Still Hungry
by Bob Reiss
Bob Reiss is the best selling author of 24 books of fiction and non-fiction. Still Hungry is from Bob’s short story collection, “Still Hungry, Tales From the Shadows” published as an ebook by Vida press in 2022. Many of his novels are based on his travels as a journalist in remote parts of earth, for magazines including Outside, Smithsonian, Parade and Fortune. You can watch an interview of Bob on YouTube by Inspicio Arts Magazine. The interview title, “Living On the Border between order and anarchy” pretty much describes Bob’s work. Bob’s website is bobreiss.com
It starts like a joke but it isn’t. An ordinary looking man walks into a diner, and orders and ordinary lunchtime meal. After that he’s still hungry, so he orders dessert. Then another sandwich. After that, he asks Sarah to bring him a piece of cherry pie.
Now three days later, Sarah eyes him with horror, still sitting at the corner table, signaling her to come over again, signaling for a check again, crooking an index finger and smiling normally enough but that mouth, that normal looking smile, to Sarah it’s the place where all the food keeps disappearing. It’s a black hole. An entry point. A chute. He never stops. She wants to scream.
MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO UNRULY CUSTOMERS, reads a sign by the short order station.
He’s not unruly though. Other than the non-stop eating, the man at table nine is the sort of customer that Sarah, Alice and Gus the owner usually appreciate.
Gus is leaning out of the kitchen now, hissing at Sarah to give him the check. The diner is packed and no one else pays the man particular attention. She makes her feet move. The sounds of talk, cutlery inside and traffic outside gives her a headache. He’s cleaned his plate. Her hand trembles as she adds tax to the bill. The check lands gently against his empty coca cola glass. It’s going to start again, I know it. Why doesn’t it bother anyone else?
“That was delicious,” the man exclaims, patting his slim stomach with his slim white hand. “If there’s one thing I love, it’s rib-eye steak. Singed on the outside, red and juicy inside.”
There’s something wrong with him.
“Tender inside. Salted on top.”
His mouth, moving. Normal pink skin. White, even teeth. Lips thin and wet. Moving, moving.
He’s going to say it again, I know he is. It’s impossible but it’s going to happen.
“Can I see a menu? I’m still a little hungry,” the man at table nine says.
###
“I won’t serve him any more,” she tells Gus, in the kitchen. “He’s a freak.”
“You know what I think?” Gus replies, flipping a burger. “Cancer. Normal on the outside but inside, a mess. My cousin eats six meals a day. Burns it up. Never gains weight. Eats and eats but loses pounds.”
Sarah’s backed against the freezer, barely feeling the steel against her uniform. “I come in to work, he’s here. I go home, he’s here. He pays once in a while, uses the bathroom. I’m still a little hungry? How can you stand it?”
“What does he want this time?”
“Roast beef.”
“One blue plate coming up,” Gus says as Alice backs through the swinging door with a tray of dirty dishes. The older waitress takes one look at Sarah and sighs. “Table nine again?” she says.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Sarah hisses. “Why don’t you see it?”
“He’s quiet. He tips big. He’s different. Who cares?”
Sarah wants to shriek. “It isn’t human!”
Alice laughs. “What is he then? An Angel? Gabriel come to earth with a pocket full of five dollar tips?”
“You’re not funny and I won’t serve him any more.”
Gus draws himself up. He bought the diner 20 years ago and made it a neighborhood favorite. Cops and fireman use it. It’s open 24 hours a day. There’s a news stand outside and Sarah’s bus stop. There are cheap framed prints of natural wonders on the walls; Yellowstone and Zion national parks.
Gus, usually easy going, has his limits.
“You will serve him. Go back to work.”
Alice puts her flabby arm around Sarah’s shoulder. “Just because you don’t understand something doesn’t mean you have to be afraid,” she says. “Talk to him. You’ll get the reason. It will make sense in the end, I’m sure.”
Sarah’s always been afraid of things, even as a child. She needs order. Schedules. Familiarity. Lists. She had a boyfriend once, but love brings surprises, and surprises are pressure. She sent him away. She adopted a dog once, but pets surprise you too so she brought it back. Her days begin at 5:30 each morning with exercises in front of the television. Breakfast is hard boiled eggs and apple slices arranged in a semi circle around the plate. The 6:30 bus driver knows to hold the front left seat open for Sarah. Mom calls on Tuesday nights, sleep begins at 11:15, Sundays find her walking a two mile loop in the park, rain or shine.
Now Sarah places the roast beef special before the man at table nine, thinking, how does he stay so thin? Other customers don’t apparently mind the man, and this seems the crux of the creature’s power, not just the eating, but the fact that no one else pays attention to it.
“Delicious,” he says, chewing, chewing.
Talk to him? Okay, I’ll try.
“Do you live around here, sir?”
“Oh, I move around,” he says, eyes closed in pleasure.
“My cousin’s apartment is being painted,” she lies. “He has to stay out all day because of the smell. Is that why you stay out, work on where you live?”
“Sorry, didn’t hear that. I was concentrating on the fries.”
She hears her voice becoming more brittle, even as she tries to control it. “The cook has a friend who eats alot because he’s sick.”
“It’s not healthy to eat too much,” the man agrees, between bites. “Eating too much gives you indigestion.”
She backs away, sweating. His fork and knife move like piston machines. The mouth opens and gravy drips and the jaw chews and the fork spears another bite.
You are not a man. You are something terrible and you don’t fool me.
Sarah goes off to serve table eleven. Fifteen minutes later the creature at table nine is signaling her again, wag-wag, wag goes the finger.
“Can I see a menu? I’m still a little hungry,” he says.
The night shift workers don’t seem to mind that the man is still there, in the corner. Out on the street, eyeing him through plate glass, Sarah almost misses her bus, has to run after it and pound on the door before the driver opens up. Other passengers stare at her, fueling her anger. Nobody pays attention to that freak but you stare at me if I’m one minute late?
Sarah calms a little at home, lulled by the familiar task of doing Wednesday night laundry, the familiar Wednesday night sit com, the usual Wednesday night half glass of cold white wine. By ten, she’s trying to convince herself that she has over reacted. Maybe, as Gus says, there is some logical explanation. Sarah pulls out her laptop and decides to research what might be wrong with the man at table nine.
She Googles HUNGER AND CANCER. She Googles, ANOREXIA. She Googles, “NON-STOP EATING.” She Googles, “EATING DISORDERS.”
Nothing she reads matches the man’s behavior, so in frustration she punches in the last offering and up swims EATING AND SUPERSTITION, at the very end of the list.
The Hungry Man is an Irish folktale creature who wanders the earth and is said to cause famine. Those who defy him starve, those who are kind to him eat.
She shuts the computer off. This is stupid, she thinks. I can’t believe I’m even reading this stuff, Maybe he’ll be gone in the morning. Maybe I’ll get there and see someone else at table nine. Maybe I’ll never see him again, yes, yes, that is what I choose to believe.
Sarah sleeps well, wakes hungry, and rides to work in her usual seat. It’s a beautiful day. The sky is blue. A few riders greet her and she nods to ones she recognizes. Harold Hanson at the news stand waves hi. Her anxiety rises as she approaches the diner door, but she tells herself she won’t look to see if the man is there until she gets inside. Don’t be there, she wishes, but her anxiety is rising. Her mouth has gone dry. Her stomach throbs. Her armpits itch. She pushes the diner door open, and looks.
The man at table nine is still there.
“You don’t mind if I call you Sarah, do you? That’s the name on your tag. I feel like we know each other by now. Sarah, there’s nothing I like better than eggs in the morning. That lumberjack special tasted great!”
“Here’s your check, sir.”
“I’m still a little hungry. French Toast! That’s the thing! Little cinnamon, crispy bacon. Cuppa coffee! Can I have that, Sarah?”
Stop calling me Sarah, she thinks.
“You are a terrific waitress! I feel like I haven’t eaten in days, Sarah.”
“Why me?” she hears herself blurt out to the man.
His eyes flatten and just for an instant, it seems to her as if only the two of them are here. He seems to consider the question. “It’s the place, not the person,” he says.
“I looked you up,” she says.
He smiles, pink mouth, white teeth, pink tongue.
“Well, not you, but eating. I researched it. Illness.” No response. “Polyphagria, that’s what doctors call extreme intake. The Hungry man,” she adds.
“That’s me,” he says, poking his chest and grinning as the usual diner noises return. “A hungry Man, Sarah.”
“No, it’s a folk myth,” she says. “Irish.”
“Is it? Well, folk tales,” he continues, but a dish clatters in the kitchen, drowning out the rest of the response. She thinks she heard him say, “never get it right.” But the only word that came through was, “Sarah.”
If you say Sarah one more time I will scream.
Mister and Mrs. Gable, retired, arrive at eleven for their usual Friday lunch, as table nine is finishing up a tuna melt on wheat. Mrs. Gable points to the man. “I’ll have what he’s having.”
“But you never order tuna,” Sarah says.
“Live big. Try something different!”
“But you hate fish!” Sarah cries, causing other diners to stare.
“Hate’s a strong word,” Mrs. Gable says.
“I’ll try the tuna too,” Mr. Gable says.
“But you always get chicken in the pot!”
Sarah’s never seen the couple hold hands before. She’s never seen them smile at each other before. They’re eyeing each other as if Sarah has ceased to exist.
Sarah rushes off to the kitchen.
“If he’s still here tonight, I quit,” she tells Gus.
“Yeah, the day you quit is the day earth stands still,” Gus says.
***
Patrolman Ryan Szell stops by at two for his usual apple pie and coffee, but seeing Sarah’s expression, he halts in his tracks. “Are you all right?” he asks.
She shakes her head.
“What’s wrong?”
His eyes follow hers to the man at table nine who, at the moment, is picking onion bits from his green garden salad, considering them, then popping them into his mouth.
“That guy?”
Ryan’s eyes narrow. He’s a big, kind man who often helps carry heavy bundles of newspapers inside from the stand outside, when old Harold the owner suffers back problems.
“That man’s bothering you?”
“Yes.”
Ryan turns red. He goes very still. “He touched you?”
“Uh, not exactly. It’s not that.”
“He said something to you then? Something ugly?”
“It’s…no.”
Ryan looks puzzled. “He won’t pay?”
“No.”
“Then he must be bothering other customers.”
Miserable, she shakes her head. Ryan looks baffled. “What is it then?”
“He won’t stop eating!”
Patrolman Ryan breaks out laughing. Each guffaw feels like a knife thrust into her brain. He roars so hard he’s gasping for air. “Arrest a guy for eating in a diner?” Ryan pantomimes pointing a gun. “Hey buddy, put down that chubby burger, real slow.”
“You’re not funny,” Sarah says.
“Those crumbs on your shirt are evidence,” Ryan says.
Sarah screams, “Stop it!”
Ryan reddens. Diners look away. The man at table nine meets her eyes, innocently, and mimes, bring a check please. When she does, he inquires as to which menu item tastes better in her opinion, taco special or reuben sandwich?
In the kitchen, where only Gus can see her, she begins to weep. Outside, now, a heavy rain.
A TV announcer interrupts the afternoon soaps to warn that the storm is worsening, local bridges are closed. Gus calls Sarah and Alice into the kitchen and tells them that the night staff can’t make it in tonight. “We all pull double shifts,” he says. “I’ll make it up to you next week, give you extra time off. You both have to stay tonight.”
Most diners have scurried off, eager to get home before the storm gets worse. But the man at table nine remains there, contentedly enjoying a hot fudge sundae as Sarah watches through the kitchen door porthole.
He wipes his mouth. He picks up a menu. He doesn’t even bother to give it back to her any more after ordering a meal. Sarah imagines herself locked in the restaurant with him, all night. She’s sweating. It’s getting harder to breathe. She feels something snap inside.
“He has to leave,” she tells Gus and Alice. “Now.”
“Don’t start again,” says Gus.
“He goes or I do.”
“Uh huh,” Alice replies.
“I’m not kidding. He’s not human. He has everyone fooled but me. He eats and eats and it is impossible and I don’t understand why no one else sees this. I won’t take it any more. I’m leaving. I’m walking out RIGHT NOW. You two live with this freak, this monster, whatever he is.”
Sarah unties her apron, hands shaking with rage.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Gus says, astounded.
She reaches for her coat.
“All right! All right!” Gus extends his palms. “I don’t understand why this makes you so crazy but you win. Only thing is, you tell him. You want him out? You do it.”
“Me?”
“I’m sure not doing it,” Alice says, hands on hips.
Lightening flares outside. Thunder crashes. All tables are empty except for number nine. Through the porthole they eye the guy craning his neck, waiting for someone to come take his order. Sarah hears a pounding out there, then realizes it is her own roaring heart.
The door seems heaver than usual when she pushes it open. The distance to table nine seems longer, and she hears the squeak of her rubber soled shoes on the floor. The man looks happy. It strikes her that his clothes look fresh, even after four days in here. A lightening flash seems to distort his features. Make them sharper. Make the eyes shine.
“Sarah,” he says, grinning, “that was the tastiest Reuben sandwich I ever ate. Mucho delicious!”
“Thank you,” Sarah replies.
“I think I’m still a little hungry.”
“I’m sure you are,” Sarah snaps back.
The stranger’s smile falters. “Excuse me?”
She’s come here without a plan, but inspiration hits suddenly. “I’m sorry, sir,” she tells him, “but something’s come up and you’re going to have to leave.”
“Leave?” The man’s voice has dropped a notch.
“Yes. The health department just e-mailed an advance notice of inspection tomorrow. We need to prep, clean up, keep our A rating, see? Everybody out while we prepare!”
He’s gone utterly still. “The health department?”
“Inspection? Make everything spic and span?”
He’s gone expressionless. That confident looking mouth has gone white and still and his breathing sounds quicker and shallower and he repeats, as if dumb, “Inspection?”
“Take your time,” Sarah says with false generosity, feeling the power shift to her now. “Finish up. Make sure you take all your belongings. Have a pleasant night.”
The man’s facial muscles seem to war with each other, emotions flicking and battling in wan light. The room is quiet except for storm noises. The clock reads nine but the hour seems later. Sarah observes rain cascading off the tin roof of the news stand where Harold huddles, looking out.
“But..but Sarah, I’m still a little hungry.”
“It’s not up to me, sir.”
“I was looking at the menu? The grilled cheese?”
“Now!” Sarah snaps, the glossy embossed menu in his hand, the photos of food, fueling her rage.
The stranger slumps, looking desperate. He begins muttering to himself, trying to process what she has said. “Sure, sure, inspection. They need to clean up.”
“Exactly, sir.”
“They can’t use the stove, it could splatter, messy.”
“Right.”
“Grease, crumbs. Gotta scrub the place spotless.”
“Thank you for understanding.” This is easier than I thought, she thinks, liking it.
The man does not move. He remains in his seat. His face becomes shrewd and hopeful. “I have an idea,” he says. “Peanut butter sandwich. You don’t have to cook it. I can eat standing up. I won’t make a mess.”
“Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“No? Not peanut butter? I’ll be quiet when they come.”
He resumes muttering. “Sure, sure, even a sandwich makes crumbs, I guess.”
“Sir, you really have to -“
“Wait! What if I eat it in the bathroom! The inspector won’t know I’m here! After he leaves, I can order more, you see, because I’m still a little -”
“Are you crazy?”
“A bag of chips? The mints from the cash register?”
“Get out!” she screams. “Freak! FREAK! Take your damn coat and get out of here right now! You don’t fool me!”
The man has gone pale. He’s slumped, all force or pleasure in him gone. He does not look dangerous at this moment. He looks sad. Like he’s about to cry.
“This is what always happens,” he says.
“Sir?”
He’s pleading. “I was quiet. I paid. I didn’t bother anyone, not like the Russian wheat.”
“What are you talking about?”
She’s not noticed how blue, deep and old his eyes seem before. “Not like the Irish potatoes.”
“What?”
“All you have to do is let me eat. Is that so much?”
“WHAT?”
She’s aware of Gus and Alice watching, behind the porthole. Rain pummels plate glass. Wind is a sibilant hiss. He’s begging now, with his palms, his posture, with his eyes, but she will not weaken at the last minute. “I don’t control the rules,” she says. “It’s not my fault.”
His face looms, an inch from hers. She smells food on his breath. “Please don’t make me leave. You don’t understand what will happen if you make me leave,” he says.
***
There it is! The threat! She’s known for days this would happen and now he’s proved it. She steps back, aware of the serrated knife on his table, and that he’s bigger than she. But she steps forward instead of back. She resists the urge to flee. She gathers up inner strength. Her whole life has been a preparation to repel this thing.
“Get out, now,” she says.
A pause, longest in her life, but the man sags and pushes his chair back and he’s up and he’s got his coat on and he seems skinnier in it, like it’s too big for him, like he’s actually hungry, like he never ate a bite in here at all. She experiences a delicious surge of righteousness. She’d not noticed the mustard stain on his shirt before. For an instant she thinks maybe Gus was right, maybe he’s sick, maybe I should change my mind.
“Thank you for your patronage,” she tells the man, crisply. “Have a nice night.”
The rain seems louder when he opens the door. The newspaper truck, easing to the curb, splashes spray but he doesn’t seem to care. Sarah gets a final glimpse of the man passing beneath a streetlight. Then he’s swallowed by dark like food disappearing down a gullet. Her fear and nervousness vanish, turning to the sameness of relief.
Gus and Alice come out of the kitchen and all three of them eye each other. They all heard the threat. They are waiting, superstitiously, for something bad to happen. But it doesn’t. It can’t. How could it? Rain keeps falling. The second hand on the clock goes around. A car drives past.
Everything remains the same.
Gus sighs. Alice clicks on the TV. The door opens and Harold lays down two dozen papers by the cash register.
He was a freak. He had no business here. I did the right thing. I feel better,
And now that she thinks about it, now that she can think clearly because he is gone, what could he have done to her anyway? He didn’t turn out to be powerful. Challenge him and he just slunk away.
You don’t know what will happen if you make me leave?
Sarah chuckles. Still hungry, indeed!
In fact, if anyone is hungry around here she is, because she’s ignored food up until now because the thing unnerved her so much. She pushes into the kitchen. She opens the big fridge to make herself a snack. The light doesn’t come on inside and although the fridge is plugged in, electricity must have failed, because it’s warm in there, food wilting. Everything in the freezer has melted. Gus curses when she calls him to see. Meat, veggies, ruined, and nothing to do about it, no repairman available until tomorrow.
Now they really have to close. Gus hangs the sign on the front door, and they sit down to watch TV, stay here until the storm abates. I should have eaten earlier, Sarah thinks, as her stomach growls.
Sarah notices that Alice and Gus are gazing up at the mounted TV, tuned to the weather channel.
BREAKING NEWS, FAMINE.
Sarah stares, frowns, fidgets, eyes the display of potato chip packs by the cash register.
MILLIONS MAY STARVE, the TV headline says.
The chips were moldy. The packs must have been bad.
On TV, 3AM, a world map, blue mostly, with blobs of red pulsating where “unprecedented weather” has endangered key crops. Wheat dead in Kansas. Citrus dead in the American south. Food processing plant destroyed by tornado. “A chain of events impacting supply,” the announcer intones. “Stay tuned for SPECIAL REPORT, HUNGER, and my interview with a Harvard professor and author of, GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY, ALL CONNECTED NOW.
Sarah shuts the set off. This is stupid.
Sarah turns the set back on.
4am. Sarah eyes a map on screen showing red areas in Europe and the US where wheat has died, storms in the Bering Sea driving fishing ships off, hail storms ravaging the US south, killing fruits.
Gus and Alice are asleep in back. There are no customers here. Sarah cannot go home because the bus doesn’t start running until five. The professor on screen says, “Centuries ago people blamed angry gods for famine. Moses predicted 7 years of hunger to Pharoah in the bible. Irish peasants believed in a fear gorta, an emaciated figure wandering earth, hunger in it’s wake.”
Sarah stares at the sketch. At a thin stooped figure in rags. That’s not him, she thinks. What if instead of rags, he wore a coat? Would that look like him?
Folk tales get it wrong, he told me. You don’t know what’s going to happen if I leave, he said.
Stop it, Sarah tells herself. Just stop it right now!
6AM. Storm over. Streets wet. Sarah wanders the neighborhood peering into restaurants serving early morning workers. She spots a man who looks like him in a 7-11. She walks in. It’s not him, and the freezer broke in here too. Lots of food ruined. She sees his coat on a hanger, inside McDonalds, through a window. No one in McDonalds looks like the man, and the staff seems to be closing up.
I want you to come back, she thinks.
On the street, puddles. In the news headlines in stands, famine in Asia, drought in the Midwest. Sarah tells herself that the man had nothing to do with it. She understands that people don’t walk into diners and keep eating and as long as they do the world does too. There is no such thing as the hungry man. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to invite him back, apologize even. If he wants to stay awhile I’ll serve him. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll find him and serve him even though there is no connection.
After awhile, she gives up.
When she gets home, she realizes that she is out of food; eggs gone, cereals gone, cheese and meats gone, so she must go shopping. She was so fixated on the man she’d neglected to shop before. Sarah gets her pull cart out and walks to the Price Chopper. There’s a crowd inside, odd for a weekday, angry lines at the register, empty shelves, piled up carts.
The delivery trucks all over must be held up because of the storm, she thinks, pushing her way in.
In aisle two, she reaches for lettuce, but a woman shoves her away, grabs the last one. In aisle five the pasta shelf is empty. The soup shelf too. Sarah manages to snatch one of the last burger packs, but when she turns away for a moment, she’s sure the big man disappearing around the corner took it from her cart. Sarah opens the glass bread case and reaches for a half dozen donuts. Then she spots the roaches, pulls her hand quickly back.
Someone screams for the clerk in front to move faster. Two women are pushing each other in aisle four. Sarah hears glass break. Sarah runs out of the premises, terrified.
People are fighting over food in there.
I’m really hungry, Sarah thinks, a new feeling in her belly, something she’s never felt before, an ache of growing need, an acid burn blooming, a meal consisting of air and imagination, a meal called alone, seasoned with too late and regret.
Leave a Reply