Read Hunger and Thirst for Free Online Page B

house.
    ....
    Jack sat on the sofa thumbing through a ragged magazine when Natalie came in with a filled canvas bag — and aloft she held by the neck a bottle of white wine, like a trophy. “Chardonnay!” she said proudly. “This is going to be so good.” She rounded the counter into the kitchen area and hoisted up the bag. “Two fat sweet potatoes!” She held them up for him to see. She beamed.
    “I turned the rabbit loose.”
    “Two carrots, not of great quality, and a pocket knife. They do have pleading eyes. A man's shirt, about your size....”
    “He expected me to kill him.”
    “Two cans of beans. And look — dried pasta.”
    “You're not angry at me?”
    Natalie stopped in mid-motion and looked at him with some surprise. “Angry? I can't imagine ever being angry with you. Jack, I know who you are, so I know what you can or might do. How could you disappoint me? You were being a nice guy again. The rabbit is free. We're not hungry. And there are more rabbits.”
    “When I looked at him, I could see he was waiting for me to kill him.... Couple times I’ve seen people look like that. They couldn’t do anything but hope it was a mistake. Bad memories.”
    “I know. And that’s why I love you, Jack.”
    He didn't understand her generosity. Why, he wondered, should he be troubled by that?
    “You got a lot today,” he said.
    “I drive a hard bargain. Onion.” She held it up. “It's been six months between onions. When they guy saw the rabbit — ta-da! — he gave me everything.”
    He went over to the counter and leaned on it. “I don't know how you can kill them like you do.”
    “And I don't understand how you can eat potatoes and peas all the time. But I do understand how people could drink chardonnay all day. Let's open it now. It's been five years since I've had a chardonnay. Let's open it right now.”
    She slid him a corkscrew and two stemmed glasses.
    “I'm so glad you're here, all over again,” she said. “Despite the awful world around us, we can be here, right now, safe, with chardonnay.” She had come around the counter and had her face next to his. “I like being safe with you, Jack.”
    When they kissed, her mouth tasted of salt.
    ....
    That evening, after dark, Natalie had placed six candles around the room, and slow piano music played. The two of them danced aimlessly around the room, Jack never growing tired of looking into her black-framed face.
    “How can you be so beautiful?” he whispered.
    “I'm the last woman in your world. You would have to think I'm beautiful.”
    “In a crowd, in the old days, under gunfire, I would stare at you.”
    “Jack, your love for me has deluded you in delightful ways. We need to go to the upstairs deck now.”
    “Why?”
    “A surprise.”
    She led him up and out the double doors to the deck. It was starting to rain — not more than a heavy mist yet, but it was starting. In the northwest, lightning forked to the ground.
    “How did you know?”
    “I smelled it,” she said. “Don't you?”
    He did. The mist slowly turned into a light rain. He took her hand. Blue-white light flashed close enough to brighten the rectangular tops of the hutches out in the scrub.
    “Why do you love me, Jack?”
    “You read the inside of my heart.”
    “You're easy. I don't even need my bones. It surprises me that you put up with my predatory ways when you really can't approve.”
    “Artie was practice for me. He's my friend and he has his bloody practices. His life is built on eating other animals. Unfortunately. I know it's normal. I wish it wasn't.”
    “Out there, in all the world out there—” Lightning flashed nearer. “—there is no 'normal,' no 'right.' It's just a place where things happen.”
    Now, it rained on them. They stood closer and let it run down their faces and soak their clothes. When thunder rumbled and rain poured on them, they turned to each other and they danced, in flashing light, in the rain.
    ....
    Warm in bed, in the