"Show him Belle. Show him something to put in his dreams. He'll come around fast enough."
He squeezed his eyelids tighter shut.
"All right then, Sweetie, Jail-Birdie Boy," said Belle, dropping skirts. "Your appetite for our cell block service'll change. How d'you want your eggs, Bird-Boy?" She laughed.
He raised his head, dully. "Any way you feel like laying them, goddamnit," he snarled.
The harsh amusement dissolved. "A funny one? Did I say fresh meat, dears? Too fresh, hah? All right. Should we serve him a chef's special?"
The other two gruntingly pushed the steam table forward. One lifted a metal plate, something between a dish and a bowl, and scooped a ladle full of a greyish mess of whatever, mush of some sort. Edible? Conceivably. Then she reached into some nauseous recess of the table and brought out a stout roach, legs moving feebly. She dropped it into the mush. Number two drew a steaming cup of muddy liquid from an urn. Coffee? Well, it was a brown-grey, it had a smell, it wasn't soup. Coffee. The hag with the cup hawked gurglingly and spat into the cup. The third grinned evilly and dropped three slices of grey-white bread—grey was in everything—on the gritty corridor floor; stirred them around with her bunion cut left shoe; picked them up.