An Unknown Hunger
Chris Hayes-Kossmann
Part 2/2
#
That night Con tangled himself in the sheets and dreamed of graduation. The wind flicked the tassel on his cap against his face. His two best friends stood on either side, robes hanging heavy. Their faces were blank skin, no eyes, no smiles, like half-formed mannequins.
He woke and sat in the darkness, and thought of those friends. Their names were whispers in the back of his mind, flitting about too fast to catch.
#
It was the awful ass-end of summer where the afternoons were sticky-hot but the mornings still held enough chill to make the hairs on your arms stand up. The steering wheel was a ring of ice. Elliot was waiting outside the office. “Coffee?”
“I owe you ten,” said Packer.
Elliot grinned. “Forget it. Spend it on your wife, you cheap gringo.”
“Anything tasty today?”
“Well,” Elliot said, “we woulda been doorknocking up in Flemington, except the kid that held up those gas stations turned himself in last night. Crying, too. So, my diary is open.”
“You mind if-”
“Stannis again?” Elliot stretched his hands over his head, yawned. “Whatever you say, Holmes.”
#
Serena glared from behind the counter. “You were drunk. Totally drunk.”
He apologised with his eyes to the floor.
“Forget it. I have work to do.”
He waited a while, studying the way her fingers flickered across the keyboard. Somehow they weren’t half as sexy as they had been under the twinkle of Christmas lights, wreathed in cigarette smoke.
“I just came over ill,” he said. “I wasn’t that drunk.”
She didn’t reply.
He sat on a bench outside the supermarket and ate crisps, suddenly aware of his sagging belly, the veins on the back of his hands. The weight of almost fifty years pressed on his heart. He thought of Marilyn, and what she would have said.
Stop being an idiot, most likely. He remembered her crooked-tooth grin. Curls of strawberry blonde heaped on the pillow. You only ever had one twenty-first birthday. You were never exciting enough for two. Help me peel these spuds. She’d introduced herself as Marilyn but her real name was Sam, and it never felt right for her. She even grimaced on their wedding day as the minister read her name, do you solemnly vow...
He remembered lifting her veil, his father squeezed into a charcoal suit clapping so loud, his shoes pinching and the smell of the roses almost dizzying, all the applause, so many hands...
But. But.
He stopped. There were no hands. Just himself and the woman by his side in a red brick chapel that smelled of pine. Her fingers were light and smooth against his neck as he lifted the veil, and her hair spilled down her back as dark as the ebony of piano keys. She kissed him with a fury.
But she hadn’t. It was a church kiss, mouth closed, delicate and slow. Applause. More kisses that night, the bed ringed by candles. Petals of condensation blooming on an ice bucket. Her groans.
No. Cheap motel. Stains on the carpet, ash on the bedside table. They burned through a pack of menthols together. Long black hair tangled in his fingers as they fucked.
“Christ,” he said, recalling the taste of both women’s mouths. “Christ almighty.”
When Con returned to the complex it was closing on noon, the sun slow-roasting the back of his ears. He stopped in the street. The dark-suited policemen were in the lobby, notebooks open. They had Serena on the lounge by the door. He couldn’t tell what she was saying, but he could guess.
The other woman was still buzzing in the back of his head. He shrank back from the entrance and went around to the fire stairs. Every step rattled, ready to collapse. The door to his floor was unlocked and the cool rush of air conditioners made him shiver all the way to his toes.
He locked the door to his apartment and sat on the bed with a stack of post-it notes. He scribbled down Sam. Married 1993 died 2003. He crossed out Sam and wrote Marilyn. He stuck it on the fridge. On a fresh square, Black hair cheap chapel. The pen was running low on ink. Black hair, he wrote again, and then the house was too small and the roof leaked but there was lavender in the garden.
Yes. He’d sat in the yard with a car magazine under one arm and run his fingers through the lavender. She’d brought him sandwiches. But what was her name? He remembered photos in frames on the coffee table, flimsy lace curtains, the washing machine rattling. He was a mechanic when he wasn’t on welfare. She signed her name with sharp letters. Connie.
The pen tore through paper. Connie. Con and Connie. He stared at the words. He crossed out Con and chewed the end of the pen. What was it they’d carved on the elm out back? R+C. When he dropped the plates she tutted him, Robbie, we won’t have any left if you keep that up. Yes, that was his name. Robert. He wrote it down.
Where were you the night before last?
Robert. He’d heard the name before. Did you speak to, or touch this man at any point? His name was Robert Olive.
He had called himself Robert Olive, and he was Con Stannis, and neither was a lie.
For the second time in two days, he ran to the toilet and threw up.
#
“So he told you-”
“He said his wife was dead. And his Mom was dead too. He wasn’t making much sense.”
Elliot scribbled furiously. “Did he make any threats towards you? Did he grab you?”
Serena shook her head, her black ponytail flipping from side to side. “He didn’t want me to leave, though. I tried to walk out and he said I had to stay. I wasn’t scared, or anything…”
“Are you sure?”
She brought a finger to her lips. “Well. It was worrying, I guess.”
“Okay. Al?”
Packer chewed on the end of his pen. “Could you take us to his apartment?”
“Sure. I mean, if I have to. I’d have to call up first, see if he’s in…”
“Whatever you have to do.”
Serena ran back across the lobby and Elliot whispered, “I still don’t know why you’re bothering.”
“There was no damn reason for Olive to die. Maybe Stannis saw something. I’d like to be able to tell his wife anything more solid than sorry, his brain just turned off.”
Elliot snorted. “You care too much.”
“Suck it.”
Serena was coming back, nodding. “He’s there. Hung up without saying anything.” She laced her fingers together. “I’m sure he didn’t hurt anyone. He was drunk, but not, you know, dangerous.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” Packer’s right hand hovered over the pistol at his belt. “I’m sure it’ll be just fine.”
#
The TV gibbered in the background while he sat on the bed and remembered.
College. Law-school girls in shoulder pads. The front doors of the refectory creaking on rusted hinges. Accounting was boring, but it paid well enough for Marilyn to buy the car that would eventually kill her.
He’d also been a mechanic. Bills spread on the table, third notices, final notices. Connie brought home enough from temping to keep the phone connected. She’d finished high-school; he’d dropped out. Engine grease in the lines of his palms.
They met for the first time at the bus stop, and the ringlets of her hair caught the afternoon sun like leaves in autumn.
They met in a park; she was chasing down a golden retriever. She said she was third-generation Chinese, but he could barely tell.
They had never had any pets. He hated dogs.
He loved dogs.
“I’m going mad.”
The phone rang and for a moment he thought it was Connie, always ringing at three to ask what he wanted for dinner that night, whether he would be in the shop late. But when he brought the receiver to his ear he heard Serena. “Mister Stannis? Hello? There are some people here to see you… Mister Stannis?”
He hung up. Sweat beaded across his forehead. He imagined walking down the stairs into the foyer. I remembered. I’m Robert Olive. I need to see my wife.
But they thought Robert Olive was dead. Con turned out his wallet over the bedspread. Nothing inside but twenty dollar bills. They wouldn’t believe him. Nobody would. And in the back of his head, that nagging voice – what if you did it? What if they’re right?
No. He’d never hurt anybody, never even raised his hand against Marilyn when she’d been in one of her moods. And there was still one person who believed. There was Connie.
He was already flipping through the phone book before he realised he knew her address, because it was his address. The little two-bedroom with the paint peeling off the doorframe and the stink of cigarettes in every room, no matter how much air freshener they used. Barely four miles away.
So where did Con Stannis live?
He unlocked the door with trembling fingers. The hallway was empty. So was the fire escape. He wanted to leap down the stairs, but that was a trick for teenagers, and he was forty two. Or was that Robbie? No, not quite. Robbie was thirty nine. “Don’t even know how old I am.” The stairs shook from side to side. “Jesus fuck.”
He ran across the parking lot bent double and peered around the corner. One police car, empty. He waited for a break in traffic and pelted across the road. Only when he was through to the safety of the trees did he chance a look back at the complex. Seven stories up was his window. A shadow moved behind the curtains.
Con ran, the yelping car horns drowned out by the jackhammer of his heart.
#
Packer had been expecting an apartment littered with empty bottles, the stink of cheap whisky soaked into the wallpaper. Instead the door swung open onto a pristine living-room, still rich with the chemical-tang of carpet shampoo. “Mr. Stannis?” Packer knocked once more before stepping inside. “Con?”
A coffee-table dulled by dust. A single bed, sheets folded neat. In the cupboard, two blue-checked shirts, two pairs of khaki slacks. Two pairs of socks. The wool-knit jumper from the video was bunched at the foot of the bed. “Con?”
“He ran, Al.”
“Well, shit.” In the fridge, two cartons of milk, unopened. A block of cheese, uneaten. Three packets of chocolate digestives still in the wrapper. “He’s got to be sick.”
Elliot rifled through the cupboard. “Serena… how long did you say Mr. Stannis had been staying here?”
“Less than a week, I think. I should probably go…”
“Go.” Packer shut the fridge and stared at the mass of post-its. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
A single square. Con and Connie. Con crossed out, replaced with Robert.
#
He met Connie in her driveway as she stepped from a dented Ford sedan. She was stooped, a fat bag of groceries clutched to her chest, eyes bloodshot and shadowed. Strands of black hair were plastered to her cheeks. For a moment they stood, staring, and he thought she was just as beautiful as the day they married in that little red-brick chapel.
The gnawing in his stomach was half worry and half hunger. There was a need growing in him he didn’t understand, some longing that was spreading through his chest with claws and suckers. It hurt to breathe.
“Hello,” he said.
She sighed, long and tired. “What do you want?”
“I came…”
Her eyes widened. “Are you from the police?”
“Not police.” He stepped closer. “I don’t know if you want to see me. I can’t remember what happened. I don’t know if I ran out or if you kicked me out or whatever.”
She glanced to her front door, then back to him, and again to the front door. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Did you come about Robert?”
Every word was a punch to the gut. “Connie… I don’t get it. What did I do?”
“I think you should go.”
He swallowed. The claws in his lungs dug in deeper. “Did you forget too? It’s me.”
“What?”
“I’m Robert,” he said. “I remember it, almost everything. I love you.” He stretched his arms out to hold her, hold her while she cried after her mother died, when the doctor told them he was infertile, when the repo men took the television. Hold her every night after they made love.
She dropped her shopping with a clatter. “I’ll call the cops,” she said, and ran for the doorway. The keys jangled in her hand. “You’re mad,” she said, louder now, “I’m calling them. I am!” Then she slammed the door behind her, leaving shopping scattered in the driveway.
The sirens began almost instantly, a long low ululation like a battlecry. Con looked for the cars, the flash of red and blue. He ran to the door and shook the handle. “Connie! Please! It’s me, Robert!” There was no reply.
The sirens were coming from the east, so he ran west, sneakers slapping on the pavement. Wind blew cold beads of sweat into his eyes. It was just like this, on the last night. The moon only a sliver in the sky, laces flapping around his ankles. Chest burning. Counting off the house numbers as he grew closer to home.
He remembered it all.
He stopped in the middle of the road and shuddered as it washed through. Everything that Robbie Olive ever knew was laid out before him like a film reel. He saw every forgotten anniversary and hot dinner and every sleepless night. He saw how it ended.
Tires squealed against the macadam. His shadow was thrown out before him and the edges of his fingers shone red and blue and red and blue.
#
“Yeah. It’s going to go late. Keep that dessert in the fridge. How’s Nikki?”
Yelena’s voice was tinny, distorted. “In the bath. Playing animals.”
“Is she a duck?”
“She changed her mind. Ducks are ugly. Tonight, she’s a swan.”
“Love you.” Packer hung up, gave Elliot a sheepish grin. “She made tiramisu.”
“I love tiramisu. I need a wife. How much for yours?”
“Fuck you. Okay, start the tape.”
He slipped into the interview room where Con Stannis sat, steel cuffs around his wrists, the chain dangling in his lap. “Evening. Going to be cooperative?”
Con ducked away. “I will.”
Packer frowned, trying to read anything from the man’s expression. Nothing there but fear. He undid the cuffs and Con rubbed his wrists. “You didn’t need to do that.”
“You expect any different, turning up at that poor woman’s house?”
“I d-didn’t know.”
“You didn’t know? Yesterday you didn’t know Robert Olive and today you’re at his house?”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Packer snorted. “You watched a man die and then went to harass his wife? You’re a prick. I’ll come back when you’re bored of being an asshole.” He waved to Elliot behind the glass and locked the door behind him as he left. His hands were shaking. “Goddamn. Fuckin’ goddamn.” He reached for the cigarette pack that wasn’t there.
#
Con Stannis was alone. The room was only a few paces a side, just big enough for a table and two chairs. He’d expected it to be cold steel and concrete, like on TV, but everything here was cheap plastic and chipboard. Taking the weight off his feet was an instant relief. It was the running that did it. Too long without exercise. Everything ached.
He closed his eyes. He laid his hands upon the table and felt his pulse through his fingertips.
The hunger swelled, and he understood it.
He remembered the fights with Connie, peaking with screaming and ending with skin pressed against skin, gasps in the darkness. It was hard, but sometimes hard was good.
Memories in strobe. Losing track of what went where. The sun on his back as he repaired the shingles. His first attempt at roast lamb, blackening in the oven, the stink getting into the curtains.
Five years ago he buried Marilyn. They did an incredible job on her face, rebuilt all the shattered bone. It looked like she was sleeping. The minister used her real name in the eulogy and he dug his fingernails into the flesh of his palms.
Five years ago he was Robert, and Connie was introducing him to the spaghetti western. Clint Eastwood seemed the kind of guy he could have a beer with. He dreamed of the unending sand of the West.
He was so terribly hungry.
A week ago he’d been eating takeaway Thai in his apartment, alone. But a week ago Connie had cooked lasagne.
And then…
Three nights back he’d gone for a walk. T-shirt and running pants and dusty sneakers with the sole flapping off. He’d played pool at the local till the two am lockout. Connie would be waiting under the covers, ready to welcome him in. She always was. She could be a bitch sometimes, a real straight-edge stick up his ass, but that was alright, because she knew what he wanted to say before he said it and she dreamed the same dreams. He believed she loved him almost as much as he loved her.
He turned the corner that signalled three blocks from home. Traffic was dead. The streetlights hummed in long rows.
Then a man stepped from nowhere and he was face to face with himself.
He remembered being Con looking into Robert’s eyes, and Robert looking into Con’s, and that was the last Robert saw.
He hadn’t really lied to the cop. Not really.
The hunger curled his hands into claws. It had come back so quick, much faster than before. The need was greater. Maybe it was because he was getting old. And the look in Connie’s eyes…
“Can’t d-do this m-m-much longer,” he whispered. It wasn’t a town for folk his age. A hard place to wake up not knowing who or what you were. Maybe this time he’d remember something. Keep hold of some little scrap. Maybe he’d try to remember Marilyn. She was worth it.
He could smell the men in the next room, and his mouth filled with saliva.
The door opened and the cop called Packer walked in, papers in hand, coffee in the other. “Ready to chat?”
He swallowed the spit. “How did you find me?”
“You left a post-it.”
“Ah,” he said. “Stupid. I… I…”
“Don’t play dead on me now.”
The need was a screw twisting in his gut. His words came out in gasps. “I don’t want to d-do this.”
“Mm?”
Con’s hand was a blur. He grabbed Packer around the wrist and the cop had time to shout before Con pulled him close and breathed him in. Packer went stiff, the cords in his neck taut. Then it was over. Packer fell. His head hit the floor with a hollow smack.
Con stood, feeling sweat and purpose and memories bubble in his chest, and he tasted and relished them all. Digesting would take a while. He heard movement in the next room. The door handle turned very slowly. He ignored it. He had all the time in the world.
Two concepts jostled for space in the forefront of his mind. One had called itself Robert Olive, and the other Conrad Stannis. They were distracting. There was only room for one, and Conrad was getting tired. All his parts worn down and creaking. His memories were dimming. A single bulb flickering in a long hall, waiting to finally sputter out.
He let Conrad go, breathed him out to mingle with the air and dust. There was nothing to see.
The door opened. The man on the other side flapped his mouth. He didn’t hear the words. They didn’t matter. Humans were slow, doddering creatures, and the only life they had was their own.
He pounced.
#
Robert Olive rolled out of bed swaddled in sheets. His right arm throbbed with pins and needles, and he shook it until the blood began to flow. The room was silent. Connie must have already been up and cooking breakfast.
“Connie.” No reply. “Hey, Connie. You up?” Still no reply. He wandered into the kitchen. “You know that dream? The one about my birthday? I had it again.”
The kitchen was empty, neon reflecting on linoleum. He remembered. “Dork,” he said. “Rambling on to nobody.”
He made breakfast in the dark, hands working by instinct. Then he froze. His fingers tangled. The bowl fell to the floor. Milk puddled cold around his toes.
“Nikki,” he said. It was a name that didn’t mean anything. Maybe a face in his dream. Maybe nothing at all.
Still, it was a nice name. He said it again, and then cleaned the floor and made his breakfast a second time. There was a long day ahead.
- - -
Copyright Chris Hayes-Kossmann, 2009
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