Dave Eggers - How We Are Hungry

At Loch Mor we walked down a spongy hill to a valley. The sun was dropping then dropped, leaving a sky of frilly reds. The moon appeared too soon. The valley sloped around a teardrop-shaped lake, pink with the bizarre fuchsia bursts of the late-coming sunset. Violet heather bruised the green weedy ground as we jumped down. This was a place conceived in a burst of emotion by a melancholy boy.

I grabbed Erin around the waist and picked her up, throwing her over my shoulder. Look at this place! I wanted to say, but I chose to be mute, to punish her, perhaps. I put her down and she jogged away from me.

I caught up with her as she leaned against a rock wall, facing the teardrop lake. My eyes focused on a broken white rock cleaved with moss. Does the rock cleave, allowing the moss, or does the moss cleave the rock? She put her chin on my chest.

“This is nice,” she said.

“Where’s the lighthouse?” I asked.

“It must be beyond that.”

She was pointing to a huge outcropping, forty feet high, the shape of an anvil turned on its side. We followed a path as it swung down and to the right, sloping into the valley. The lighthouse couldn’t be seen. When the path leveled out we walked to a cliff — a drop of eighty feet to a rocky beach and a malevolent surf. The moon now was high enough to reflect on the lake in a nickly shimmer.

Where we expected the path to end and the ocean to begin, the path instead continued, down, through another smallish valley, at the end of which was the lighthouse, on what seemed to be the very blue-black edge of this world. Erin gasped. The lighthouse was not alone and small, but huge, and surrounded by a cluster of dark buildings. It looked like a penitentiary complex, with fences and guard towers.

“Let’s go down,” I said.

“You can go,” she said. “I’ll watch you from here.”

“I won’t go alone. But I really want to see it.”

“Sorry,” she said. “That’s too Witch Mountain for me.”

We turned and the wind swept into the valley, its motives suspect. We pushed against it and walked up the hill, toward the car. Erin’s jacket had no zipper or buttons; she held it closed with her hand. I pointed to a cluster of sheep far to our right. In the dark wind they looked ghostly, conspiring. They knew about the one we killed.

“Let’s run,” Erin said.

We did, up the path, and reached a small supply shed and rested. I was hot with my own exertion, and out of the wind it was much warmer. Erin had her back and head against the building, heaving. The sign on the shed, now just above our heads, said BEWARE WINCH OVERHEAD WHILST IN USE.

I leaned into Erin. I held her very close, and then kissed her hair.

“Sorry,” she said, speaking into my chest.

“For what?”

“The lighthouse was my idea.”

“Don’t say sorry.”

“I am, though. I’m sorry in general,” she said.

Her face was red and rough; she looked so cold. I leaned into her again, and rubbed her back with my searching hands. The cold and her thighs had aroused me, and I was dizzy with the wind.

“Turn around,” I said.

She faced the shed, her back to me. I opened my coat and wrapped it around her, my arms joined at her stomach.

“Warmer?” I asked.

“Yes.” She did a quick shake to indicate her coziness, pushing herself into me. I was already hard. I assume she noticed, because she stopped moving.

I brought my mouth down to her ear and licked the top. She made no sound. I tightened my grip around her stomach and pulled her closer, throbbing against her. All was soaring, my head gone like buckshot. She reached around and rubbed my lower back, while I took her whole ear into my mouth and breathed hotly into it. She bent her knees and turned to face me.

“No,” I said, turning her around again. I pulled her pants down and then my own.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I’m so…”

I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“What?” she breathed.

“I just want…” I was feeling around between her legs, searching for moisture. I plunged my finger in.

“Ah! That hurt.”

“Sorry,” I said.

I moved myself between her legs, passing just under her. It was warm, dry. I needed—

“Wait,” she said.

“I can’t,” I said. I found my way in and pushed. My cheek pressed into the back of her neck, her smooth hair in my mouth. I lunged further. She spread her feet, her hand above her, palm flat against the shed. I stepped back, hands on her hips and found my way fully inside. I felt huge within; it was so close, everything was. Her skin, exposed, was cold.

I opened my eyes and looked around and there were three sheep, not twenty feet away, staring, motionless. The wind scraped at the two of us, very small in the valley. The sheep did not move.

I couldn’t keep my eyes closed, couldn’t stop watching the sheep watch us. I was out of breath, I was frozen, dizzy. Without finishing I felt finished. I slipped out of her and stepped back. I buttoned my pants and backed away, in the path of the wind. The nickly shimmer of the moon sat blankly, doing nothing.

“Sorry,” I said.

Her back to me, she dragged her pants up over her thighs. “Don’t be sorry. That would make it weirder.”

“Oh shit,” I said. “This is so bad.”

“Don’t say that,” she said. “It’s bad if we say it’s bad. It’s not bad. It’s fine.”

I wanted to help her with her pants but I knew she’d refuse. I wanted to sit down. I wanted to be cut to pieces and eaten.

“Erin.”

She slid down against the wall and sat. She squinted at me. “That hurt, Tom.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Fuck!” she said. “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck-fuck!”

“Sorry.”

“That hurt.”

“Sorry.”

“You should have at least waited.”

I wanted to throw myself over the anvil-shaped rock. Or I wanted to tell Erin that I wanted to throw myself over, so that she would feel for me, see my grief. We both sat for a minute, occasionally glancing at each other. I wanted to erase the road that had brought me to her.

I tried to touch her shoulder where her arm was missing. She brushed my hand to the ground.

“Shit,” she said. “This whole fucking year.”

In Erin’s room there was a cat. I’d seen this cat, in the hotel lobby, stepping gingerly along the granite mantle over the fireplace. It was very small and wailed when we entered.

“It’s hungry,” Erin said.

I didn’t agree. I thought the animal just wanted more than she deserved, that she was surely fed all the time, but I said nothing. I was glad that Erin was speaking to me.

Erin decided to go downstairs to get milk for the cat, and when she opened the door, the cat tried to leave with her. But Erin pushed it inside and closed the door.

We would feed the cat and love it, name it. I found food in the small fridge under the TV. Cashews. I opened the can and tossed cashew fragments on the carpet. The cat pounced and her head pecked at the nuts; she was finished in seconds. I dropped her another handful and she ate those. The door opened and Erin walked in with a glass of perfect white milk. I had never been happier than when she walked in. I would not be sent away, not yet.

Hours later, the cat was asleep, and Erin lay next to it, her eyes half-closed. There was purring. I felt content. Why does it give so much comfort to be responsible for someone’s sleep? We all — don’t we? — want creatures sleeping in our homes while we walk about, turning off lights. I wanted this now. I touched Erin’s soft head and she allowed me. She allowed me because she was tired. She seemed so profoundly tired. After Scotland I would not hear from her again.

As my fingers spidered through the strands of Erin’s hair, the brightness outside took my eyes from the room. The moon was striped by the blinds but I could see its nickly shimmer on the bay. It looked like aluminum foil, when crumpled and then smoothed with a thumb or the back of a knife. It smiled, eyed me with an unwelcome knowingness, and began to speak.