of life.
Was there ever romance between us? Sure. But it was always so much more than that. The love was just a game—the hunger was always what counted. And Pepper-Man liked living through me; grew strong and fat and very lucid—vivid—when he fed from me. I think my blood resonated more deeply with his almost forgotten humanity than, say, the sap of a birch tree or the heart blood of a fox.
I think he was a very dangerous man when he was alive, way back in time. He must have had a honeyed tongue and persuasion must have been his gift. I picture him a merchant prince, counting golden coins. There’s no point in asking, he doesn’t remember a thing. But it’s still there, the template, the basic blueprint of who he once was. Ruthless and cunning, that’s my Pepper-Man, no matter his pleasing exterior.
Maybe I adapted too, and learned to live with the monster instead of struggling against it. If I did, it happened such a long time ago, I cannot recall how that felt, being afraid of Pepper-Man. He was ugly at first, for sure, and I always worried about what he would do, but then—he was always there beside me, a steady companion who knew me more intimately than anyone else, and my only champion for so long. There was much comfort in that. He did what Mother could not and gave me a sense of self-worth. To him I was precious—even if only as his source of existence.
You can’t get more important than that, after all.
These latter years he has changed again, paling to a dusty gray.
I think that means I might be changing too, slowly shedding my colors with age. I wonder what I will look like at the end. When I walk out the door to this house for the very last time.
Will I even recognize myself in the mirror?
* * *
After he became Pepper-Man, drinking and gambling was no longer Tommy’s habit. That first winter of his new life, before we got married, he left his human vices behind, and instead we would go for long walks through the streets of S— and have ice cream by the sea. He took me to the movies and bought me pastries and roses.
The women Tommy Tipp used to have relations with observed this new development with suspicion and jealousy. Soon there was a rumor that I had fallen pregnant, and that Tommy stood by me because it was “the right thing to do,” and he was a good man, really. When time went on and no baby was in sight, they said I’d either tricked him or miscarried.
The rumors made Mother uncomfortable.
“He should make a decent woman out of you,” she said. “No need to feed the gossip mill. God knows it would be better for all of us if you left this house for good.”
She didn’t care at all that Tommy Tipp had so recently been considered “bad news.” I think any man would have done for her, as long as someone pulled me out of her hair. I think that if she could, she would have rather just forgotten I existed.
After seven months as Tommy the locksmith, Pepper-Man did as Mother wished, and married me the first day of May. The wedding took place at the S— town hall. Tommy Tipp’s mother and aunts donned dresses in powder blue and salmon pink, pulled straw hats down their ears, and came to throw rice as we exited