Husk

by Dave Zeltserman

  For a long moment neither of us spoke. The sound of the cars passing by and all of the other city noises surrounding us grew into such a deafening clamor that I could barely stand it. My neck had hardened like stone, not wanting to allow itself to move even an inch, because if it did I might find myself looking down into Jill’s face and see fear flooding her eyes. Or worse, see that she was lost to me. But then her hand sought out mine, and that gave me the courage to look at her again.

  There was no fear anymore. Instead, her face had softened, her eyes large and liquid. ‘I can’t even imagine what you must’ve gone through,’ she said, her tone hushed, her voice raising that lump once more in my throat. Whatever danger might’ve existed of her fleeing me was gone. I felt a wetness around my own eyes, which confused me before I realized that for the first time in my life I was crying. Not so that I was sobbing or making undue noises. But still, tears were leaking from my eyes. I was ashamed, but I wasn’t going to turn away. More than anything I needed to look into Jill’s eyes and the breathtaking beauty they provided.

  ‘None of that matters, because everything in my life has led me to being here with you right now,’ I said.

  That was maybe the truest thing I’d ever said or will ever say, and Jill recognized that.

  ‘Let’s go eat,’ she said.

  The restaurant Jill took me to was much smaller than the one we’d eaten at the other night. I counted only eight tables and there was little space separating them, leaving me and Jill crowded among them. Both tables next to ours were occupied, so I had other eaters sitting on both sides of me, leaving less than a foot between us, even though they were both thinner than many of them I’d seen. (Thin enough that I might not have stopped to pick them up if I was still collecting them for the clan.) While their scent was ever-present and I could feel a moist heat from them, having them so close no longer caused me any undue anxiousness. I was getting used to having so many of them around me. Jill was also well aware of the other eaters’ close proximity, and it caused her voice to be more guarded as she thought of additional questions to ask me. Her first one was whether I’d really been building houses as I had told her.

  ‘Yes, of course. So far I’ve built seven of them.’

  ‘How did you learn to do that given your, um, upbringing?’

  ‘I taught myself. The same with how I learned to read. The same with fixing an automobile.’

  She had other questions about my childhood, some of which I was able to answer honestly, others where I needed to lie. At no point did the fear and distrust that I saw earlier resurface. If anything, the look she favored me with was more endearing. At the end of her questions, which were interrupted only by our server (a bony man who wore jewelry in his ears and had his arms and neck covered with peculiar ink symbols) coming to take our order, Jill, lowering her voice so no one else could hear her, told me she found me remarkable.

  ‘The way you overcame your early environment is so impressive. I can’t even fathom the inner strength required to do what you’ve done. No wonder the crowds here freaked you out as much as they did yesterday. Charlie, I am so happy I met you. It was worth having Ethan mistreat me the way he did if it ended with us meeting.’

  She reached out across the table (which didn’t require much of a reach given how small the table was) so that she could rest her hand on top of mine, and the look she gave me let me know that words from me weren’t necessary. There was no longer any risk of her fleeing me.

  I had guessed right that I needed to explain about certain oddities she must’ve been noticing about me. My traveling to a new city without any belongings was only one of them. Even though she didn’t say anything about it, I’d caught a fleeting look from her when she asked me this morning for my cellphone number, and I told her I didn’t have one. Although that look lasted barely a heartbeat, it haunted me for much of the day. I knew also that she must’ve been finding my manner of talking unusual. I’m not stupid. How could it be anything other than that, given how few conversations I’d had in my life that had lasted more than a dozen words? Even though I had read all I could and had spent many evenings studying the dictionary in the clan’s possession, my vocabulary and the manner of talking that I’d learned from my books were different from how Jill and others of them talked. I knew this simply from the idioms and slang they used. Jill’s use of ‘freak’ as a transitive verb was an example, although I reckoned I was able to guess its meaning – to cause someone to act as if they’d been turned into something aberrant. Even if Jill hadn’t admitted to herself her suspicions about me, I knew she had them, and thankfully I realized before it was too late that I needed to address the matter.

  Her hand rested on mine until the food was brought over. On Jill’s recommendation, I ordered the refried bean, grilled onion, and green pepper burrito once the server’d assured me that the cheese used in it wasn’t made from cow’s milk but from nuts, oils, and spices.

  Jill had ordered the same meal. When it arrived, I sniffed my food cautiously before trying it (which caused Jill to laugh, in a good-natured way, her eyes sparkling as she did so, and then to quickly apologize), and decided right away that I’d be happy eating that kind of food every day of my life, as long as I was able to figure out how to keep the cravings at bay. (It hadn’t been two full days yet and the cravings were already causing a dull, persistent ache in my teeth and jawbone.) While I’d had plenty of onions, green peppers, and corn from what my clan grew in the fields, I’d never had refried beans before and certainly never tasted anything like guacamole. Jill could see how much I was favoring my meal, and she commented about how glad she was that I was enjoying the burrito. I grunted something back in response, but I couldn’t say exactly what.

  We were still eating when music of some sort came from Jill’s pocketbook. She made an annoyed face and told me that was Brittany’s ringtone. ‘I should’ve turned the phone off,’ she said. She removed her cellphone from her bag and presumably did just that. A short time later our server came to our table and sheepishly asked Jill if she was Jill Zemler. When she nodded, the server told her that she had a phone call from someone named Brittany Hennessey, who claimed it was urgent she speak to Jill. Jill sighed in exasperation and accepted the phone handset from the bony long-haired server.

  ‘I should never have told Brittany where I was planning to take you for dinner,’ Jill whispered to me, her hand covering the mouthpiece on the handset. ‘But if I don’t talk to her, she’ll probably be storming the restaurant in minutes. She’s a very sweet girl, but she can go overboard at times.’

  A look of patience settled over Jill’s face as she greeted her friend. I have learned during my ventures into their world that my kind’s hearing is exceptionally strong compared to theirs, and even over the din of the restaurant I was able to hear what Brittany was telling Jill. I wasn’t surprised that what she was saying appeared to be having no impact (in fact, Jill told her friend that what she was saying was pretty much what she already suspected, given what I had told her), nor when Jill told me about the call once she’d ended her conversation with her friend.

  ‘That was Brittany freaking out after discovering that you have zero presence on social media,’ Jill said, smiling sadly at what she considered her friend’s unnecessary alarm.

  I’d read about social media in magazines and newspapers during past trips and knew it had to do with cellphones, computers, something called the web, and other things called websites, tweets, and blogs, but the concept remained unclear to me. Still, I recognized that in some way Brittany had spied on me, and suspected this wouldn’t be the last time if I left her alive.

  ‘I told you earlier today that I never owned a cellphone,’ I said, trying to act as if I fully understood what Jill had told me. ‘But I’m not a Luddite. I used power saws and other modern tools in my home-building. And you know that until today I drove a van. But given the way my ma and pa and others of my kin raised me, I never developed any interest in using computers
.’ (I was proud of myself for remembering the term ‘Luddite’. I think I came across it over a decade ago, although I might’ve also seen it while studying the dictionary.)

  Jill said, ‘I know, and that’s one of the things I find so cool about you.’

  That was it. That Brittany girl’s attempt to drive a wedge between us had failed. If anything, all she had accomplished was to make me more endearing to Jill. Of course, I was fortunate that I’d earlier told Jill what I did. If I hadn’t, Brittany’s call might’ve had its desired effect.

  When we later walked back to Jill’s apartment, instead of holding my hand like Jill had done earlier, she took hold of my arm with both her hands and kept her body touching mine. The closeness of her made me nearly breathless.

  Once we were back inside Jill’s apartment, she told me it was about time I watched my first movie. I didn’t object, whatever she wanted was fine with me. She chose what she claimed was her favorite movie from a small library that she kept. It was called The Shop Around the Corner and she told me it was an old movie, made in 1940. Which didn’t seem all that old to me given the publishing dates of many of the books I’d read.

  We sat together on the couch as we watched the movie. I was well aware of what a movie was from my reading, but it was a strange experience watching one unfold. It had a different kind of power than a book. Maybe part of the excitement was having Jill so close to me, but I still found myself absorbed in the story, which seemed to be an account of love at first sight, even though initially the couple bickered worse than my ma and pa ever did. It stunned me when I realized that I wasn’t considering the participants in the movie as them, but more in the same manner that I viewed Jill and my own kin.

  We’d watched a fair amount of the movie when Jill moved closer to me, and then without any notice swung her feet on to the couch and curled up with her knees almost to her chest, lying on her side so that her head rested on my leg.

  ‘It just feels natural for me to be on the sofa like this with you,’ she said, her voice the very definition of the word sultry – at least, as given in the clan’s dictionary that I had studied. ‘That’s all this is.’

  A dizziness overwhelmed me, so much so that I could barely pay attention to the goings-on in the movie. Later I realized that while Jill was lying like that, and maybe for as much as an hour afterwards, I wasn’t aware of any of the aching that the cravings had brought on. We sat like that for a dozen minutes or so (although the time seemed to stretch into something far longer) while my heart pounded so heavily that it seemed to be beating in my ears. Then Jill tilted her head so that she was looking directly at me, her eyes larger than I’d ever seen them.

  ‘You can kiss me,’ she said.

  ‘I want to more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything,’ I forced out, my voice heavy and catching in my throat. ‘But I can’t. It wouldn’t be right. Not now. Not until I move into my own home and we start dating properly.’

  Her head titled back so that she was looking again at the movie. ‘Is it OK if I lie like this when we’re on the sofa together?’

  I nodded, not sure I would’ve been able to get any more words out of my mouth. Even though Jill couldn’t have seen me nod, she knew I had done so. So we remained like that until the movie ended, with me sitting nearly breathless, my head and heart pounding, while Jill lay curled up, her head resting lightly on my leg. I had told Jill the truth about how badly I wanted to kiss her, but I lied about my reason for not doing so. I did want to court her properly, which meant waiting until I wasn’t a guest in her home, but if that was all there was to it I would have weakened. What kept me from doing so was that I was afraid. It was partly because I had never kissed a girl before. Even though Patience and I had engaged in marital relations, we never once kissed. She would never have put up with it if I had been inclined to try to do that with her, and she probably would’ve bitten a chunk out of my lip or tongue if given the chance. But that was only part of the reason. It had been almost two days since I’d last had one of the clan’s stews, and even though I’d used the toothpaste and mouthwash that Jill made available to me, as well as having other meals since that stew, I couldn’t help worrying that if we kissed Jill might taste the meat used in it. I needed more time to pass before I could risk kissing her.

  FOURTEEN

  I accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep that night, not with all the thoughts whipping about in my head, and not with the intense longing that I felt for Jill. After Jill had disappeared into her bedroom, I tried reading the rest of Frankenstein, but I was unable to concentrate on the words, and I knew I’d have no better luck if I tried choosing any of her other books.

  Once the lights went off in Jill’s bedroom, I waited a spell and then slipped out of the apartment. I had warned Jill that I might be too restless for sleep, and if that turned out to be the case I would wander outside for a while, hoping the cool night’s air would help. She seemed concerned by this (as evidenced by the way her brow wrinkled and she bit her lip), but she told me she understood and warned me that I needed to be careful when walking around her neighborhood late at night. I listened to her warnings as if they were genuine, but the idea of any of them individually or even in small groups posing a threat to me was absurd. There was the same chance of that as of rabbits posing a threat to a wolf.

  After I left her building, I stared up at the sky, but it was starless and the moon was hidden by haze and clouds. My sense of direction, though, was still strong enough to direct me north. There were far fewer of them outside at that hour, but there were still occasional stragglers roaming about, as well as cars and taxis on the streets, although far fewer than earlier. If I had still been collecting them, this would’ve been the hour for it. As I walked, I spotted one of the predators Jill had warned me about. He was hiding in the shadows and eyeing me, but as with most predators he recognized that I was a more dangerous one than himself – even though I was keeping my true self hidden – and he remained in the shadows.

  I let my instincts guide me, and it wasn’t long, no more than several miles of walking, before I entered an area of greenery, and not long after that I reached a small lake.

  I found it soothing to a degree sitting on grass among trees beside this body of water. Perhaps it would’ve been even more soothing if I had heard more animals rustling about or other noises from animals, but there were almost none, which made the setting seem both familiar and foreign to me. Still, as I sat there I was able to slow down my thoughts and was better able to untangle and study the problems weighing on me. First and foremost were my worries about the cravings.

  After two days the cravings were only a discomfort, nothing more. I could easily live with them if this was how bad they were going to get. But I knew from that black time when my clan was driven nearly into madness that the cravings were going to get much worse, and I couldn’t just ignore what was going to happen. Ever since I spotted that man in Brooklyn with the heavy jaw, I’d been trying to decide whether he was one of my kind, and I had pretty much came to the conclusion that he was. So I needed to find him. It was that simple. I needed to have him tell me his secret for keeping the cravings at bay, which meant I had to hope he lived near where I spotted him.

  Resolutely, I decided I would search the area of Brooklyn where I’d seen him walking. Either I’d find him or I’d discover another way to fight the cravings. Or alternatively, the cravings would end up destroying me. With that problem settled in my mind (at least as much as was possible at that time), I moved on to the next issue troubling me, which was finding work.

  My evening with Jill had made me doubly anxious to court and marry her, but that wasn’t the only reason I needed to start working. Even this one day of mostly idleness left me feeling uneasy, and I didn’t know how many more days of it I could stand. But that was still only part of it. When the cravings maddened my clan, we were snowbound, and icebound, and were more idle than during the other seasons. The thought stuck in my mind tha
t if I was spending long hours each day building houses or doing carpentry or fixing cars, that would lessen the cravings. Although I knew I might turn out to be wrong about it, I kept thinking that would be the case. I therefore desperately needed to find work, but judging by my experience earlier that day it seemed as if I would be blocked from doing so unless I was able to obtain a social security number. And from what I’d been able to gather, it didn’t seem as if I could get one unless I had a birth certificate. Which I didn’t, and I didn’t see any way I could.

  It was maddening. Despite having been born in the New Hampshire wilderness, because I didn’t have an official document proving it I would be unable to work in their world, even though I was able to prove that I could do the work required. I considered telling Jill about my quandary and seeing if she could help me find a solution, but I soon realized the dangers in doing that. After what I’d already told her about my upbringing, she’d believe that my ma and pa had never obtained a legal document from the authorities regarding my birth. But she might question how I had worked in the past without the necessary social security number. And even if she believed that I had been able to work without one, it could very well lead to a disastrous outcome, such as Jill or others wanting the whereabouts of my kin so they could verify my birth. I soon accepted that I couldn’t tell Jill about this, nor anyone who might end up wanting to find my ma and pa. So it appeared that I was stuck as badly as a fly in molasses, and I didn’t see any way of getting unstuck.