Hungry

by Daniel Parme

  But Dave was a pretty sharp guy and usually kept his head about him. “Huh. I guess you’re right.” He calmed himself the way I imagine Poseidon smoothing out the waves, and he sat. “All right. We’re smoking the rest of my pot, and we’re playing video games. This has to sink in a little.”

  Sounded good to me. I needed a break, and if video games are enough to make an entire nation of children utterly retarded, I figured they’d be able to take me out of my head for a bit.

  “You’re not going to start gnawing on my leg when you get the munchies, are you?” Dave, like most of my friends, was just cynical enough to have the perfect sense of humor to deal with this situation.

  After a few rounds of Tekken and a few games of Madden, Dave wished Adam was around. “I need to smoke more,” he said. “That fucker’s probably driving around, stoned off my weed.”

  It wasn’t like Adam to just disappear. He was raised to call his mother if he was going to be late for supper or out later than he’d planned, and this habit stuck with him. We always knew where he was. He’d leave phone messages or notes on dry-erase boards. If he left neither, it meant he was at the bar.

  “He didn’t leave a note or anything?”

  “No, man. Nothing. Yesterday morning, he said he’d be at the bar with you last night. You didn’t eat him, did you?”

  “Nah, man. I think I’ve eaten more than my fair share of friends already.”

  “Good point. I’m glad to hear it, too.” He leaned forward, dropping his arms between his knees, getting down and close like he was telling a secret. “Um, you don’t know the names of the people you ate, do you? Other than, you know, Jason and Erica?”

  People want to know.

  I asked why he wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. I guess… I guess it just seems like one of those things that would be easier the less you knew about it, you know?” He may not have been able to phrase it very well (he was stoned, after all), but it made sense to me (I was stoned, too). I told you, he was sharp.

  “That’s quite the astute observation, David.” Sometimes, when I get high, I like to use big-boy words, just to give myself a breather from the monosyllabic and crass language I usually use. “I know the one guy’s name, but I never met him.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows and opened his hands, inviting further explanation.

  “Thomas J. McGovern.”

  He went white as the paper on his cigarette, which he dropped on the floor and didn’t even think about picking back up.

  “What, Dave?”

  Nothing.

  “Dave! What’s the matter?”

  He stared at the floor between his Pumas. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Don’t want to know what?”

  You could tell he didn’t want to, but he told me. “Remember your last year at school? There was this kid who started hanging out right before you graduated. Remember? Tall? Red hair? Kind of stupid, but funny?”

  I remembered.

  “Well, that’s him. Only, not really.”

  “What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

  “Before the end of our last year – mine and Adam’s, I mean – we had this huge party and everyone got completely wasted. This was like the night before everyone moved out. Anyhow, in the morning we found this kid’s ID on the porch. No wallet or anything. Just the ID. We tried to find him, but he already left to go home, so we just kept it because the kid looked like Adam, and you never know when you’ll need a fake, you know?”

  I’d begun this conversation with an unclear head. I was hiding in the fog that makes you feel safe because, even though you can’t see anything, nothing can see you. Then Dave came along, and with one gust he blew that fog away, and I was left in the clear, facing a snarling, nasty beast that I’d have been much happier never knowing existed.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “Fucking bullshit.”

  Dave said nothing. He just sat there, staring and twitching a little.

  “Bullshit.”

  Chapter 30

  Once you tell a story often enough, it’s almost like it never happened. Like you read about it once, years ago, in National Geographic. Like even if it did happen, it didn’t happen to you.

  If I’d ever have thought about it, I’ll bet I’d have thought it would take a long time for this transformation to occur. Years of telling it at parties and weddings and water coolers and reunions.

  Turns out that a couple weeks of talk shows and magazine interviews take care of it pretty quickly. Like some sort of intense repetition therapy or something.

  And you know that thing about stories changing over time? It really happens. But it’s not that the adjectives get bigger or the adverbs more exciting. It’s not that the settings get more exotic or the actions more impressive.

  There are some stories that are not changed for the audience.

  What happens is your mind erases details that remind you what you felt then, so it gets easier to tell the story. The more things change, the less involved you feel.

  What’s left is fill in the blank.

  What’s left is a Mad Lib.

  I ran out of food after ________ days. ________’s body was about _________ yards from the wreckage. The first thing I ate was his ________, and then his _________. It tasted like _________.

  You get the idea.

  You separate yourself from the story so you can enjoy yourself while Conan O’Brien messes with his hair and makes a funny face at the camera. This is so Paul Schaffer can play She Drives Me Crazy by Fine Young Cannibals as you come on-stage and shake Dave Letterman’s hand, take a sip from your little mug. This is so Carson Daly can tell you about the time he and Fred Durst toilet-papered that guy from N*Sync’s house. This is so Bill Maher can ask what you think about the government using scare-tactics to influence American citizens’ views on whether or not to go to war with Iraq, but you can’t get a word in edgewise because right across from you is that one slutty bitch from Sex and the City who just won’t shut the fuck up.

  The story doesn’t change for the audience.

  The story changes so the teller doesn’t feel like a character. He’s just the messenger, the voice-over. James Earl Jones selling you phone service. Queen Latifah pushing pizza.

  It turns into an out-of-body experience.

  The story changes so you can forget about it, so you can move on.

  It happens so you can go out and get drunk off the shots bought by all those people who saw you on Good Morning America, and that girl flashed the camera.

  This happens so you can keep going.

  This happens so that after some psycho invites you to dinner, murders your best friend, and threatens your life, you don’t completely lose it.

  If you were still all wrapped up in that plane wreck thing, you’d never be able to handle this new thing. This cannibal debacle.

  The story changes because now it’s over, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It changes now because it couldn’t change then.

  That story is over, and now you have other shit to worry about.

  Chapter 31

  I left Dave’s an emotionally overloaded man. There was that relief that comes with getting it all off your chest – sharing, if you’re a group therapy person. There was the fear/paranoia that I was being followed by the car behind me; that if I stopped, the guy in that car would get out, and I would have to meet my maker all slurred speech and red eyes. There was the guilt about dropping all this crap onto Dave, the Wile E. Coyote to my ACME inventions.

  I was also horny, anxious, terrified, confused, determined, and tired.

  I was a fucking mess.

  But my concern for Virginia outweighed everything else. If she had somehow become involved I this, it was because I’d planted her right in the middle of it. Sure, it was unintentional, but most of the time intentions have surprisingly little to do with outcomes. Even Hitler thought his intentions were good, which m
eans they were, but that’s a philosophical debate just itching to get going, and I’m not much one for debate. Besides, that’s not the point. The point is that Hitler meant well in his own fucked-up way, and look how that turned out.

  The bottom line is I wanted to see Virginia. She deserved to know what I’d gotten her into.

  So I drove around until I was sure I wasn’t being followed, parked on a side street, and cut through a few courtyards and backyards to get out to Carson. I did a quick sweep of the bar, looking for Shoulders while trying to stay hidden behind the spiked hair of all the wicked-cool hipsters crowding the place up. As far as I could tell, the coast was clear. I sat at the end of the bar, my face hidden from the crowd by a Megatouch 3000 Emerald touch-screen thing.

  Virginia brought me a drink and an incredibly unpleasant look. “You better tell me what’s going on right fucking now.”

  “You’re right. That’s why I’m here, actually.”

  “Well fucking start talking, then.” God, how I love women with no desire for nonsense.

  I lit a cigarette. For some reason, I hoped it would ease the tension, like the act of someone smoking a cigarette somehow made everything more casual. Yeah, it was a fool’s hope.

  “You’re going to have to be pretty open here,” I started. “This is going to sound pretty fucked up. Those meetings I’ve been going to – the people there – they’re cannibals.”

  She straightened up, but not out of any sense of panic. This was most definitely an angry move. “Fuck you. I’m being serious.”

  “I know you are. So am I.” I sipped my shot, just so I could feel the burn of it. “They eat people. I just found out the other night. The night that girl was at my apartment.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. She shook her head and stormed off to pour some drinks. Four shots. Two for a couple guys in baseball hats, two for herself. She took them down like they were full of some magic potion that would fix everything that was going haywire in her head.

  I watched her and wished the whiskey really had been magical. I felt horrible knowing it was just booze. She deserved better. I wished I could have given it to her. As it was, I had nothing of any real value.

  She came back. “You better be joking.”

  I shrugged and shook my head no.

  “You’re a sick fucking bastard.” This had no tone. Not even a hint of anger. No lingering scent of her playfully bitter perfume. And she was looking at me, but only because I was what happened to be in front of her. I don’t think she was seeing with her eyes just then, anyhow. I think she was envisioning a good-looking man with painfully hot shoulders strangling her as she slept. Or maybe he was stabbing her. Either way, Virginia had just learned something I’d become quite comfortable with by this point: picturing your own death is not a pleasant thing.

  “So then, you’re fucking a cannibal.” The thing about women is you spend your whole life trying to figure out where they’re going to go with this, and just as soon as you think you have it figured out, they go the opposite way. We’ll never agree on what’s important.

  “Actually, she’s not a cannibal. It’s sort of a long story.”

  “But you are fucking her?” Like an arrow, this girl.

  “I fucked her, yes. But that’s not the point.” I took the rest of my shot. “Did you fuck the guy with the shoulders?”

  She leaned in. “Of course I did, you prick. And it was good, too.”

  “No it wasn’t.”

  “And how would you know?”

  “You said he wouldn’t be, and I’m willing to bet you’re never wrong about these things.”

  “Well, I…”

  “It doesn’t matter. You fucking the guy with the shoulders isn’t the point, either. The point is that these people killed Adam. And I think they want to kill me. I just wanted you to know because I have a feeling they’re keeping an eye on me and the people I know.”

  She took the empty shot glass and full beer away from me. “I’m never letting you drink in here again, you know. Get out.”

  “Listen…”

  “No. Get the fuck out.”

  And then it happened. I watched it happen. The look that came over her face, and I knew exactly what was happening in her head and in her heart. I’ve felt the way her face looked. I’ve always had trouble with empathy, but I understood this one, and I felt for her.

  She looked at me, sad and desperate. “That food – that food that you brought in here…”

  “I know,” I said. “I know. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry. I didn’t know. I swear. I would never have done that on purpose.”

  “You,” she said. “Fucking,” she said. “Asshole!”

  “I know. Please under –”

  “Please what!? Please understand!?” She grabbed the empty shot glass and chucked it at me, but she missed, and her fury hit the wall, shattering and unfulfilled.

  “Hey!” I yelled. “Please! Wait!”

  But she picked up my beer. I jumped back, anticipating that she would throw it in my face. This would not have been the first time this has happened to me, and it likely won’t be the last. What I did not anticipate, however, was that the glass itself would be flung with its contents. The thing hit me square in the forehead, followed by a shower of beer, like a comet and its trailing debris.

  “You fed me a dead person, you son of a bitch! Get the fuck out of my bar!”

  I didn’t look, but I didn’t need to. Heads were most certainly turning.

  “Virginia, please. You have to –”

  “Anyone who punches this asshole on the way out gets a shot!”

  The thing about being famous is that the public has a short memory. And they’re fickle. This does not bode well for the celebrity, who is, after all, human, and will inevitably make a mistake big enough to sway public opinion.

  Three guys got out of their seats the moment she said it. I knew all of them.

  I should have told her it was just another hunk of dead cow.

  Chapter 32

  There are two ways I know of to lose track of the days. The first involves a lot of pain, hunger, cold, death, and brief-to-extended periods of unconsciousness. Sometimes you’re out for hours, sometimes entire days. You can never really be sure.

  The second is almost exactly the opposite, except for the death and hunger. You can have so much going on that it all seems like one unreasonably long day. Even the sleeping seems active. Sure, you’ll hear the date on the radio or see it on a calendar, but whatever you hear or see are just numbers. They’re just numbers and blocks of time named after gods or goddesses or seasons. Sometimes our measurements for time just don’t cut it. It’s all relative. It’s like Einstein, only not so scientific.

  A day can feel like a year, and a year can feel like a day. There’s just no defining it.

  I knew damn well it was the end of the summer, and I was aware that, whether I was paying attention to it or not, time was moving forward. I just couldn’t decide if it was moving too quickly or too slowly.

  Either way, the Weather Channel said it was August 14th and to expect rain, lots of rain, this evening. They also did a story about some small town in Kansas that was pretty much destroyed by a tornado. Three dead, a bunch more injured. (Pat Robertson ran a story about it, too, incidentally. He said that God was no longer watching over this town because the schools were teaching intelligent design. So much for judge not, I guess.)

  I thought about all those people who no longer had homes. No schools, no bars. I thought maybe I should go there, volunteer, offer my help to people with worse luck than my own. It would be perfect. I could get away from everything and do something good, all in one go.

  Then someone knocked on my door, and the do-gooder thought bubble burst in a puff of smoke.

  It was Mr. Hanlon.

  “Mr. Eliot,” he said as he passed by me and into my living room.

  “Hi, Hr. Hanlon.” I ducked back into
the bedroom for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. “What brings you up here?”

  He was inspecting the place, not like tossing a jail cell or anything, but just looking around, trying to find something different, out of place, the way you find differences between two pictures on the back of a cereal box. “Mrs. Greenly, downstairs, said she heard some sort of commotion a couple nights ago. Breaking glass or something like that. I’m just checking to make sure everything’s ok.”

  “Oh. You should check out the kitchen, then. I got home and there was glass everywhere. And a rock. I think someone threw a rock though the window.” I felt horrible, lying to an old man. That’s the problem with these kids nowadays. No respect for their elders.

  “Probably those kids that have been spray-painting their names and cuss words on the dumpster and the wall around back. Little bastards.” He took a look in the kitchen, saw the table drilled to the window frame, and turned around with his hands held out in front of him. “What’s that all about?”

  “Oh. I just wanted to make sure nobody came in. Sorry. I get a little paranoid sometimes. I’ll take care of the holes in the wood. Wood putty or something.”

  “I should probably get the windows replaced, anyway.” He walked/hobbled back out of the kitchen and down the hall, then stopped, his head poking into my bedroom. “Mrs. Greenly said she also heard a lot of thumping and crashing and screaming from up here, too. She said it sounded like a fight.”

  My room looked a little like that town in Kansas. I hadn’t had time to clean up after the night Angela had stayed, so the fallen bookshelf and its books were still on the floor, the leg that broke off my desk chair was still sitting on my nightstand, the chair on its side, and all sorts of random crap was strewn about the room. Yeah, it was a fun night…