Dave Eggers - How We Are Hungry

Erin asked if she had any rooms, and I saw that the woman hadn’t noticed Erin’s missing arm. Erin had a way of standing, which she’d used — she told me later — the first time I’d met her. It was an undetectable three-quarter stance, giving people a bit more of her right shoulder than was customary.

While the woman was telling us her son was home and occupying the one available room, the man of the house, round and with a leftward brush of gray hair, came up behind her and kicked the back of her knee, throwing her balance off. She turned, slapped his shoulder and they both grinned, bashful and proud, at Erin and me.

“You’ll have a bit of trouble finding a room tonight,” the man said.

“A load of birders up this weekend,” his wife said. “Someone said there were puffins here, so they’re all in search.”

“Are you birders?” the man asked.

“Yes,” said Erin. “Completely.”

“Well, I’m sorry about the room,” the man said. Now he was starting to close the door. “We’d invite you in, but you’d be sharing our bed.”

“And we don’t do that anymore,” the woman said, out of view, laughing. And the big scarlet door closed on us.

Driving aimlessly, we speculated about their sex life. At some point I said something to Erin about her possibly wanting to have a three-way with the older couple.

“Sounds like you wanna go bump in the night with Terry Jones and her husband.”

I think that’s what I said. It was a joke, but I delivered it wrong and it sounded nasty.

Erin said, with all the cheer available in the world: “No thanks. Not this time.”

I asked her what she meant by that.

“Nothing.”

“So you’ve had a threesome!”

She was quiet.

“Erin! You dog.”

More quiet.

“Who with?”

Nothing.

“Tell me. You have to tell me.”

A sigh. “It was nothing. It was weird. Forget it. You see any more places to stay? On the map? I don’t want to have to go back to Kyleakin.”

This exchange was itself a level of intimacy we’d never had. When we’d shared stories before, it had always been voluntary — titillating but unchallenging. Now I was pushing her and I felt we were very close.

“Tell me who! Another girl, or a couple or what?”

“I don’t know. Just stop.”

“Who were they? Anyone I know? I bet it was two guys!”

We were having such a good time. At the same time, I felt like I was sticking my head ever-deeper into an oven.

“It was nothing. It was weird.”

My mouth dried and I pretended to keep smiling. Why do we pursue information that we know will never leave our heads? I was inviting a permanent, violent guest into my home. He would defecate on my bed. He would shred my clothes, light fires on the walls. I could see him walking up the driveway and I stood at the door, knowing that I’d be a fool to bring him inside. But still I opened the door.

“You know I won’t stop until you tell me,” I said, still trying to be jocular.

A fog threw itself over our car and Erin turned on the brights.

“Who was it?” I asked, knowing. Almost knowing, as my eyes adjusted to the dim light now between us.

“Where is this coming from?” she asked. “Why are you obsessing?”

She looked in the side-view mirror and then rolled down the window to readjust it. I already knew I was right.

“Tell me,” I said, hushed.

She stopped the car and turned to me. “You’re being an ass. I thought you knew.”

“Let me drive,” I said.

We both got out silently and passed in front of the car, steam rising from the hood, our faces in the headlights white and terrified.

I drove faster. She was execrable. They were villains, the three of them. Vermin in Dockers. And liars. I closed my eyes and no colors appeared.

The black road devoured our headlights. I wove left and right with the double lines; they toyed with me. I couldn’t imagine a time when I’d want to talk to her or to them again. It was almost a relief.

“Tom.”

I didn’t answer. I’ve wanted to be in a war. Or a box. Somewhere where I would always know what to do.

I didn’t want to be in Scotland. Just getting off of Skye would mean something, having that bay between us. I’d go to Muck or Eigg or Benbecula or Rhum. How was it that I’d known? Far before she’d given me a hint I knew. I decided that yes, I wished she’d lied. I didn’t like her face anymore. It had reddened and dropped — she almost had jowls, didn’t she? Who was this person? She was an animal.

Two flashes of white and a boom and something black and two eyes — we hit a living thing. Erin gasped quietly, and I immediately had the strangely satisfying thought that she was so cowed by her sins to stay silent during a car accident. She couldn’t scream.

I stopped the car.

“A dog, I think,” she said.

I backed up. In my side-view mirror, a black mound marred the road, resting precisely on the divider. The brake lights were not enough to illuminate it. I turned the car around to shine the headlights on it. It was not a dog. It was a sheep.

Its wool was black and its eyes were almost white but also gray and blue. They reflected the car’s lights flatly. There was blood coming from its mouth. Its head was twisted. Oh God, said Erin.

There were two white sheep by the side of the road. They were speaking to the dead black sheep. They made tentative steps toward the middle, where the black one’s body lay. They wanted the dead sheep to get up and get going.

Erin and I both said Oh my God, oh my God, look at that. I thought, for the first time in my life, that the known science of the world was going to be changed by something I had witnessed. This communication between sheep, this cognizance of mortality, was surely unaccounted for.

“Should we pick it up?” Erin asked.

I considered this.

“No. It’s in the middle,” I said. “It won’t get hit anymore — it’s not in anyone’s way. We should leave it.”

The two sheep looked toward the car and spoke to Erin and me. How could you? They brayed at the car. Don’t you have enough? You fucking monsters!

“Oh God,” Erin said, “now they’re talking to us.”

Both sheep stepped toward the car. Quickly they picked up speed and started jogging at us.

“They’re really scaring me,” Erin said.

I backed up. I backed up fifty yards. I stopped the car again and watched. One sheep was still talking to us and the other had turned again, had resumed talking to the broken black one.

We drove then, both of us now very awake. As we slowed through Portree, a small town of tall clapboard taverns and inns, shops of woolen goods, I was half-broken but only when I concentrated on it. Fuck those people. I moved my mouth when I thought this, and then I smiled. Erin saw me smile and she didn’t smile in return because she knew why I was smiling.

The hotel in Portree had been awarded too many stars — it was well-made and charmless. Twelve different newspapers fanned out on a heavily lacquered table in the drawing room, a robust fire chewing its cereal in the corner, the ceilings were vaulted and the beds canopied, but there was a sickly tint to the lighting, the smell of rain and frustration coming from the walls. The only softening touch was a cat, sleeping atop the bar. It yawned at me, showing its plasticine teeth.

We got a suite with two rooms.

“Tom,” she said as we stepped up the quiet stairs.

I didn’t answer her.

In the suite I closed my half from hers with a white sliding door. I changed and jogged down the steps alone, determined to claim the dining room as my own. Around my table, unspeaking couples were watching me and breathing into their plates. I looked out the picture window. The moon’s reflection was sketched loosely with chalk on the black flat bay. The silverware was too heavy.