Page 8 of Hunger

Inside, I stop at the kitchen table. The phone sits in front of me, its cord curled against the wood.

I lift the receiver.

I set it back down.

I don't know what I'd ask for yet. I know her name. I know her face. I know the set of her shoulders and the way she smiles when no one's paying attention. It's more than I had this morning. It isn't enough.

I go to the interior room and sit on the floor and close my eyes. In the dark behind my eyelids, she scrapes the flattop. She tilts her head to listen. She smiles.

Jenny.

I shape the name again and again until the sun rises and the world above me goes still.

Chapter Three

Jenny

Thursday is the slowest shift of the week. Always has been. Wednesday people are catching their breath from Monday and Tuesday, Friday people are gearing up for the weekend, but Thursday people just want to go home. The food court is half-dead by six.

Tammy is off tonight. Marcus has a school thing — some kind of recital where the kindergartners sing about the alphabet — and she traded shifts with one of the morning girls to be there. So I'm working with Dale, which is its own special punishment.

Dale isn't a bad person. He's just the kind of man who took the assistant manager position at Mr. Burger ten years ago and never recovered from the disappointment. He spends most of his shift in the back office with the door cracked, smoking the cigarettes he isn't supposed to smoke and listening to a Cornhuskers game on a transistor radio he keeps next to the safe.

Tonight he comes out exactly twice. Once at six to check the register. Once at seven-thirty to tell me the milkshake machine is making a noise he doesn't like and to leave it off for the rest of the night. Both times he speaks without quite looking at me. I'm not sure if it's because I'm twenty-three and female or because I'm Korean and he doesn't know what to do with that. Probably some combination.

The other thing about working with Dale is that I get the food court mostly to myself, which means I see Craig more.

Craig is mall security. He works the second shift, four to midnight, and he spends most of it walking the same route through the mall over and over. The route brings him past the food court at least once an hour. On Thursdays, when Tammy isn't here, he walks it more.

He's a heavy man in his late thirties with a thin, mean mouth and a uniform that doesn't fit him right. He carries his flashlight like it's a weapon. He likes to lean on the counter at Mr. Burger and ask me questions.

Tonight he comes by at six-forty-five.

"Hey, Jenny."

"Hey, Craig."

"Slow night."

"Yeah."

He leans on the counter. His forearms are thick and pink with the cold of the mall corridors. He has a wedding ring on his left hand and a small scar above his right eyebrow.

"You by yourself tonight?"

"Dale's here."

He glances toward the back office. The radio is just barely audible from where we're standing. The Cornhuskers are losing. Dale is, in any meaningful sense, not here.

"Right." Craig smiles. His teeth are very white and very small. "You should come down to the security office sometime. We have a coffee maker in there. It's better than the swill they serve at the food court."

"I don't drink coffee."

"What do you drink?"

"Water."

"You should branch out."