Page 63 of Hunger

He moves out of the shadow.

He crosses the short distance between us.

He stops in front of me.

He looks down at me — he's taller than I remembered from yesterday, somehow, even though I saw him in full daylight — and the black of his eyes catches what's left of the light from the streetlamp at the end of the block.

"Are you ready," he says.

His voice is rough and quiet. It's the voice from yesterday and the voice from the dark of my bedroom and the voice that saidFarkas. Your Farkasagainst my mouth.

"Yes."

He takes the canvas bag from my hand. He doesn't take the violin case. He knows I want to carry that one.

He leans down. He kisses me on the forehead. His lips, cool, against my skin. He's done this before. He'll do it again.

"This way."

The van is parked two blocks away. We walk to it through the empty residential streets with the wind in our faces. He doesn't speak and I don't speak. I slide my gloved hand into his cold one as we walk, and his fingers close around mine carefully, the way they do everything.

He opens the passenger door for me. I get in. He puts the canvas bag in the back and closes my door.

The inside of the van is colder than I expected. He gets in the driver's side and starts the engine. The heat begins almost immediately — better heat than I have had in the Granada in two years. He pulls out of Millfield and turns east on the state highway.

The fields on either side of the road are dark. The sky is overcast. The road unspools through the flat country toward something I can't see.

"Where are we going."

"To a small airfield. About forty miles east of here. There's a jet waiting."

I turn my head to look at him. The dim glow of the dashboard lights catches the gray of his cheek and the long fingers on the wheel.

"A jet."

"Yes."

"Going where."

"Hungary. There's a house in the country south of Budapest. It's been waiting for a long time."

I'm quiet for a moment. Then I say, "It's been waiting for you."

"It's been waiting for someone. I didn't know who until two weeks ago."

I don't answer. I let his words sit. I look out the window. The fields are very dark. I'm leaving the country. I'm leaving the country tonight with a man who's been alive since before the country existed.

My hand finds his on the gear shift. The cold of his fingers under my glove. The shape of him I've learned by touch over the last two days. He doesn't say anything. He just lets my hand stay there.

We drive in silence the rest of the way.

The airfield is a private strip set behind a row of trees off a county road. There's a single hangar and a small building beside it, and the apron beside the hangar is lit. The jet is there.

I stare at it through the windshield as he pulls the van around to the side of the hangar.

It's smaller than the commercial jets I've seen on the news, but it's enormous next to the van. White, sleek, the engines already turning. The door is open and a set of stairs has been lowered to the apron. Two men in dark clothes are doing something near the front of the plane.

Farkas cuts the engine.