So for over three weeks, that was what I did. I didn’t call Bill; he didn’t call me. I knew he was back from Dallas because he left my suitcase on my front porch. When I unpacked it, I found a black velvet jeweler’s box tucked in the side pocket. I wish I’d had the strength to keep from opening it, but I didn’t. Inside was a pair of topaz earrings, and a note that said, “To go with your brown dress.” Which meant the taupe knit thing I’d worn to the vampires’ headquarters. I stuck my tongue out at the box, and drove over to his house that afternoon to leave it in his mailbox. He’d finally gone out and bought me a present, and here I had to return it.
I didn’t even try to “think things through.” I figured my brain would clear up in a while, and then I would know what to do.
I did read the papers. The vampires of Dallas and their human friends were now martyrs, which probably suited Stan down to the ground. The Dallas Midnight Massacre was being touted in all the newsmagazines as the perfect example of a hate crime. Legislatures were being pressured to pass all kinds of laws that would never make it onto the books, but it made people feel better to think they might; laws that would provide vampire-owned buildings with federal protection, laws that would permit vampires to hold certain elected positions (though no one yet suggested a vampire could run for the U.S. Senate or serve as a representative). There was even a motion in the Texas legislature to appoint a vampire as legal executioner of the state. After all, a Senator Garza was quoted as saying, “Death by vampire bite is at least supposed to be painless, and the vampire receives nutrition from it.”
I had news for Senator Garza. Vampire bites were only pleasant by the will of the vampire. If the vampire didn’t glamour you first, a serious vampire bite (as opposed to a love nip) hurt like hell.
I wondered if Senator Garza was related to Luna, but Sam told me that “Garza” was as common among Americans of Mexican descent as “Smith” was among Americans of English stock.
Sam didn’t ask why I wanted to know. That made me feel a little forlorn, because I was used to feeling important to Sam. But he was preoccupied these days, on the job and off. Arlene said she thought he was dating someone, which was a first, as far as any of us could remember. Whoever she was, none of us got to see her, which was strange in and of itself. I tried to tell him about the shapeshifters of Dallas, but he just smiled and found an excuse to go do something else.
My brother, Jason, dropped by the house for lunch one day. It wasn’t like it had been when my grandmother was alive. Gran would have a huge meal on the table at lunchtime, and then we’d just eat sandwiches at night. Jason had come by pretty frequently then; Gran had been an excellent cook. I managed to serve him meatloaf sandwiches and potato salad (though I didn’t tell him it was from the store), and I had some peach tea fixed, which was lucky.
“What’s with you and Bill?” he asked bluntly, when he was through. He’d been real good about not asking on the drive back from the airport.
“I got mad at him,” I said.
“Why?”
“He broke a promise to me,” I said. Jason was trying hard to act like a big brother, and I should try to accept his concern instead of getting mad. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that possibly I had a pretty hot temper. Under some circumstances. I locked my sixth sense down firmly, so I would only hear what Jason was actually saying.
“He’s been seen over in Monroe.”
I took a deep breath. “With someone else?”
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“You’re not going to believe this. Portia Bellefleur.”
I couldn’t have been more surprised if Jason had told me Bill had been dating Hillary Clinton (though Billwas a Democrat). I stared at my brother as if he’d suddenly announced he was Satan. The only things Portia Bellefleur and I had in common were a birthplace, female organs, and long hair. “Well,” I said blankly. “I don’t know whether to pitch a fit or laugh. What do you make of that?”
Because if anyone knew about man-woman stuff, it was Jason. At least, he knew about it from the man’s point of view.
“She’s your opposite,” he said, with undue thoughtfulness. “In every way that I can think of. She’s real educated, she comes from an, I guess you’d call it, aristocratic background, and she’s a lawyer. Plus, her brother’s a cop. And they go to symphonies and shit.”
Tears prickled at my eyes. I would have gone to a symphony with Bill, if he’d ever asked me.
“On the other hand, you’re smart, you’re pretty, and you’re willing to put up with his little ways.” I wasn’t exactly sure what Jason meant by that, and thought it better not to ask. “But we sure ain’t aristocracy. You work in a bar, and your brother works on a road crew.” Jason smiled at me lopsidedly.
“We’ve been here as long as the Bellefleurs,” I said, trying not to sound sullen.
“I know that, and you know that. And Bill sure knows that, because he was alive then.” True enough.
“What’s happening about the case against Andy?” I asked.
“No charges brought against him yet, but the rumors are flying around town thick and fast about this sex club thing. Lafayette was so pleased to have been asked; evidently he mentioned it to quite a few people. They say that since the first rule of the club is Keep Silent, Lafayette got whacked for his enthusiasm.”
“What do you think?”
“I think if anyone was forming a sex club around Bon Temps, they woulda called me,” he said, dead serious.
“You’re right,” I said, struck again by how sensible Jason could be. “You’d be number one on the list.” Why hadn’t I thought of that before? Not only did Jason have a reputation as a guy who’d heated up many a bed, he was both very attractive and unmarried.
“The only thing I can think of,” I said slowly, “Lafayette was gay, as you well know.”
“And?”
“And maybe this club, if it exists, only accepts people who are all right with that.”
“You might have a point there,” Jason said.
“Yes, Mr. Homophobe.”
Jason smiled and shrugged. “Everybody’s got a weak point,” he said. “Plus, as you know, I’ve been going out with Liz pretty steady. I think anyone with a brain would see Liz ain’t about to share a napkin, much less a boyfriend.”
He was right. Liz’s family notoriously took “Neither a borrower nor a lender be” to a complete extreme.
“You are a piece of work, brother,” I said, focusing on his shortcomings, rather than those of Liz’s folks. “There are so many worse things to be than gay.”
“Such as?”
“Thief, traitor, murderer, rapist . . .”
“Okay, okay, I get the idea.”
“I hope you do,” I said. Our differences grieved me. But I loved Jason anyway; he was all I had left.
I saw Bill out with Portia that same night. I caught a glimpse of them together in Bill’s car, driving down Claiborne Street. Portia had her head turned to Bill, talking; he was looking straight ahead, expressionless, as far as I could tell. They didn’t see me. I was coming from the automated teller at the bank, on my way to work.
Hearing of and seeing directly are two very different things. I felt an overwhelming surge of rage; and I understood how Bill had felt, when he’d seen his friends dying. I wanted to kill someone. I just wasn’t sure who I wanted to kill.
Andy was in the bar that evening, sitting in Arlene’s section. I was glad, because Andy looked bad. He was not clean-shaven, and his clothes were rumpled. He came up to me as he was leaving, and I could smell the booze. “Take him back,” he said. His voice was thick with anger. “Take the damn vampire back so he’ll leave my sister alone.”
I didn’t know what to say to Andy Bellefleur. I just stared at him until he stumbled out of the bar. It crossed my mind that people wouldn’t be as surprised to hear of a dead body in his car now as they had been a few weeks ago.
The next night I had off, and the tempe
rature dropped. It was a Friday, and suddenly I was tired of being alone. I decided to go to the high school football game. This is a townwide pastime in Bon Temps, and the games are discussed thoroughly on Monday morning in every store in town. The film of the game is shown twice on a local-access channel, and boys who show promise with pigskin are minor royalty, more’s the pity.
You don’t show up at the game all disheveled.
I pulled my hair back from my forehead in an elastic band and used my curling iron on the rest, so I had thick curls hanging around my shoulders. My bruises were gone. I put on complete makeup, down to the lip liner. I put on black knit slacks and a black-and-red sweater. I wore my black leather boots, and my gold hoop earrings, and I pinned a red-and-black bow to hide the elastic band in my hair. (Guess what our school colors are.)
“Pretty good,” I said, viewing the result in my mirror. “Prettydamn good.” I gathered up my black jacket and my purse and drove into town.
The stands were full of people I knew. A dozen voices called to me, a dozen people told me how cute I looked, and the problem was . . . I was miserable. As soon as I realized this, I pasted a smile on my face and searched for someone to sit with.
“Sookie! Sookie!” Tara Thornton, one of my few good high school friends, was calling me from high up in the stands. She made a frantic beckoning gesture, and I smiled back and began to hike up, speaking to more people along the way. Mike Spencer, the funeral home director, was there, in his favorite western regalia, and my grandmother’s good friend Maxine Fortenberry, and her grandson Hoyt, who was a buddy of Jason’s. I saw Sid Matt Lancaster, the ancient lawyer, bundled up beside his wife.
Tara was sitting with her fiancé, Benedict Tallie, who was inevitably and regrettably called “Eggs.” With them was Benedict’s best friend, JB du Rone. When I saw JB, my spirits began to rise, and so did my repressed libido. JB could have been on the cover of a romance novel, he was so lovely. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a brain in his head, as I’d discovered on our handful of dates. I’d often thought I’d hardly have to put up any mental shield to be with JB, because he had no thoughts to read.
“Hey, how ya’ll doing?”
“We’re great!” Tara said, with her party-girl face on. “How about you? I haven’t seen you in a coon’s age!” Her dark hair was cut in a short pageboy, and her lipstick could have lit a fire, it was so hot. She was wearing off-white and black with a red scarf to show her team spirit, and she and Eggs were sharing a drink in one of the paper cups sold in the stadium. It was spiked; I could smell the bourbon from where I stood. “Move over, JB, and let me sit with you,” I said with an answering smile.
“Sure, Sookie,” he said, looking very happy to see me. That was one of JB’s charms. The others included white perfect teeth, an absolutely straight nose, a face so masculine yet so handsome that it made you want to reach out and stroke his cheeks, and a broad chest and trim waist. Maybe not quite as trim as it used to be, but then, JB was human, and that was a Good Thing. I settled in between Eggs and JB, and Eggs turned to me with a sloppy smile.
“Want a drink, Sookie?”
I am kind of spare on drinking, since I see its results every day. “No, thank you,” I said. “How you been doing, Eggs?”
“Good,” he said, after considering. He’d had more to drink than Tara. He’d had too much to drink.
We talked about mutual friends and acquaintances until the kickoff, after which the game was the sole topic of conversation. The Game, broadly, because every game for the past fifty years lay in the collective memory of Bon Temps, and this game was compared to all other games, these players to all others. I could actually enjoy this occasion a little, since I had developed my mental shielding to such an extent. I could pretend people were exactly what they said, since I was absolutely not listening in.
JB snuggled closer and closer, after a shower of compliments on my hair and my figure. JB’s mother had taught him early on that appreciated women are happy women, and it was a simple philosophy that had kept JB’s head above water for some time.
“You remember that doctor at that hospital, Sookie?” he asked me suddenly, during the second quarter.
“Yes. Dr. Sonntag. Widow.” She’d been young to be a widow, and younger to be a doctor. I’d introduced her to JB.
“We dated for a while. Me and a doctor,” he said wonderingly.
“Hey, that’s great.” I’d hoped as much. It had seemed to me that Dr. Sonntag could sure use what JB had to offer, and JB needed. . . well, he needed someone to take care of him.
“But then she got rotated back to Baton Rouge,” he told me. He looked a little stricken. “I guess I miss her.” A health care system had bought our little hospital, and the emergency room doctors were brought in for four months at a stretch. His arm tightened around my shoulders. “But it’s awful good to see you,” he reassured me.
Bless his heart. “JB, you could go to Baton Rouge to see her,” I suggested. “Why don’t you?”
“She’s a doctor. She doesn’t have much time off.”
“She’d make time off for you.”
“Do you think so?”
“Unless she’s an absolute idiot,” I told him.
“I might do that. I did talk to her on the phone the other night. She did say she wished I was there.”
“That was a pretty big hint, JB.”
“You think?”
“I sure do.”
He looked perkier. “Then I’m fixing to drive to Baton Rouge tomorrow,” he said again. He kissed my cheek. “You make me feel good, Sookie.”
“Well, JB, right back at you.” I gave him a peck on the lips, just a quick one.
Then I saw Bill staring a hole in me.
He and Portia were in the next section of seats, close to the bottom. He had twisted around and was looking up at me.
If I’d planned it, it couldn’t have worked out better. This was a magnificent Screw-him moment.
And it was ruined.
I just wanted him.
I turned my eyes away and smiled at JB, and all the time what I wanted was to meet with Bill under the stands and have sex with him right then and there. I wanted him to pull down my pants and get behind me. I wanted him to make me moan.
I was so shocked at myself I didn’t know what to do. I could feel my face turning a dull red. I could not even pretend to smile.
After a minute, I could appreciate that this was almost funny. I had been brought up as conventionally as possible, given my unusual disability. Naturally, I’d learned the facts of life pretty early since I could read minds (and, as a child, had no control over what I absorbed). And I’d always thought the idea of sex was pretty interesting, though the same disability that had led to me learning so much about it theoretically had kept me from putting that theory into practice. After all, it’s hard to get really involved in sex when you know your partner is wishing you were Tara Thornton instead (for example), or when he’s hoping you remembered to bring a condom, or when he’s criticizing your body parts. For successful sex, you have to keep your concentration fixed on what your partner’sdoing, so you can’t get distracted by what he’sthinking .
With Bill, I couldn’t hear a single thing. And he was so experienced, so smooth, so absolutely dedicated to getting it right. It appeared I was as much a junkie as Hugo.
I sat through the rest of the game, smiling and nodding when it seemed indicated, trying not to look down and to my left, and finding after the halftime show was over that I hadn’t heard a single song the band had played. Nor had I noticed Tara’s cousin’s twirling solo. As the crowd moved slowly to the parking lot after the Bon Temps Hawks had won, 28–18, I agreed to drive JB home. Eggs had sobered some by then, so I was pretty sure he and Tara would be okay; but I was relieved to see Tara take the wheel.
JB lived close to downtown in half a duplex. He asked me very sweetly to come in, but I told him I had to get home. I gave him a big hug, and I advised him to call Dr. Sonntag.
I still didn’t know her first name.
He said he would, but then, with JB, you couldn’t really tell.
Then I had to stop and get gas at the only late-night gas station, where I had a long conversation with Arlene’s cousin Derrick (who was brave enough to take the night shift), so I was a little later getting home than I had planned.
As I unlocked the front door, Bill came out of the darkness. Without a word, he grabbed my arm and turned me to him, and then he kissed me. In a minute we were pressed against the door with his body moving rhythmically against mine. I reached one hand behind myself to fumble with the lock, and the key finally turned. We stumbled into the house, and he turned me to face the couch. I gripped it with my hands and, just as I’d imagined, he pulled down my pants, and then he was in me.
I made a hoarse noise I’d never heard come from my throat before. Bill was making noises equally as primitive. I didn’t think I could form a word. His hands were under my sweater, and my bra was in two pieces. He was relentless. I almost collapsed after the first time I came. “No,” he growled when I was flagging, and he kept pounding. Then he increased the pace until I was almost sobbing, and then my sweater tore, and his teeth found my shoulder. He made a deep, awful sound, and then, after long seconds, it was over.
I was panting as if I’d run a mile, and he was shivering, too. Without bothering to refasten his clothing, he turned me around to face him, and he bent his head to my shoulder again to lick the little wound. When it had stopped bleeding and begun healing, he took off everything I had on, very slowly. He cleaned me below; he kissed me above.
“You smell like him” was the only thing he said. He proceeded to erase that smell and replace it with his own.
Then we were in the bedroom, and I had a moment to be glad I’d changed the sheets that morning before he bent his mouth to mine again.
If I’d had doubts up until then, I had them no longer. He was not sleeping with Portia Bellefleur. I didn’t know what he was up to, but he did not have a true relationship with her. He slid his arms underneath me and held me to him as tightly as possible; he nuzzled my neck, kneaded my hips, ran his fingers down my thighs, and kissed the backs of my knees. He bathed in me. “Spread your legs for me, Sookie,” he whispered, in his cold dark voice, and I did. He was ready again, and he was rough with it, as if he were trying to prove something.
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