The Hunger (26 page)

“You’re celebrating a man’s destruction,” Sarah said as they sat down to a Mexican dinner at Las Palmas on Eighty-sixth Street.

“I’m celebrating nothing of the kind. Hutch still has his job.”

“The biggest discovery in history, and you took it right out of his lap. You.”

He winced. “OK, I’m an ogre.”

“Ambitious bastard.” She smiled. “I wish I could punish you, Tom. God knows you need it. But the truth is I’m so damn relieved, I can’t see straight. Knowing that we’re out from under Hutch is — well, it does deserve a celebration.”

“I’m only an ogre when it comes to protecting your work.”

“Wipe that sincere smirk off your face, my love. It makes you look like a card sharp.”

“I think I resent that.”

“You love it.” She lifted her glass of beer. “Here’s to you, you bastard.”

“And to you, bitch.”

“Don’t call me names.
I
don’t deserve it.”

He could see a real argument developing out of this, so he said no more. The waiter returned and they gave their orders. Tom was surprised to hear Sarah order the biggest dinner on the menu; she normally subsisted on nibbles and snacks. Sometimes he thought a handful of birdseed a day was all she really needed. “At least you’re really hungry for once. That’s a good sign.”

“Developing neurosis. I’ll be as plump as a pigeon in a few years.”

“You don’t care?”

Her eyes flashed. “Tonight I want to eat. There’s nothing the matter with that.” She paused. “I’m ravenous, as a matter of fact. A second ago I felt like taking a salad right off that tray.” She gestured toward a waiter wheeling among the tables.

Their food was served promptly. For five minutes Sarah was silent, digging at her enchiladas and tamales. “Care for more?” Tom asked.

“Yeah!” He signaled the waiter and she ordered another round. An appetite was fine, but she was going to turn into a sausage if this kept up. “Got a pencil and paper?” she asked. “I’ve had some insights.”

“I’ll memorize them. Tell me.”

“One. We’re correct to assume that Miriam is evolved from a primate ancestor. She’s too close to us not to be. Two. We therefore need skeletal X rays so that we can determine which primate line is involved. Three. One thing is certain, she and her kind are in some sort of symbiosis with us, otherwise why would they keep themselves hidden? They take something from us we wouldn’t otherwise give.”

“Why does that follow?”

“What else would be their motive for secrecy? And it’s not a matter of being overlooked. It is deliberate. It must also be hard to do. It can’t have been easy to remain undetected for so long.” She paused, ate a couple of bites with birdlike speed. “I wonder what they take from us. I wonder if we’ll find out.”

Tom envied her the clarity of her mind. She had reduced the whole affair to two important questions.

Suddenly she stopped eating. She dropped her fork on the plate and looked up at him, her face pallid. “Let’s get out of here.” Tom obediently paid the bill and they went out into the crowds thronging Eighty-sixth Street. Smoke billowed from chestnut stands, radios under the arms of geeks blared disco music. They passed a Chinese restaurant, a German restaurant, a Greek restaurant. Only when they had rounded the corner onto Second Avenue did the crowds thin.

“I’m going to lose my lunch, I’m afraid.”

“OK, honey.” He wasn’t surprised, the way she had eaten so much spicy food. “Can you make it —” She let go in the gutter. Fortunately, their building was just at the other end of the block and Herb, the late-shift doorman, had seen it happen. He trotted up with a towel in his hand. “Doctor Roberts,” he said in a gruff, surprised voice. “Jeez, you must have got the stomach flu, ma’am.”

Tom was holding her head. He brushed her sweating face with the towel. Cars rushed by three feet away. Pedestrians passed up and down the sidewalk. A fire truck, complete with balancing Dalmatian, roared by. Sarah coughed mightily.

“Oh, I feel
awful
,” she moaned. “Tom I’m so cold!”

“Come on, let’s get you to bed!”

“Can you make it, Doc? You want I should carry her?”

Sarah staggered to her feet. “No thanks, Herb.” She tottered into the lobby on Tom’s arm. His mind inventoried the various types of food poisoning it could be. The onset was too sudden for botulism. They hadn’t had mushrooms, so it couldn’t be that. Probably old friend salmonella, or just plain overeating. He’d keep her quiet and warm, she’d be on her feet in no time.

“Gonzalo,” Herb said into the housephone, “come watch the door. I’m goin’ upstairs with the Docs.”

They rode up quietly, the only sound in the elevator Sarah’s breathing. “Tom, it’s going to happen!” Her voice quavered.

They were at nineteen and rising. “Just another second, honey.”

Herb looked miserable, he was about to get one messed-up elevator. But he didn’t, she made it as far as their foyer. Tom was half angry with her, half pitying. She didn’t have to eat like a hippo, after all. But she was suffering for it, and he suffered with her. “C’mon, honey,” he said, “it’s bed and bucket time.” All he got was a moan.

He left her sprawled on the bed with their mop bucket on the floor beside her and strict instructions to use it. Then he went about cleaning up the mess in the foyer without getting sick himself. Herb had slipped away while he was bedding her down. The man couldn’t be blamed.

When he returned to the bedroom he was surprised to find her sitting up. “I’m better,” she said. She glared, as if daring him to contradict her.

At that moment the doorbell rang. “God damn, they never leave you alone — who is it!”

“Herb again. You got a package.”

Tom pulled the door open. “A Fleet Messenger come up and delivered it while Gonzalo was workin’ the door, Doctor Haver.” It was a compact box wrapped in beautiful blue paper and tied with a ribbon. It was addressed to Sarah. With a shrug Tom took it to her.

“Who could have sent me a present?”

“Open it, maybe there’s a card inside.”

She shook it and listened.

“Expecting a bomb, sweetheart?”

With a slight smile playing across her face she tore it open. At once powerful perfume filled the room. There were six cakes of yellow-green soap.

“Good God, throw it out, throw it out!”

“Miriam sent it.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little sweet? As a matter of fact —”

“Come on, honey, it’s nice.” She held a bar to her nose and inhaled. “Wonderful. I told her how much I liked it while I was at her house. She’s just being considerate.”

“All right already, seal it up in something for now. Let me get used to the idea.” Then a thought struck him. “Good God, I
know
that soap!” He took a bar in his hand. Sure enough, a label was imprinted on it,
Brehmer and Cross, to the Trade
. Tom burst out laughing, tossed the soap on the bed.

“What the hell’s so funny? She has it made up specially.”

“Oh, yeah! Sure she does! You know what that stuff is? Mortician’s soap. They use it on corpses. That’s where in hell I’ve smelled the damn stuff and why it makes me sick. They used it on Gran Haver when I was a kid. Kept her from stinking up the living room.”

Sarah touched the bar of soap, withdrew her hand. Tom came close to her. “Her thought processes are different from ours.”

“But she said —”

“Who knows what she said? You shouldn’t assume you understand her motives. Maybe it’s some kind of joke.”

After a long silence Sarah said that she supposed it must be. There weren’t any arguments when Tom threw the soap away. Her nausea appeared to have stopped and she didn’t have any significant fever so they contented themselves with doing nothing for now about her sickness.

“You probably don’t even need electrolyte replacement,” Tom commented.

“Good. I really don’t even want water right now.”

“Wait till you feel thirsty. Hey, look at this.” He was glancing through
TV Guide
. “‘Great Performances’ is on thirteen at nine. It’s nine now.”

While they were watching, Tom noticed Sarah rubbing her right arm. “You OK?”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe you sprained it in the street.”

“It’s hurt all afternoon.”

Midway through the show she turned on her bedside lamp. “Tom, look at this.” There was a pinhole lesion on her forearm.

“Did you give blood?”

“When would I give blood? Maybe something stung me. I’ll bet that’s what made me sick.”

Tom examined the wound. The bruise running along the vein, the redness of the wound itself — it looked for all the world as if Sarah had been given a transfusion.

“A spider bite,” she said.

Tom noticed a rasping undertone. Sarah was scared. He touched her shoulder. “If that’s what it is, not to worry, it’s a mild one.”

“Yeah. Mild.”

“That’s right, darling. No myalgia, no cramps. Those are both present when you have a serious spider bite.”

She sighed. “It’s disgusting, but I’m incredibly hungry again.”

Tom didn’t know what to say. His mind moved through the catalogue of her symptoms. He thought of suggesting that Sarah check into the hospital but immediately dismissed the idea. The symptoms were too minor. Thousands of people suffered slight cases of food poisoning or insect bite and never went to a hospital. Yet Tom worried. He looked at her face. Its color was poor, and its unusual roundness indicated slight edema. Her skin felt cool and rather dry. “Hungry or not,” he said at last, “I think you ought to try to get some sleep. We’ll eat a big breakfast in the morning.”

She didn’t argue but her eyes were pained. They took off their clothes, settled into bed. After five minutes with
Time
, Tom turned out the light. He patted Sarah’s bottom, then listened to her tossing and turning for what seemed a long time. Only when her breath became regular and deep did he begin to relax. A last touch told him she had no fever. Finally, sleep took him as well.

* * *

Thunder rolled and blue lightning flashed against the ceiling. Sarah stared into the darkness that followed the flash. Hadn’t that been a silhouette in the hall? Sheets of rain fell. The wind moaned past the building. She lay absolutely still, barely breathing, waiting for more lightning so she could see.

When it came the hall was empty. Her heart began to beat more slowly. She had been about to wake Tom. Now she withdrew her hand and threw her forearm across her eyes. Her skin crawled, she ached, she was freezing. A vision came to her, of a Big Mac and double fries and a huge, cold Coke. Disgusting, she hardly ever ate that sort of stuff. Yet it remained there, a powerful temptation. Her eyes went to the clock on the dresser. It was hard to read the dial from here but it appeared to be about two-thirty.

A bad time to go outside in New York City. She visualized the McDonald’s on Eighty-sixth Street: a few people huddled over coffee, maybe a couple of cops taking a break. She could almost smell the place, a scent of heaven.

She slipped out of bed slowly and very carefully. If she woke Tom she sure as hell wouldn’t be able to do what she intended. The McDonald’s wasn’t far. She would probably be fine. She pulled on jeans and a sweat shirt and laced up her jogging shoes. As she left the apartment she noticed that Tom — typically — had forgotten to lock up. She paused to lock both the dead bolt and the mortise lock with her key and then went to the elevator. For a supposedly ruthless type Tom was surprisingly absentminded.

The elevator doors opened onto an empty lobby. There was a stentorian rattling sound — Herb asleep at his post. The lobby doors were locked to the street so Sarah would have to let herself in when she got back.

Outside the air was storm-fresh, smelling wet and green. But for the soughing of the wind the street was quiet. Sarah found the emptiness of it all quite wonderful. She strode along feeling as if she had acquired a sort of secret power just by coming out at this hour. She went two blocks down and turned east on Eighty-sixth. The McDonald’s was open, as she had known it would be. There were many more people inside than she had visualized. In fact the place was humming. She had to spend five minutes in line, finally all but hopping from foot to foot with hunger.

She ordered two Big Macs, double fries, a pie and a jumbo Coke. Cradling her food, she found a seat across from a hulking young man who ignored her. After a couple of annoyed tongue-clicks he got up and pranced off to another table. For the first time Sarah really looked around. She almost laughed, everybody in the place was gay except her. There were transvestites huddled over milkshakes, leather boys devouring Steakburgers, men in all variations of straight and drag dress, all engaged in a slow dance among the tables.

Sarah was left alone, which was fine with her. The hamburgers seemed unusually good, rich with flavor, aromatic, cooked just right. Better than Big Macs usually were, far better. Even the Coke and fries were wonderful. What did this place do — serve gourmet junk food after the moon went down?

The only thing that prevented her from getting another couple of hamburgers was the memory of what had happened earlier. She didn’t feel full but good sense told her not to overeat. At least Tom had promised a big breakfast. She pictured eggs and hot, spicy sausages and a mountain of buttered toast, and maybe pancakes on the side. Her mouth watered. The big clock above the take-out counter read 3:00. It was at least four hours until she could taste that breakfast. She got up, forced herself to leave the restaurant. She’d pass the hours walking, she had no intention of cooping herself up in their bedroom until dawn.

Her earlier indisposition seemed to be gone. There was more rain threatening, but she didn’t care. She would welcome the bracing cold of it. Her hunger was still with her, but it only added intensity to the glorious way she was beginning to feel. She found herself walking east past empty shops and dark apartment houses, and with a more rapid step into the quiet stretch between York and East End avenues. Here the buildings are older, the lights dimmer. Across East End lay the darkness of Carl Shurz Park. With its few old streetlamps lighting the paths, and the mist that hung beneath the tall trees, the park reminded her of a scene from childhood, from her teenage years in Savannah. She had a vivid memory of Bobby Dewart, the sour smell of his skin and the lovely, adolescent hours they had spent touching one another among the headstones in the old Savannah City Graveyard. They had walked along the docks afterward, smelling the salt breeze that came up the Savannah River at night, watching the last tourists leave the Pirate House Restaurant, and declaring the eternity of their love.