Hunger

She fretted over her handbag, her switchblade wrapped delicately in a clean handkerchief she had taken from George's house. "What a mess," she complained. "I don't want this ruining my make up. A girl has to have an ample supply these days, she can't leave her house with a naked face, that just won't do." In response to her own panic, she reapplied her lipstick, her pocket mirror balanced precariously against the steering wheel as she tried to manoeuvre her paint and the car at the same time. She veered dangerously to the left, only to make a shocking turn to the right that left him sprawled in the back seat.

"I don't know why you always have to sit back there," she complained. She smeared her lips and tossed her lipstick and compact mirror onto the seat beside her. "I had a shower, after all, I smell rather pretty now."

"I don't care what you smell like."

"Ah, so now you're being a real pain. A lunkhead, that's you." She glanced back at him, her icy gaze now replaced with a sneering playfulness. "I think we need to get some lunch."

A cold feeling washed over him at this. He could boil himself to death beneath that relentless summer sun and it would never make him warm, not when she was in his presence. "You can't go back there."

"Why not? It's a diner, and we got a long way ahead of us on that road." She grinned, her fingers tapping to a silent tune that only she knew. "I'll get a big piece of pie, I will. And you can have another cup of coffee, seeing as how you didn't have any trouble drinking that swill down."

"It'll look strange, us going back to eat again. It's only been a couple of hours."

"Business is business. They're so desperate for hungry people with money it wouldn't matter if we left on the half hour and kept marching back in to drink soda floats all day long, Stella would oblige without question. If we wanted a meal for free, well, then we'd be noticed. Stella ain't the kind to give something for free, I've already figured that out."

He rested his head on the stale crocheted pillow, his hand smoothing against the pain brewing inside of his skull. The motor oil he'd had sat ill in this host, its black sludge creeping through the partially full veins in throbbing pulses. "Doesn't it bother you?"

"What?"

"That you are getting food from a woman whose husband you just killed. I should think there is some kind of social wrongness to such an act."

"Why should my hunger factor into it? Dead is dead and I need a sandwich."

She rummaged in her beaded purse for change, the nickels and dimes ratting against her stained switchblade. "Besides, it wasn't like he was a good husband. When he travelled to Chicago, I know he had a bunch of girls draped on his arm wherever he went, and they weren't his cousins, and he's had no children to speak of, so they weren't his snappily dressed daughters. While hard working Stella here kept slaving away holding onto her one little dream, that rat bastard was fox-trotting his way into every copper's pocket and every Chicago whore's bed. Lord knows how many diseases he's brought home to her. I hope she really is as sour and bitter as they say, that might stave off the syphilis."

"I'm glad you find this amusing." He crossed his arms and stubbornly remained in the back seat after she parked the car in the exact spot they had occupied earlier, the rattling engine groaning loudly into a full stop. "This is madness."

"I don't know what you think I'm going to do." She batted her eyelashes innocently and he fought the urge to gag.

"You know damn well."

Her lips pursed in coquettish mischief. "Do tell."

"You're going to do something terrible. Some unspeakable act of evil, and I will feel sick, and whoever finds it will feign surprise." He rolled his eyes at her continued curtsying. "You can't be trusted."

"I do love this dress," she said, ignoring his observation. She parked the car in the lot, slamming the driver's door behind her as she skipped off to the entrance of the diner. "I'll snag you a sandwich too," she shouted to him.

"Don't bother," he shouted back, but she was already in the diner, her entrance a loud chorus of jangling bells that hung across the swinging door. He tried to get a good view inside, but the windows were above car level, and all he could discern with any clarity were the rounded tops of a few heads, faces obscured by cloche hats. The polished chrome of Stella's decor gleamed in welcome to the appreciative customer who would visit.

He got out of the motor car and stretched his host's body, his back creaking from the effort. He'd been sure this host would have lasted longer, but it was already starting to show signs of wear and tear, the custom fit comfortable, but the chemistry within the body was clearly incompatible with his own. The freckles dotting the epidermis had turned a darker grey, the reddish complexion that had been the youth's sign of good health was now a sallow, pasty mauve. Perhaps the other host had been more accustomed to daily abuses and thus hadn't reacted quite as strongly as this one to his imbibing of motor oil.

A fly buzzed near his ear, and landed on the top of his head. It crawled into the dull reddish forest of his hair, searching for an open space to lay her eggs. He scratched at his scalp, tearing a small hole with his nail. The fly buzzed around his fingers in excited agony as he pulled an entire chunk of scalp away, the red hair trapping the fly within it in a thin, strong cage.

Perhaps he was judging her too harshly. Georgio, or George as he was known here, was hardly a kind soul. As a rum-runner he had plenty of bodies strewn behind his success, and it was unlikely that his wife Stella was ignorant of this. It shouldn't bother him that the two female customers he saw in the diner were now leaving, their cloche hats hiding all but their delicate lips which spoke in nasal Maine accents, teeth chewing on words as if they were tobacco. But these weren't loose women, not molls. They talked of family and children and the annoying habits of their husbands. They were on safari here in the south, visiting relatives they had no connection to.

"Hey, you there," one of them shouted to him. A blast of sunlight hid her face as tried to discern the features beneath the low brim of her hat. "You don't look well. Are you all right?"

Her friend pinched her on the shoulder. "Shirley," she harshly whispered. "Let's just go."

"But he doesn't look right…."

"That's what I mean, let's just go."

They piled into a covered automobile, the worried friend Shirley looking over her shoulder at him, her bottom lip bit in concern.

He wasn't sure what to make of these flashes of insight that occasionally drifted his way. He'd seen it in Clara's father as well, that same look of sickened concern. It was as though these humans had some hidden knowledge over how to avert an inevitable disaster, but they were helpless to implement it. Such a cruel omission, he thought. They had rendered compassion useless. Not that this should have surprised him, for after all, it was so easy for them to kill in so many ways, not just the physical. A stab through the heart came in many guises. Sometimes, it was the slow torment of bitter words that cut into the soul and ruined what was otherwise another person's happy existence. At other times, it was a complete lack of acknowledgement, a pervasive, ongoing neglect that withered the soul away.

If Clara used a more direct approach to killing someone, who was he to object to that honest exchange?

He rested his chin on the roof of the Chevrolet, keeping a keen eye on the diner. There was no discernible movement from his vantage point, the diner having suddenly taken on an abandoned, neglected aura since the exit of the two women from Maine. He narrowed his eyes and tried to look past the polished chrome interior, the clocks that told perfect time hanging in triangular perfection on the wall behind the counter. There was no movement within, no suggestion that humanity coursed through here on a daily basis. Time had arrested at this exact moment, a frozen capsule of ennui and hope.

She had been wearing Stella's dress, he remembered. A pink flowered affair that complemented her appearance. Blood purified by white. A bleached hue of the living.

She'd been in there a good twenty minutes now. She was taking too long.

Dust rose and fell around the Chevrolet, the green tinted surface stained in dull, sepia tones. The front windshield had a crack in the corner near the passenger side, an injury from a speeding pebble. He traced the crack with his fingertip, wondering how much further it would spider out as they made their way to California. At some point it would become a hazard, shattering out if they hit a large enough bump in the road. But he didn't know much about these things, so maybe it would stay the same and would hold together. He couldn't be sure.

The diner was eerily quiet, and it was with concentrated effort that he refused to inspect if his suspicions were correct. In the back seat, under the mouldy crocheted pillow, a square can of motor oil lay in waiting. The host he now resided in released the oil too quickly and cleanly from its system, and though he was well sated earlier his mind was now painfully clear. With it, the fluidity of his ethics pinched him inwardly, little hematoma that blistered blue and black along his soul. The truth was, with this body he inhabited, he had stolen, there was no real difference between himself and Clara. He was going to need a new host by the time they reached Texola and he doubted very much it would be acquired by strictly natural means.

He had no room to judge.

She was right, it wasn't his business what she believed, she had her own mission to accomplish. He was allowing his feelings to get in the way of his reason. which was always a danger in these situations. Where he came from, murder was wrong, but there was no oral law concerning what to do in the event of one's imminent demise. The will to live was the same everywhere, one had an existence and one wanted to continue on with it. A freckle faced simpleton knocked dead with a wrench was simply a survival tool that skirted the periphery of natural law. He had a specific mission to accomplish and some collateral damage along the way was inevitable. His survival was important for the mission, and yes, it was a bloody business, but there was no other choice offered. His superiors would understand.

He hoped they would. They had to.

She was swinging her purse against her swaying hip as the diner entrance slammed shut behind her, the jingling bell nearly toppling from its fixed place at the top of the door. She was eating one half of a sandwich loosely wrapped in a napkin, her mouth dotted with crumbs as she spoke to him. "We should drive straight through, right into Texas. I say we don't stop until we hit Armarillo. Or, we could make a quick pit stop in Shamrock and stay at the Reynold's Hotel." She took another bite of her sandwich, contemplating this. She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her thumb, brushing off crumbs indelicately. "I know that place well, actually. The owner owes me a few favours, I could get us a good deal." She gave him a warm, friendly smile, of the kind that sent chills through his liquid self. "Sound like a good idea to you? The place really is top drawer, you know. All marble and fancy tiles, not too cheap, but not too expensive, neither. You and me, we can hole up in a room and no one would ask any questions. That's how it is there, see."

She placed her half eaten sandwich on the hood of the Chevrolet and rummaged in her purse. She took out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, the end of it partially squished flat. "Here," she said, handing it to him. "Since you like the food there so much you can have one for the road."

He weighed the sandwich in his hand, studying the folds of the wax paper that covered it. Ham and rye, by the look of it through the murky white paper. Clara paced and finished her own sandwich, her eyes constantly darting to the busy road beside them, her manner fidgety, as though she were ready to take off in a run at first opportunity.

He unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite. It was dry, not a hint of mustard. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

She still had on Stella's wide brimmed hat, which was doing little to prevent the continued onslaught of the afternoon sun on her already tanned arms. "No problems at all."

"You look nervous."

"I'm wondering about that mayor."

"What are you thinking?"

"That he's a loose end that needs tying." She wiped imaginary crumbs from her skirt. "I think we should swing by his swanky house, have a little peep into his windows and see if he's alone."

A dried tumbleweed drifted past the abandoned diner, all hope of life within it effectively vanquished. He took another bite of his sandwich, its dry texture alien on his slimy tongue. Granules of bread stuck in his throat, and he longed for a quick drab of motor oil to help it ease down. "We can't do it."

A sudden breeze tried to lift her hat away, to steal it along its current. She snatched the brim, holding it firmly in place, her face obscured in much the way the cloche ladies of Maine had been hidden from view. "I do what I want, and I want to tie up a loose end."

"We've overstayed our welcome here. We're leaving." He opened the passenger door, tossing the uneaten portion of his sandwich onto the ground. "That's not fit even for me to eat. I've only just started eating your food and I know that one was made wrong." He sat sideways in the passenger seat, the door ajar, his feet braced on the dusty earth at his feet. The sun shone behind her, casting her in a cameo shadow. "Were you trying to poison me?"

"What? Don't be ridiculous."

But he had to wonder. There was a strange, dry sensation on the edges of his tongue, a gritty texture that had nothing to do with dry bread. "There's a funny taste to it, similar to magnesium. Is that a sulphur chaser? Could it be belladonna, or the dreaded strychnine?"

"I'm not poisoning you."

He eyed her with profound suspicion. "Was I a test run for that mayor? You think it's so easy to get rid of me, and yet here I remain, thwarting your one act of murder that comes with concentrated effort." He swung his legs back into the Chevrolet and let out a long sigh as he settled comfortably into the back seat. "Leave the mayor alone. He's a politician. You said so yourself, he lives on insincerity. No one will believe a word he says."

She kicked at the dirt, thinking on what he'd said. "But he's been here, he's seen us. He'll run off to the papers and tell them what he knows, and I can't have that."

"He saw nothing," he reminded her. "He was too busy needling Stella over the diner and George's involvement. His real dealings are with George, and chances are he won't mind having his partner snuffed out. He can be the one to clutter up his house full of expensive garbage."

She raised a brow, its perfectly pencilled arch pushing into her bangs. "So you think he'll be happy to be the new head honcho connection in Chicago?" She bit her bottom lip, hips swaying softly in the breeze, her fingers tapping a strand of pearls on the hood of the car. "Maybe you're right," she said, giving him an uncommitted shrug. "He was kind of a throwaway nobody. We can always accuse him of being drunk, we can use the empty rum bottles we find in his garbage as proof of his lush behaviour."

"There won't be any need to discredit because he won't say a word," he reminded her sagely. "He's a rum-runner, just like George was, and last I checked such practises were highly illegal all over the country, not just by state. So, I'm guessing, even if he is the one who finds George's body, he'll be the one to turn tail and run, with all the town's savings in his pocket." He rested his head on the mouldy pillow as Clara finally got into the driver's seat, her stolen white gloves gripped hard on the wheel. "Chances are, he's long gone with George's money already. Soon enough we'll be hearing of him in Chicago, an unfortunate corpse with his feet sunk in concrete. Tell me, can't anyone in this world of yours simply enjoy their riches? Why is it so important to acquire these things, especially when so many others in the community need his help? It's not like they were useful. There's so much waste."

"So, they're all bolsheviks where you come from, then." She pulled a slender cigarette out of her case and lit it before turning the key in the ignition, the motor rattling away into half-hearted life. "We'll have to find another car soon," she said. She gave him a sidelong glance filled to bursting with disgust. "You need a new host. This last one just plain looks weird on you, not to mention you smell bad, and you look like you should be fertilizing grass, not hanging with the likes of me."

She sped off, away from the diner, the force of the wind from the motor car forcing a tumbleweed off the road and into a ditch. He tried to close his eyes and get a small amount of rest. He hated closing his eyes these days. All he could see was red.