How We Are Hungry Read Online Free PDF Page A

made about eighty so far.”
    They walked back through the strip. Americans and Canadians and Swiss crisscrossed the street; some stood and watched the TVs positioned above the open-air bars, fuzzy college basketball happening, though soundlessly. Sunburned couples in white cotton fondled baskets in the souvenir shops. Surfers waited on benches for one of the two pay phones. Twelve-year-old locals sped by on ATVs, three on each bike, huge white smiles.
    She counted the reasons she should sleep with Hand: because she was curious about sleeping with him, curious to see him naked; because she loved him; because sleeping with him would be a natural and good extension of her filial love for him; because there existed the possibility that it would be so good that they would change their ideas of each other and then think of themselves as a pair; because to deny one’s curiosity about things like this was small and timid, and she was neither and didn’t ever want to be either; because he had really wonderful arms, triceps that made her jangly in her ribs and tightened her chest; because she was not very attracted to him when away from him—she’d never thought of him while in the tub or flat on her bed—but in his presence she didn’t want to walk or eat, she wanted to be nude with him, under a dirty sheet in a borrowed house. She wanted to hold his shoulders; she wanted to go snowshoeing with him; she wanted to go to funerals with him; she wanted him to be the father of her children, and also her own father, and brother; she wanted all this while also to be free; she wanted to sleep with other men and come home and tell Hand about them. She wanted to live one life with Hand while living three others concurrently.
    At the hotel, the horses: two were sitting in the grass, as if they’d been waiting, patiently but with pressing business, the white one glowing faintly, like a star on the ceiling of a child’s bedroom. The third and fourth were standing on the road, by the hedge, their dark hair shining.
    HORSES: It’s never like we planned.
    HORSES’ SHADOWS ON DIRT ROAD: I wish I could do more.
    HORSES: We want violence, so we can kick and tear the world in thirds.
    HORSES’ SHADOWS ON DIRT ROAD: I’m helpless to help you.
    HORSES: All we need is the spark.
    HORSES’ SHADOWS ON DIRT ROAD: When it happens, tell me what to do.
    “Jesus,” said Pilar.
    “Maybe they live here,” said Hand.
    The horses had no symbolic value.
    Pilar wanted to describe, to Hand, how she felt, every twenty minutes or so, about being there with him. They were together in the room, which had a roof and was warm. They were alive, though neither of them could have predicted with certainty that at their age they would both be alive—people flew on airplanes and drove cars after so many drinks, and every time they were away from each other or their family or friends, it seemed very likely to be the last; it was more logical, in some ways, to die or disappear. She had not grown up—her parents stayed home always—thinking that people could go far away, repeatedly, all over the earth, starting and finishing lives elsewhere, and then see each other again.
    She wanted to rub herself in bananas. She wanted to open umbrellas into the faces of cats, make them scurry and scream. How could she sleep with Hand in this room? If it would be the only time, she wanted mirrors everywhere, so she could remember it a dozen ways.
    But it would not be this night because he hadn’t kissed her on the forehead yet. But this would happen. Tomorrow one of them would find a reason to hug the other, and they would hold each other for too long, making sounds about how good it was to be here, and then he would pull away a few inches, to kiss her on the forehead. And the rest would come soon after. She pictured his penis flying across the room and into her, and then shooting in and out. His head on the wall, mounted.
    Hand took the couch and Pilar took the bed and they