The New Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page A

see him finally valuing nutrition.
    “Do you think they have music?” he wonders.
    “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
    “Why?”
    “If someone comes up the elevator, we might not hear them.”
    “So? They’ll hear us and then they can have dinner with us.”
    “Addis…”
    “What?”
    Nora glances around. Addis watches her.
    “Fine. Let me go check.”
    She makes a quick circuit of the restaurant, looking for the stereo controls but looking even harder for any signs that they’re not alone. Those bandages. The blood is brown; they’re at least a day or two old. She finds no other traces, so when she finds the stereo, plugged into some cleanup crewman’s battered iPod, she spins through its playlists with a certain thrill, hoping to find something they can both enjoy.
    “Billie Holiday?” she yells at Addis.
    “Boring!”
    “The Beatles?”
    “They suck!”
    “You little shit,” she laughs. “I’m putting it on shuffle.”
    She presses play without looking and walks back to the table. Some soft piano begins, then a high, whispery voice layered with fragile harmonies.
    “What’s this?” Addis says, wrinkling his nose.
    “Sounds like Sigur Ros.”
    “Why do you always listen to old d n> ol music!” Addis groans.
    “This isn’t that old.”
    “It’s like a million years old.”
    Nora sighs and flicks one of Addis’s spilled corns onto his shirt. A glint comes into his eye. He picks up a piece of tofu.
    “No , ” Nora snaps, pointing her fork at him. “We are absolutely not food-fighting with this meal. Put it down.”
    Addis hesitates, sizing up her resolve.
    “Sir?” she says in cop-voice, “I need you to put the tofu down immediately.”
    He pops it in his mouth. Nora nods and eats some corn. They smile at each other as they chew.
    The restaurant moves so slowly it’s barely perceptible, but Nora notices they’ve made half a revolution since they arrived. The view of the Cascade Mountains has been replaced by the Puget Sound, pink and red, set ablaze by the setting sun. In the evening dimness, with the buildings all just silhouettes, the city looks perfectly normal. Many of the downtown highrises are dark, but a few still have power, their tiny windows blinking on and off like Christmas lights. She watches her brother shoving fries into his mouth and somehow getting them in his hair, and she wonders where she’s taking him. When they spend a whole day walking, where are they walking to? She has been avoiding this thought, but here it is again, insistent: she has no idea. She has no destination, or even a direction. She is making them walk because motion is the only plan she has. Because stillness is death.
    Addis is looking out the window now, following her gaze. Her focus shifts to their reflections in the glass, ghostly faces surrounded by constellations of ceiling lights, and she is struck again by how different they are. He is tiny even for his age; Nora is already taller than her mother. His skin is dark like his father’s; hers has more of her mother mixed in—coffee with Irish cream. Her hair is a briar of loose coils; his is a tightly woven nest that floats over his head collecting leaves, cobwebs, French fries. It’s in desperate need of grease, so dry she could probably snap a chunk off in her fingers. His skin, too, so ashy he almost looks dead. It hits her suddenly how fragile he is. How constantly vulnerable. She doubted her ability to be a mother even beforethe end of the world. How is she going to do it now?
    “Nora?”
    He is looking at her uneasily. She wonders what her face has been doing for the last few minutes. She blinks away the beginnings of a tear.
    “I need to go to the bathroom,” she says, and stands up. The music has shifted to something modern, one of those new pop songs Addis and his friends used to listen to back in D.C. It murmurs and clangs, slow and dark, the singer’s androgynous voice doubled note for note by a mournful viola. It