Page 35 of Hunger

The day is harder than the last two.

I sit in the room with no windows and the sun moves overhead and I can't find the still place in myself where the hours pass without me. The hours pass and I'm in them. I'm awake. I'm thinking. I'm replaying. The line of her under the blanket. The sound of her speaking to the dark.Thank you for the rosin.The way her body softened into sleep two feet from my hand.

When the light fades I rise and I'm already moving.

I don't eat. The hunger is dull and uninteresting. I take the keys to the van from the table.

I'm at her apartment in twenty minutes.

The light in her window is on. I wait at the base of the building and look up. The wind is coming off the field at the edge of the complex and it's colder than it's been. The first true cold of the week.

I climb.

The window is closed and the curtain is drawn. The light bleeds yellow around the edges. I crouch on the ledge and listen. She isn't playing. She's moving in the room. The soft noises of a person getting ready for bed.

The light goes out.

I wait.

I don't work the latch immediately. I wait until I hear the soft rustle of her getting into bed, until the shifting of the mattress goes still, until I can hear the rhythm of her body settling.

Then I work the latch.

I let myself in and close the window behind me.

The room is dark. She's in the bed.

She's awake.

The same as last night. She's on her back. Her eyes are closed but her breathing isn't the slow breathing of sleep. She's lying there. She's listening.

I don't go to the corner this time.

I cross to the foot of the bed.

She doesn't move. I can hear her heartbeat from here, steady but quick. Quicker than last night. Quicker, and not slowing.

I move along the side of the bed. I lower myself to my knees beside it as I did the first night I came here, and the second night, and the third. I look at her face in the dim light through the curtain.

A piece of her hair has slipped across her temple.

The same strand from yesterday. The same strand I almost touched and didn't touch.

I lift my hand.

I don't stop it this time. The hand rises and the long fingers reach for her and one of them slides under the loose strand of her hair and lifts it back from her face. The tip of the finger grazes her cheek as it goes.

She's warm.

The warmth runs into me through the contact and I feel it again — the warmth of her shoulder against my chest in the parking lot, the night I first saw her. Living warmth. The blood close to the surface. The heat of a body that's doing the work of being alive.

I ease it back from her face.

She doesn't wake.

But her heartbeat has changed. I can hear it. It's gone faster. Her breath has gone faster. She's awake. She's been awake the whole time. She's lying in the dark with her eyes closed and her body open and she's letting me touch her.

I withdraw my hand.