Hunger and Thirst

by Richard Matheson

  “I can’t,” she said helplessly, “I can’t! I love you, I love you! I want you so much!”

  “Sally,” he whispered, lost, confused.

  And felt cold.

  He kissed her burning neck and was cold. She bent her forehead down on his arms. He pushed aside the hair on the back of her neck and pressed his lips against the hot flesh. She shook and gasped as though she couldn’t breathe. And he was cold.

  She straightened up suddenly. She bit her lip. Tears came to her eyes. She sat looking at him, her body quivering. He almost winced under her intense stare.

  Then, with a gasp, she threw herself against him and dug her fingers into his back.

  “Oh, please love me! Please, Erick! Please love me!”

  He held her tightly and said nothing as she cried in his arms, her body shaking helplessly. He disappeared from the spot. He was up in the black sky watching dark spots waver on the moon. He was in the trees listening to them whisper dully among themselves. He was with the dog that barked up the street somewhere. He was in the bus that roared by on Main Street, sparks flitting from the exhaust, tiny figures sitting inside.

  Then he shivered, back again to her, with her sobbing as if her heart would break. And, although he wanted to, he couldn’t seem to care one way or the other.

  “May I use your handkerchief?” she said meekly.

  “Huh? Oh, sure.”

  She dried her eyes and cheeks. “You mustn’t mind me,” she said, “Spring fever, I guess.”

  “I thought it was love.”

  “I mean me getting so upset.”

  “Sex, maybe.”

  Silence. “Maybe,” she said, quietly. She gave back his handkerchief. “Thank you.”

  She rested against him. After a while she sighed, “You’re so nice and warm.” And she lifted his hand and kissed it and pressed it against her cheek for a long time.

  * * * *

  He was sitting in the darkened auditorium when she came in the side entrance. He pretended not to see her. She came over and stood in front of him. He looked up, annoyed.

  “Hello, darling,” she said, cheerfully.

  “Sit down,” he said. She sat next to him.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “I’m trying to watch the play, Sally.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  They sat quietly until the scene ended. “Thirteen,” Lynn said through the public address system. Some of the cast sitting in the auditorium rose slowly and went on stage. “You’re wasting time,” Lynn’s voice crackled acidly through the air.

  “Can you say hello now?” she asked.

  “Hello,” he said. Sullenly.

  “Didn’t they cut some lines in that last scene. I seem to remem …”

  “Yes,” he interrupted.

  “Why did they?”

  He twisted slightly in his seat. “I don’t know, they didn’t ask me,” he said irritably.

  “But they can’t do that without your permission,” she said.

  “They did it.”

  “Well,” she said, “I don’t think they …”

  She stopped and was silent a moment. Then she said penitently, “Don’t be angry.”

  He gritted his teeth and shook off her words with a twist of his head. She said no more.

  When the next scene ended, Lynn had the lights put on and went down front to discuss the first act with the cast.

  Erick noticed Sally looking at him. He turned down his mouth. Then, when she didn’t turn away, he looked over. She didn’t move her gaze. Their eyes met. She looked so hurt that he smiled to ease the moment.

  It melted her. She smiled warmly and reached out her hand to touch his arm. Then she took his hand.

  Her palm was wet. That irritated him. It made his hand itch. He noticed suddenly how her skirt had slid over her stockingless crossed legs making her right calf bulge out where it pressed against the left. And her dress was cut too low, he thought. He saw the edges of her pink brassiere, saw the fleshy line that ran between her breasts. He let his hand go limp and turned away from her.

  “Don’t be discouraged,” she said, “It will come out all right.”

  “Yeah.”

  When the next act started he noticed, with growing irritation, that she kept looking at him.

  “The play is up front, Sally,” he said, thinking his tone a patient one.

  “Is it?” she asked.

  He gave her a look of cold disgust and turned back front.

  After the scene ended the assistant director came back and dropped down next to Sally.

  “How about ditching this jerk and coming with me after rehearsal,” he said, jerking a thumb towards Erick.

  Sally smiled a little. “Maybe,” she said.

  Erick drew back his hand and wiped perspiration from it with his handkerchief. He didn’t turn to look at them. The assistant director said, “Has he been mistreating you? By God, I’ll kill him!”

  Erick turned. “Why don’t you go and assist the director?”

  “Sally is going out with me tonight. Any objections?”

  Erick glanced at Sally moment. The look she gave him irritated him further. “None whatever,” he said.

  “You see!” The assistant director was jubilant. “He has no appreciation of,” he leered at her, “The better things in life. Arf, arf!”

  Sally said nothing. It made Erick angrier still. Get the hell out of here! his alien mind shouted. The feeling of triumph was draining quick. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to push it all away. It hurt him.

  When the next scene started, Sally and the assistant director got up and left. Erick watched them leave as the side door opening, shooting a ray of light across the back aisle. Then he clenched his fists and stared fiercely at the stage, hissing in irritation, twisting uncomfortably, feeling sick. The play sounded ridiculous to him.

  When the rehearsal ended he found Sally on the stage entrance porch. He walked up to her.

  “Going home?” he asked her.

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “Want me to come?”

  She looked away from him and he saw her throat moving.

  “If you want,” she said quietly. He suddenly felt sorry. He put an arm around her shoulders.

  “Did I treat you so terribly,” he said.

  “Y-yes,” she said.

  He took out his handkerchief and dabbed at the tears on her cheeks.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “As long as you’re nice to me,” she said.

  “I’ll try,” he said, kissing her cheek.

  They rode home and sat on the porch looking at the sky. “Look at all the stars,” he said.

  “It’s lovely,” she said. Without enthusiasm.

  “Let’s sit on the lawn.”

  She hesitated. Then she said, “All right. I’ll get the blanket.”

  They spread out the blanket, sat down on it. He put his head in her warm lap.

  “I can see you,” he said.

  She said nothing.

  He closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

  “I was burned up Sally,” he said, “The play’s not going good. Lousy test marks today. I took it out on you.”

  She stared straight ahead. “It must be nice not to be a pushover,” she said, bitterly.

  He sat up and put his arms around her, kissed her neck.

  “I’m sorry, Sal”

  A moment later she was pressed against him, murmuring, “I couldn’t not forgive you if I tried.” And her lips molded themselves to his.

  “Erick, Erick, if only I didn’t love you so much.”

  He felt ill at ease again. Because every time she said it, he was more compelled to say it back. It made a vacuum on his side into which all her love was rushing, overbalancing everything.

  “I wish you could love me,” she said.

  “I do, too”

  “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

  “Afraid?”

  “Afraid I�
��ll interfere. With your work. I wouldn’t, darling. I’d help you.”

  “You’d want to help. I know that. But …”

  He rested his head on her shoulder and she caressed his hair with her gentle fingers.

  “It isn’t just a matter of wanting and not wanting,” he said, “Marriage brings responsibilities. How could I do all I want to do and still support a wife and children?”

  “I could work too. I’d expect to.”

  He felt a slight undefined resentment that she should keep arguing with him despite the fact that he seemed to have covered the objections adequately.

  “You’d have time,” she said.

  “I’d have to work too much.”

  “You’ll have to work after school anyway.”

  Was she goading him? He began to feel a desperate fear. A fear of being rushed, of being told what to do, of not being given a chance to do what he wanted to do. He almost pulled away forcibly and shouted in her face—No, I don’t love you! I don’t want to marry you! I refuse to marry you! I refuse to throw away all my work for a nightly bed and a squawling battlement called home.

  He felt a fierce desire to escape from what seemed to be methodically forging unbreakable links around him.

  The topic passed. She didn’t say any more. And he found peace again as he lay on the blanket and pressed their bodies against each other. He felt the warm night wind on his face. He had her in his arms. But he was free too.

  “I wish it could be like this forever,” he said.

  * * * *

  The curtain closed. He crossed his fingers, stretched forward and looked over the balcony railing. Applause flooded up from the darkness like a rushing of black wings. The curtain flew open. The cast stood lined up, smiling. Loud applause. The curtain zipped shut. In a second it rushed aside again. The principals stepped forward. The applause increased.

  “Oh, boy!” he said.

  The curtain closed and opened a third time. The cast all smiled broadly. They bowed gracefully, nodding their heads.

  He sank back with a satisfied sigh. There were two more curtain calls. He sat pleased while the light from the stage sprang into the auditorium, then was cut off by the rushing curtain.

  The lights went on and Erick went downstairs, listening to the comments of the people as they went out of the auditorium.

  Sally hugged him. “Wasn’t it wonderful!” she exulted.

  “Terrific!”

  They embraced. Then they stood in a big circle on stage and held hands with the rest of the cast. He grinned at Lynn and Lynn smiled a little, nodded to Sally. They all started to sing, “Should auld acquaintance be forgot.” Their voices swelled up to the high stage ceiling. They all rocked gently on their feet, their eyes smiling at each other. Erick looked at them all. It was a moment of utter nostalgia, he thought. Closing of the show. All the separate components blended together now to become separated again. Sets to be scrapped, stage swept away of all the familiar magic. Then, the show forgotten, the rush of studies for final exams.

  And Sally was with him. He looked at her. He was singing to her and she to him — “We’ll drink a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.”

  Everyone cheered. Hands were released, the spell broken. Everyone lingered a moment. Then the strands parted. The stage manager called for the set to be struck. And someone shouted, “Party at the Golden Campus!”

  “It’s all over,” he said to Sally.

  She pressed against him. “There’ll be others,” she said. Over her shoulder he noticed Lynn standing nearby as if waiting to speak.

  “You want to see me, Lynn?” he asked.

  Lynn shook his head once and turned away. “No,” his voice came briefly in the swell of other voices. Lynn walked off stage, taking out a cigarette.

  * * * *

  They all clomped down the narrow squeaky stairway into the Golden Campus. A pall of cigarette smoke hung just below the ceiling. The dance floor was filled with sitting couples who were watching a small combination perform on the low platform. Shivery clarinet notes fluttered in the air like the sound of idiots laughing. The pianist beat out a tinny rhythm while the bass man plucked wildly at his strings.

  “What’s going on?” Erick asked, squinting.

  “A jam session,” Sally said, “Didn’t you ever see one here before?”

  “No,” he said, “Did you?”

  “Sure, lots of times.” He felt himself draw away from her a moment. Then he went back. “Oh,” he said.

  They went back to the big table that had been reserved and everybody all sat down at it. The show’s business manager brought armfulls of quart beer bottles from the counter. Excited hands shot out and plucked them from his grasp. He bottles skidded over the streaked table and glasses filled up with the dark malty liquid. The thin music cut like a knife through the cloud of chatter, laughter and smoke.

  “You want beer?” Erick asked.

  “What?”

  “I said, do you want beer?”

  “If you do.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll have what you have.”

  “What?” he asked, bending close.

  “I’ll have what you have,” she said. He nodded and straightened up. He was jostled innumerable times as he moved for the counter. He had his feet stepped on, someone got the cuffs of his trousers dirty. A slight ire fanned into life. Are they kicking hell out of the building code, his mind commented.

  He spilled half of one coke on his coat as he returned to the table. He cursed loudly. He put the glasses on the table. “What an ordeal,” he said.

  “What?” she said. He didn’t repeat it. He took his handkerchief out and started to wipe the coke from his coat. She handed him a tissue from her handbag and he nodded his head and sat down.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “What?” He contorted his face into a grimace.

  “Thank you for the coke!”

  “Oh.”

  The darkness was alive with arms and legs and a sea of faces. He air seemed to burst with an amalgam of cacophonous sounds.

  He drank in moody silence, listening to the band. He looked around, feeling the same sense of detachment he always felt when he was down there with a girl. It was different being with a couple of men. He could relax and talk and enjoy it. But with a date, he couldn’t relax. He didn’t like it. Unconsciously he felt that any girl who came to a place like that wasn’t the kind he wanted to be with.

  A hand dropped on his shoulder. Lynn leaned over him.

  “The manager wants us to do a few routines from the show and a couple of the songs,” Lynn said.

  “Oh?”

  “Come on up,” Lynn said, “I want to introduce you.”

  “No.”

  “Come on.”

  “Go on Erick,” Sally said, smiling.

  They threaded their way through the sprawled audience. When they stepped on the platform Lynn took the microphone from the band leader. Erick stood there awkwardly, watching Lynn, hoping that he wasn’t blushing. One of the female vocalists from the show stood beside him.

  Lynn blew self-consciously into the microphone.

  “Testing, testing,” he said. His voice blared out over the audience.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he went on, “Latter term used advisedly …” No reaction. “As the good musician has said we are members of this year’s CampuShow. We’ve been asked to present a few choice excerpts from the show which we shall proceed to do for, we hope, your entertainment.”

  Erick felt a severe desire to kick Lynn in the rear for being so wordy and polite to those people. He felt himself coloring hopelessly with all of them staring up at him, seemingly at him alone. He saw several of them yawning. He saw one of the young men fall back in the lap of a girl behind and close his eyes and her pushing him up with a lap.

  “First I’d like you to meet the author and the composer of the show,” Lynn said. He pointed, “Erick Linstrom and Bill Veezy.”
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br />   Erick tried to smile but he knew it was a false grimace. He saw Bill Veezy beside him take a little choppy bow. “I thank you!” Bill Veezy said.

  “Boo!” shouted the drunken young man from the audience. Erick felt himself tightening and his fingers twitched at his side.

  “Now,” Lynn said, “A brief comedy routine from the show by the two male leads, Al Spencer and Jack O’Brien. Take it away men!”

  Lynn stepped over next to Erick. Erick felt an increasing warmth and tension in himself. He felt absolutely ridiculous standing there exposed. He knew he couldn’t have felt worse if he’d been naked. He turned to Lynn guardedly and said, “Whose bright idea was this?”

  “Good publicity,” Lynn said casually.

  “Shit.”

  The two male voices slapped hollowly against the ceiling. The comedy fell flat, it sounded pathetic. No one seemed to be listening anyway. Erick wanted to pull the two actors away from the microphone and clout their heads together. He glanced at the audience. They were all talking it seemed. Some of them were getting up and stumbling off toward the counter or the toilet. The drunken young man stood up momentarily, accentuated a loud “Ha ha!” and then sank down again in a heap, waving his empty beer bottle.

  Now Erick watched the audience intensely. He stared right back at them, his muscles knotting. He felt as if he had been turned into icy stone. All except for the pit of his stomach. Someone had ignited a fire there.

  The bubbling chatter of the audience continued under the thin monotonous voices of the two men speaking his lines which once had seemed funny.

  Erick turned and looked at Lynn. Lynn was staring blankly at the floor as if waiting for the end of this unfortunate incident. Erick opened and closed his hands in slow rhythm.

  “Stupid bastards,” he murmured to himself. He looked at them all again. He felt a sudden overwhelming desire to have back his army rifle, to stand there with it at his hip and just pump endless rounds of hot lead into their ranks.

  The thought aroused him more. He shivered and thought fiercely of them all screaming and falling dead with blood spurting out of the holes in their faces. He lost himself in the vision of killing them all.

  The routine ended. And Lynn stepped to the microphone.

  “That’s it,” he said, “Don’t fracture your hands now.” Erick hated him suddenly, completely.