Hunger
By Mark Jabaut
This morning feels like something
coughed up by a cat. The sky is gray and
knotted with clouds, and the air outside my building has a damp, palpable
weight. Like gravity has decided that
it’s sick and tired of all this upward movement, all this building and flying
and whatnot, and has chosen this morning to begin exerting more pressure. Like
the universe has suddenly gone all
pissy.
Or maybe it has something to do with
the incredible hangover I’m hosting this morning. They’re always
worse when there’s nothing to
eat.
I shrug myself deeper into my thick
coat and start walking. I’m hoping the
motion will make me feel better – either that, or it will make me vomit the
bile sloshing around in my empty stomach, which will have the same effect. Better
health through exercise.
There’re a couple of scrawny crack addicts
still asleep in the trash between my building and the shit bar next door. Plastic
grocery bags tumbleweed around and
over them on the breeze. Lucky bastards,
I think. Wish I was still sleeping.
I hold my breath as I lurch past.
The sidewalk here is cracked but
level, yet still I feel like I’m walking uphill. I notice little stars blinking
in the pavement, and I hope they’re really there and not a result of this
tilt-a-whirl dizziness. I light a protein cig and take a big drag. It tastes
like crap but provides some needed
nourishment, and it reminds my lungs that I won’t be taking any shit from them
today – they need to suck it up and help me get through my rounds.
My stomach is a hollow, raw knot.
Two more blocks and I’m at my
destination: Raul’s tattoo joint.
It doesn’t even have a name, as far as I know
– just says “Tattoo” in big letters on the barred front window. Like
naming a restaurant “Food.” Some imagination Raul’s got.
Like it was too much effort to come up
with a name for the place.
It doesn’t matter; I’m not there for a
tattoo. I rap on the door hard and
notice my reflection wavering in the glass – a mop of uncombed hair and two
dark-circled eyes sunken into an oversized down coat. Not the kind of sight
you’d normally want to
open the door for. But Raul knows me;
he’s expecting me.
“C’mon in, Mano,” he says as he pulls
the door open and shrinks from the morning air.
“Hurry up, man, it’s cold out there.”
In just jeans and a tee-shirt, Raul looks skeletal. Like we all look
when the weather is warmer. No one’s got any meat on their bones, anymore.
I step into his shop – one room, one
tattoo chair, and coloring equipment and ink lying all over the place. Walls
looking like they’ve never been cleaned
or painted. Ceiling tiles yellowed from
cigarette smoke. A puddle of some sort
of goop pooled in a corner.
“You should clean up once in a while,”
I say.
“Fuck you.”
“Just a suggestion. You know, from a business standpoint.” I know he doesn’t give one shit about my ideas
for improving his business, and truthfully, I don’t know why I said it. I’m
thinking it must have been a curveball
tossed out by my hung-over brain. I
better rein that fucker in if I don’t want to spend all day here, I think.
Raul silently leads me through a door
at the back of the shop and into what must be his apartment, and that
aforementioned vomit almost makes an appearance. The place isn’t any bigger
than his shop, and
it smells like old laundry and farts.
Dirty clothes seem to cover every horizontal surface except a path
across the floor to a beat-up-looking blue sofa. Empty protein tablet packs
and fruit chits
lay everywhere.
“Jesus, man, let’s go back out to the
shop,” I say. “It fucking stinks in
here.”
“Can’t do business out there,” he
says, apparently not insulted by my reaction.
“Front window’s too big.” He sits
at one end of the sofa and nearly sinks from view; then leans over the
scratched coffee table and begins filling a bong. He raises his eyebrows at
me.
“God, yes,” I say, and I swear, I can feel
my brain releasing endorphins at the thought of the incoming THC. They jet through
little pathways in my cortex
like fucking subway cars. I pick my way
through the room and join Raul on the sofa. A pair of bong hits later and we
get down to
business.
“How much can you get for me?” he asks.
“How much you want?” I ask in
return. He looks toward the ceiling and
through his eyes I can see his fucked-up addict brain running
calculations. Doing the old Junior High
word problems, as if he ever got past grade school. Sine and fucking cosine.
“Four cans,” he says finally, “if the
price is still the same.”
“Still the same,” I echo, and unzip my
coat. I reach into one of the deep interior
pockets and pull out four small tins, stacking them on the coffee table. “One
hundred bucks.”
Raul looks at them and I can feel his
mouth begin to water. But a worried
frown crosses his forehead.
“That ain’t tuna,” he says, half question
and half accusation.
“It’s got tuna in it,” I say. “It’s nearly
the same thing. Anyway, I can’t get pure tuna anymore. But if you don’t want it . . .” I leave the
sentence hanging as I reach for
the cans.
“No!” Raul says, defeat and craving in
his eyes. “I’ll take it.”
He pulls some cash out of his greasy jeans
and sets it next to the cans. I pick it
up, count it, and stuff it into a coat pocket.
I stand up and as I’m zipping the coat back up, he clears his throat.
I look at him patiently.
“I was just wondering,” he says
tentatively, “why are there little cats on the label? It doesn’t
have cat meat in it, does it?”
I stare at him for a minute, trying to
decide if all this conversation is worth my time in the future.
“Would it make a difference?” I ask.
Raul shrugs. “I guess not,” he says. “Food is food.”
“That’s right,” I say as I walk back
into the tattoo parlor toward the door.
“Food is fucking food.”
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