Hunger and Thirst (51 page)

The buildings emptied out like honeycombed hives, pouring forth buzzing armies to meet the wasp attack. Under the cloud-puffed blue grey sky they rushed, the workers, the city people, hurrying back to their caves, their personal rounds again. The street was alive with them. Car doors slammed energetically, bus interiors swelled full, the buildings drained out and out until the halls were silent but for the swishing of mops and life was running in the streets.

He heard none of it.

He was sunken in sleep, his mouth sagging open. He couldn’t get up and watch the people hurrying home. He had an excuse.

He had a bullet in his back that had ricocheted and just about cut his spine in half.

It was around six thirty, getting dark.

He was wide awake, gasping for air. The air blew in on his cheek and felt cool for an instant. Then when he breathed it in it felt as though he were sucking on the exhaust pipe of a furnace. He thought of the times he’d been in the steam room at the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn. The air tasted almost as hot there. But this wasn’t wet heat and he wasn’t covered with glistening, pouring sweat.

He was as dry as tinder.

He was sure that if someone tried to lift him he’d be light and feathery because he was all dried up. Fingers and maybe hands and feet would flake off and flutter like snow to the floor. And if this imaginary person were to shake him, his lungs and his heart and anything else not nailed down would rattle.

His head still ached, worse than ever. It felt as though it were slowly expanding like a steamblown balloon. His face felt swollen and flushed. His ears felt heavy, like hanging stone. His features were all turgid and puffy. He was sure of it. The throbbing ache pulsated through his brains and down the nape of his neck and into his spine. The lines of pain ran back and forth like hot waves breaking, running in, clutching, soaking down into the beach of his tissues, a tide of agony.

Sounds were becoming strange and disjointed in his ears.

The sounds of traffic welled up into a crashing wave of noise. Then they died down and he could hardly hear them. But he heard every word a long-suffering hero was intoning on a radio serial the drunk was hearing.

He tried to shake his head and clear it up but that only made the ache flare up into a cutting acetylene blaze that started to eat away the walls of his skull and swell his brains to double the size.

He thought he was as dry as a bone. But he felt hot tears running from his eyes. And his temperature rose up and up until it seemed that hot hands stroked and caressed him and a maudlin furnace breathed maddening affection into his face. He could have sworn someone was standing over him with a bellows full of stifling hot air and blowing it into his face and nose and mouth and ears. It was as though his body were marshaling all its forces to dispel the last amounts of moisture in his body by every means, from visible, sentient tears to unseen, unfelt, evaporation.

His pulse throbbed faster and faster. His heart disguised itself as a heavy mallet and pounded against the walls of his chest as though a carpenter were building a house there. His body trembled, his right hand kept running over his face as though he might rub the heat away and let some of that cool breeze do its soothing work.

But the heat rose and rose and as seconds were gobbled by minutes and minutes glued sixty backs together into an hour, all things became transient and tenuous. He didn’t know where he was, what room or city or world. He might have been suspended over flames in space. His mouth hung open and he gasped for air, for water. He thought he heard his voice but only heard the voice of his thoughts because his speaking voice was just a wheezing issue of steam. And his mind was saying—

Purgatory.

He writhed on the pillow. His mind perked up, goggle-eyed and started in again as he suffered—Yes sir, we’ll make water the standard of exchange. It’s the most chief thing, the mostest chiefest thing Yes sir, No I mean …

Oh please give me water, he begged whatever power there was on earth or in heaven. Lynn where did you put the water bottle I can’t see it anywhere Oh not now for Chrissakes it’s too hot You give me a drink of water though and I’ll let you Hee hee how’s that for a bargain you son of a …

I must be in the desert, he thought, because it’s so hot. Oh it’s never so hot in the city in April March September April Can I have some cool water please. Oh warm water then. Anything who’s fussy? The vision of a calendar he’d seen once in a barber shop crossed his mind. It showed a fat coppery Indian boy fishing in a rushing stream and Erick remembered how the water bubbles frothed over the stones. God do you remember the desert pictures all they ever do is have no water They keep digging in the ground and there’s no water and the hero looks haggard like in
Four Feathers
.

Look. If I don’t get a drink I’ll break into dust and blow away. Is that what you want to see? Don’t you realize that you need water to weigh you down or you blow away—Fooof!—like that, like chaff in the wind? He remembered a drinking contest he’d had once or did he dream that and he remembered Lynn’s sink breaking down, both of them, the one in the kitchen and the one in the bathroom and God what fun oh Ha ha ha hee hee hee he’d said and that was so funny and Lynn standing there while …

I’m not going to think about Lynn at a time like this. Damn I’m hungry how can anyone think of anything but water when he’s hungry I mean water when he’s …

A drink!

I want a goddamn ocean of it, a a a a—what’s bigger than an ocean? Two oceans!! I want three, four, five, oceans of it! Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, fifteen, a million oceans of it!!!

A thimbleful.

Seven, eight, nine. Where was I? Twenty-nine, thirty, forty, fifty. Fifty what, bananas? Fifty glasses of water all pouring down my throat.

He remembered how it felt, water. He was in the park once, in Central Park and he had his wrists in the water. When was that? Long ago. Yes! He should have jumped and gotten cool and lived underneath the water and been a waving plant damn him for an idiot anyway. Oh God I’m thirsty. He remembered a fountain in the park boy was he thirsty
that
day. He wanted to there was a little boy he said madame he reached out for the little Thank you madame I was about to strangle him.

The water was cool and tasteless and delicious. And Wet so Wet. God how wet! That’s what he liked about water. It was so wet. I like the taste too. And I like water because it’s cool. But what I really like about water is that it’s wet. It isn’t sweet or tart or anything but it’s just wet and it’s JUST RIGHT! YES!!

Water is right for you. They ought to have it instead of money. Say,
there’s
an idea, all right, all right, all I almost drowned I was with Pop and I jumped out of the inner tube and I went down into the cool cool delicious water, the wet wet water. God it was awful to sink down into the cool delicious wonderful delicious water. I’d like to line them up fifty of them fifty glasses of cold water and then I’d strip down naked see and I’d drink the first one and then I’d drink the second one and pour the third over me and Lynn could watch me too and then I’d drink the fourth and then I’d kneel on my knees and I’d drink the fifth glass of water and then I’d drink the first glass and then I’d …

He went on talking in his rasping croak for more than an hour, saying the same things over and over without noticing it, thinking that he was delivering a perfectly cohesive and intelligible monologue.

Once in a while the talking would stop even though his lips and tongue went on moving in a silent mockery of speech.

Then, after a sentence or two, he’d realize that he wasn’t making any sound even though the rambling of his thoughts went on without cessation. And, with a painful concentration he forced his vocal organs to work again and the air of his room would crackle once more with his crazy lost stream of words that clung to the theme of water and its taste and sight and touch and smell and sound.

It was past eight when his tongue lolled in his mouth, his eyes shut slowly, his head sagged and he lost consciousness, sliding down into a hot cavern of night.

* * * *

What were those two copies of his letter to Sally doing up there on the wall?

He blinked and stared unwittingly at the hall lights shining through the two paned milky glass transom.

One a copy of the other. That’s what he couldn’t understand. He knew he’d only written one letter to her, when was it, yesterday?

And now there were two. Were they breeding? There was something mystic about it. Two letters where there should be one. The fact that there was a copy side by side, was definitely symbolic. He squinted suspiciously.

Eh? That’s a mystery and I love a mystery by Carleton Morse. He tried to read the letter. He couldn’t make out the writing though, his handwriting was very unnotable. Anyway he remembered what was in it. He always remembered.

Dear Sally
, it began …

“Oh honey,
hello!”

Her voice shook with excitement. The warmth seemed to reach him all the way from her house.

“Are you coming out?” she asked.

“I’ll be right out.”

“I don’t want to keep you a second. Come out now.”

“Okay.”

Her voice filled with affectionate urgency. “
Please
hurry,” She said.

He went back to his room. Lynn looked up as he entered.

“I must be out of my mind,” Lynn said, “To move into this squalid cell just for the sake of your dubious company.”

“You know you’re delighted,” Erick said.

“Benighted is the word.”

Lynn watched Erick pick up his jacket. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Sally.”

“What, already?”

“Already.”

Lynn shook her head. “You’re gone,” he said, “There goes your soul right down the drain.”

“Horse manure, dear friend,” Erick said, “See you later.”

It was a warm sunny September day. Erick waited at the corner for the bus.

He began to get a little excited as the bus left the downtown section and started chugging up the long hill to her house. He began to feel like a little boy returning from a summer in camp looking at everything with new eyes and saying, “There’s the good ol’ campus, there’s the good ol’ bus, there’s good ol’ Main Street.” Although he’d been away only a month, everything seemed fresh. The people, the cars, the houses standing on their green lawns. He decided the excitement was due to the fact that he was back at school.

But when he got off the bus, he knew it was more.

He stopped and stood motionless on the corner, the warm breeze on his face.

There it was. For a moment, the sense of coming home, a surge of pure happiness.

The screen door opened and she came out.

They started walking toward each other. Her face was radiant. It seemed to draw him in. They were like attracting poles. He hardly felt his feet on the ground. He seemed to float. He has never felt her love more powerfully than he did in those few seconds when she started to run and threw herself into his arms. Her words flashed through his mind—
I want to stop loving you
.

She was quiet a long time. As though she couldn’t catch her breath to speak. She clung tightly to him and held her warm cheek against his.

Finally she whispered,

“You’re back.”

“I’m back.”

They kissed. Her lips were hungry.

Then she smiled happily and sighed, rubbing a little lipstick off his mouth with the edge of her right forefinger. A tear started in the corner of her right eye. She brushed it away.

“My goodness,” she said shakily, “I’m all upset.”

“Sally,” he said.

They stared for the house and she took his arm tightly. She kept on looking at him, her eyes drinking in the sight of him. She seemed to be looking long enough to make up for the months they’d been apart. Her eyes seemed to speak—I can’t believe it. You’re back but I can’t believe it. She stroked his arm.

“Oh, see how tan he is,” she murmured, her voice vibrant with loving warmth, “You must have gone to the beach a lot.”

“I did,” he said.

She smiled at him as if his words were the most fascinating she had ever heard. And he smiled back affectionately, feeling a rush of love for her.

At his smile, she made a sound of unrepressed delight and pushed her cheek against his shoulder joyously. It reminded him of Grace’s two-year-old daughter pressing her face into a pillow when her birthday party was just too exciting for her. That was how Sally acted, unable to contain her joy. It flowed over the edges of her smile, her touch, her words. She was like a joyous child and he was her Christmas morning.

“Leo told me I shouldn’t come out and meet you,” she said, “She said I shouldn’t show you how much you mean to me. But I don’t care. I did anyway. I tried to walk. I tried so hard. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk slowly, like a lady. Not when I saw your face. And when you smiled at me—Oh Erick!—I had to run to you.!”

He put his arm around her and squeezed. “I’m glad you did,” he said, “I want it that way. You look pretty. I like that ribbon in your hair.”

“Thank you darling. How have you been? I want to know everything you’ve done this summer.”

“That will take some telling,” he said with a smile.

“I don’t care how long it takes,” she said, “If you don’t.”

Leo looked up as they came in.

“He’s back,” Sally said.

Leo looked amused. “So I see,” she said.

“Hello, Leo,” Erick said, “Have a nice summer?”

“Pretty nice,” she said, “Why didn’t you give me a buzz?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Fine excuse.”

Then Sally took his arm.

“I want to show you something, Erick,” she said.

Leo watched them leave. “See you,” she said to Erick.

“Sure,” he said.

Sally stopped in her bedroom doorway. She looked up at him. He felt enveloped by the sudden surging of her love. There was no seeming transition. Suddenly they were embracing and her warm mouth was clinging to his, drinking. They trembled. Her fingers opened and closed on his back. Erick wondered if Leo were listening to them.