Page 19 of Hunger

I lie on my back. I look at the ceiling. The streetlight outside throws a thin pale line across one corner. The wind pushes against the window glass.

I'm awake.

I shouldn't be awake. I should be tired enough to sleep. I'm tired enough to sleep. But something in me is listening, the wary attention of a deer in a clearing it doesn't trust.

I roll onto my side. I close my eyes. I'm still listening.

I don't hear anything.

I lie there. The wind dies. The pipes in the wall click once and go silent. Somewhere in the building a door closes. I keep listening.

Nothing comes.

Eventually I sleep. I don't know when. I only know that when I wake the room is pale with first light and the listening has gone with the dark.

* * *

Farkas

The phone rings at one-fourteen in the afternoon.

I've been waiting at the kitchen table since I rose at noon. The blackout fabric over the kitchen window keeps the daylight out but I can feel the sun on the other side of the wall, weighing down on the house. My body is slow. My limbs feel heavier than they have for years. I haven't been awake during the day in months. It isn't pleasant.

I lift the receiver before the second ring.

"Yes."

"Sir." Whitfield's voice is brisk. The line is clear. "I have what you asked for."

"Tell me."

"The parents. James and Eunhee Lin. They reside at 4218 Pacific Heights Drive, Omaha, in the Dundee neighborhood. Mr. Lin is in private practice. Internal medicine. His office is on Dodge Street near the medical center. Mrs. Lin works as a registered nurse at Methodist Hospital."

I let the address settle in my memory. I haven't needed to write anything down in a long time.

"And the faculty member."

"Dr. Margaret Reeves. She's sixty-two years old. She's been on the violin faculty at the University of Nebraska — Lincoln since nineteen-seventy. She supervised Miss Lin's audition placement when she enrolled in the fall of nineteen-eighty-two and she continued to coach her informally throughout Miss Lin's two years at the university, even though Miss Lin wasn't formally enrolled in the music program. There are several piecesof correspondence in the music department files referencing the arrangement."

"Her home address."

"Two-four-one-eight North Forty-Second Street, Lincoln. A bungalow in the Havelock neighborhood. She lives alone. Her husband died six years ago. There are two adult children, both out of state. She has a cat. She walks to campus when the weather permits and drives a 1981 Volkswagen Rabbit when it doesn't."

The detail is more than I need, but Whitfield is always thorough.

"Thank you."

"Sir." He hesitates. He's been hesitating with me twice now in three days. "May I ask the nature of the matter? Anything you wish me to anticipate?"

"No."

"Of course." He recovers smoothly. "If you require additional information, I'm at the number."

"I know where to find you."

I hang up the receiver.

I sit at the table. The address is in my head. The professor's name is in my head. Sixty-two. Lives alone. Husband died six years ago. Two children out of state. A cat. Drives a Rabbit.