Page 64 of Hunger

A third man comes out of the small building. He's in his fifties, gray-haired, dressed like the others in dark clothes. He walks toward the back of the van without looking at me, without looking at Farkas. He nods toward the back of the van and waits.

Farkas gets out. He opens the back. The man takes my canvas bag and then he reaches for the violin case I'm still holding. Ihesitate for a second. I don't want to let go of it. The man waits without speaking. He doesn't push. When I finally hand it to him, he handles it with the kind of careful attention a man uses for something that's been entrusted to him.

He walks toward the jet without speaking.

I watch him go.

"He doesn't look at us."

Farkas has come around to my side of the van. He opens my door. "He's paid not to look. He's been paid not to look for a very long time."

I nod slowly. I think about the firm in London. About Whitfield. About the long chain of people Farkas has paid through generations to make sure he can exist in the world without being seen. I'm stepping into the inside of that. I'm about to be one of the things they'll be paid not to see.

I step out into the wind. He takes my hand.

We walk toward the jet.

I'm not stopping. I'm not slowing. I'm not turning back to look at the road we came in on. The wind is in my hair and the lights of the apron are bright and the engines are louder than I expected and I'm walking beside him with my small gloved hand in his cold one and my chin up and my eyes forward.

The stairs are short. I pause at the bottom. I turn to him.

"Farkas."

"Yes."

"Thank you."

He looks at me. His black eyes hold the lights from the hangar. He doesn't answer me — he has never answered me when I've said something like this, he doesn't know how — but he lowers his face and he kisses me on the mouth. The cold ofhis lips. The warmth of mine. Careful of his teeth, careful of me, lingering as he does when he's afraid to let go.

He lifts his mouth.

"After you."

I climb the stairs.

He climbs behind me.

The interior of the jet is warm and dim. Wide dark leather seats. Pale wood paneling. A galley near the front. Carpet that absorbs the sound of my boots. I've never been inside anything like it.

I see the man who took my bag stowing my things in a cabinet at the front. He stows the violin case with even greater care. He nods to Farkas without meeting his eyes and disappears through the curtain to the cockpit.

The door of the jet closes. The stairs retract.

The engines deepen in pitch.

The jet begins to taxi. I press my hand against the window. The lights of the hangar slide past. The jet turns onto the short runway.

It accelerates.

The fields outside blur. The wheels leave the ground.

We climb.

The dark land of Nebraska falls away beneath us. The lights of small farms flicker and shrink. The grid of section roads becomes a dim pattern below. Somewhere behind us is Millfield — the mall with its dying fluorescent bulb in the corner of the food court, the apartment with my note on the counter and the spare key on the ledge, the parking lot where I bumped into something tall and cold on a Tuesday night three weeks ago and didn't look up.

I look until the lights are gone.

Then I turn from the window.