Hunger and Thirst Read Online Free Page A

you listen to me, he lectured smugly. You’re going to be all right, do you understand that? In a while, in a little while. All you need is some rest do you see that, you
do
see that, don’t you? You’re in a state of shock from that small wound in your shoulder or back or wherever it is. And you need rest. That’s all. Then you can get up and wash your face.
    His throat tickled.
    I could use a little water, he thought.

4
    He opened his eyes.
    He thought it must be about ten o’clock. It was five minutes to seven. In the sky, the sun climbed. The streets were growling with morning activity.
    He looked down at himself.
    His pants were tented at the crotch. His pupils expanded. He was very surprised. He hadn’t been thinking about sex, he wasn’t sexually aroused at all. What the hell is this, he thought, why is it so hard?
    He blinked at it, couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t understand. It was like some strange construction in the crotch of his trousers going on without his knowledge. An unbidden erection effected by invisible builders.
    He kept staring at it. He lay there and looked at it dizzily. He kept blinking. He kept looking at that lump down there and not understanding what had caused it.
    It moved.
    He was fascinated.
    He lost interest.
    Somehow it was like the rest of him; detached, something that belonged to another person. In his plight, of what interest was anything that had to do with another person? That bulge in his trousers simply had nothing to do with him.
    He looked around the room again. There was no attempt to convince himself that it was a dream now. He knew he was awake, very much awake. The pain in his back was more severe. It felt like a cramp; as if he must raise up and twist his shoulders to unknot the kinks in his back muscles.
    He tried at first, when he forgot that he couldn’t move. Then he lay there trembling again, trying to force a screen of blankness on his mind so that the fears would not return and the debilitating imaginations not clutch at him so.
    He looked at the room.
    Everything was the same. The coat, the hat, the money, the dresser and closet, everything.
    His gaze ran over the floor. The rug was dirty and spotty brown. There was a piece of blackened gum scuffed into it.
    He’d never noticed it before. It must have been put there by a former occupant of this room. He looked at the piece of gum and imagined the man or woman stepping on it and then lifting their foot gingerly with a muffled curse and looking at the threads of gum their soles were pulling from the rug.
    He wished that person was here now to help him.
    It seemed very telling that a person had stood right on that spot and stepped on a piece of gum. An actual, living person had stood there. But now he was alone here and that person did not know of him and couldn’t help him. In his sleepy, half-conscious daze, it seemed strangely important and valuable to him. He kept thinking of it as he stared at the rug and the gum. He saw that the rug was made up of three irregularly sized pieces that were sewed together with thick brown twine. He had never seen that before either. Odd, how many things you notice when you have the time, he thought.
    There was a magazine lying at the foot of the table that stood by the window. He looked at it.
    MOVIES
read the cover, 10.
    He saw Ava Gardner sitting in a creamy blue nightgown looking up at him. Her eyes were sleepy and sultry. Her moist red lips were parted a little. There was a lock of dark hair dangling over her creamy forehead. The bodice of her nightgown was cut very low. He could see the healthy brownish-white flesh, the entrance to the valley that ran between her upright breasts. He could feel the softness of her flesh with his eyes. Her shoulders were back and she had her right hand pressed against her hip. Through the silken transparency of the flaring sleeve, he could see her smooth, lightly-haired arm.
    His mind asked Ava Gardner—What are you doing down there, how