Hunger, Part 3

Amber felt as if she had received an electric shock, one that rocketed up from her solar plexus. She gaped at him through the dimness.

            “I…I’m sorry?” she managed.

            “Whoever it was who let you go, who filled you with such regret and anger.”  He paused for a moment, but continued to stare at her intently. “They did not see how much you had to give, and how much you could have taken, had they but given you the chance.”

            Something moved under the numbness that had been holding her up; the void was threatening to rise up and swallow her.

            “Who are you?”  Her voice stayed low, miraculously, but it shook with a mixture of emotions that even she couldn’t have named. “How do you know anything about me?”

            The answer was gentle, and it calmed her a bit, despite all rationality. “I am a stranger, but I see things a little more clearly than most.

“I see your hurt, but not only that; I see frustrated ambition and hunger, and also great strength.”

            “Strength?” Amber had no idea why she wasn’t staggering down the aisle to find an empty seat out of speaking range. “I’m sorry, but you’ve got that wrong. I’ve always been weak. All I’ve ever had is potential.”  The word was a curse. “Potential is an empty promise.”

            “No, that is a grave mistake. I can recognize these things when I see them. With that power and desire, you could consume the world whole, and leave nothing left.”  His gaze was unblinking.

            “And you see my — power?”  The man was likely playing her, but a perverse curiosity pushed her to ignore the guidelines of self-preservation. In the midst of the ruins of her life, in the middle of the night, on a sparsely-populated bus, recklessness seemed inevitable, and meaningless.

            “I do,” was his imperturbable reply. “That a few arrogant fools, a coterie of inadequate masters blinded by politics, prejudice, and insufficient imagination, rejected you does nothing to negate your real talents.”

            This was too close to the bone; too close to the fragile comforts she had told herself and never quite been fearless enough to believe. Amber dropped her eyes, skin crawling, and fiddled with her headphone cord in her lap.

            The silence (or lack of speech, rather, since the bus kept up its own rattling accompaniment the entire time) stretched on and on, so that Amber had time to go through the entire evolution of social anxiety, from feeling that she couldn’t possibly look back up at the man because she had waited too long, to becoming possessed by the conviction that she had to to check if he was still regarding her with that continuous stare.

            When she finally looked up, she saw that he had gone back to looking out the window, as if nothing had happened. The line of his nose and prominent cheekbones was crisp against the background of the highway lights, and almost glowingly pale. There was something about him that was not right — and it wasn’t just his troubling perspicacity. But still — “You are capable of greatness.”  How long had she waited for someone to believe that of her?  In the dance world, you could be dedicated, talented, and ambitious, and nothing would distinguish you from the scores of other dedicated, talented, and ambitious candidates, all yearning for the same handful of spots — unless you had a teacher who saw you, and wanted to show the world.

            Maybe it was just the aftermath of rejection (which wasn’t so much a sting as a giant, pulsing burn on her consciousness that she couldn’t quite bear to look at) but the possibility of having someone choose her was tantalizing.

            It took another half hour of mulling and staring and working herself up to speaking again.

            “What did you mean — what kind of greatness?”

            He smiled, but with his lips pressed tightly together, before turning to look at her again.

            “Yes. You are hungry.”

            The nonsequiter shook her all over again, and made her regret her temerity in speaking up. She was hungry, yes, although not more than usual. This late in the night, the disruption of her circadian rhythms usually masked hunger under tiredness and a sense of general malaise. His observation was even more pointed, and less welcome, than the earlier had been. Hunger was nothing she needed to be reminded of.

            He seemed to sense her blanche. “Do not misunderstand me. I mean that you comprehend the weight of desiring something with you whole being, body and”  — he hesitated a split second — “soul. There is a great power in appetite restrained; and in appetite gratified.

“You are full up to your skin,” he reached out one long finger and almost, but not quite, touched the skin of her wrist where it lay on the armrest between them, “practically bursting with frustrated passion. You could be very powerful, if that passion was diverted into other — channels.”

Amber was certain that she was out of her depth now, but the recklessness had taken on a life of its own. “What do you mean?”  Her voice was almost soundless.

The man did take her by the wrist then. His finger smoothed over the soft spot where her pulse leaped. He smiled again, and this time his lips parted wide, revealing long teeth that glinted in the darkness.

“How would you like to live forever?” he asked.