Page 42 of Hunger

"True." Another pause. "Are you safe?"

The question lands wrong somehow. I'm safe. I'm not safe in any way I can explain to Tammy. I'm both of these things at once.

"I'm safe."

"Okay." Her voice has dropped. The voice she uses with Marcus when he comes home from school upset. "Call me later if you need anything. I mean it."

"I will. Thank you."

I hang up the receiver. The kitchen is gray and quiet. I stand at the counter with my hand on the phone.

I go back to my room.

I take the violin out of the case.

I don't check the time. I don't eat. I don't change out of the T-shirt I slept in. I sit on the edge of the bed and I tune the violin and I rosin the bow and I begin to play.

I play scales. I play arpeggios. I play exercises I haven't played in three years. I play until my fingers bleed a little at the tips, and then I keep playing.

* * *

Chapter Ten

Jenny

I don't turn off the light when I come home from work on Friday.

I've been thinking about it all day. I've been thinking about what I'd do if he came tonight. I've been thinking about what I'd do if he didn't come.

I shower and change. At the desk in my room, I write my mother a postcard:I'll come for dinner next Sunday. I love you.I sign it. I'll mail it on my way to work tomorrow.

The clock on the desk says eleven-fifty.

I leave the lamp on a moment longer. I sit on the edge of the bed and I look at my own hands in my lap. They aren't shaking. They haven't shaken since Thursday. The shaking has been replaced by something else. A heat. A low steady thrum that lives in my chest and at the base of my spine.

I'm not going to pretend tonight.

I'm not going to lie there with my eyes closed and let myself believe I don't know what's happening. I know what's happening. I've known for a week. I'm tired of pretending I don't know.

I turn off the lamp.

The room goes dark. I get into bed. I lie on my back. The blanket is up to my chest. My hands are at my sides.

I wait.

* * *

Farkas

I rise at full dark and I'm already moving.

I don't sit or pause to think. The day was hard on me — the call to Whitfield in the gray dawn light, the long hours of the sun overhead, the kind of waking sleep that doesn't refresh me but only holds me until I can move again. None of it matters. The dark has come and I'm already in the van.

I drive to her apartment.

The lot is mostly empty when I park half a block down. I cross the street and the parking lot in the cold and I stop at the base of the southeast corner of the building and I look up.

Her light is on.