Tommy sighed in defeat. “Well, I guess we’ve got more to worry about than my toe or your weight problem.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that last night I saw a guy in the store parking lot that I think was the other vampire.”
CHAPTER 16
HEARTWARMING AND UL-APPROVED
There was a bum sleeping on the sidewalk across the street from the loft when they returned. Tommy, full of fast food and the elation of being twice laid, wanted to give the guy a dollar. Jody stopped him and pushed him up the steps. “Go on up,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
She stood in the doorway watching the bum for movement. There was no heat signature around him and she assumed the worst. She waited for him to roll over and start laughing at her again. She was feeling strong and a little cocky from the infusion of Tommy’s blood, so she had to fight the urge to confront the vampire, to get dead in his face and scream. Instead she just whispered, “Asshole,” and closed the door. If his hearing was as acute as her own, and she was sure it was, he had heard her.
She found Tommy in bed, fast asleep.
Poor guy, she thought, running all over town doing my business. He probably hasn’t slept more than a couple of hours since we met.
She pulled the covers over him, kissed him on the forehead, and went to the window in the front room to watch the bum across the street.
Tommy was dreaming of beebop-driven sentences read by a naked redhead when he woke to find her sleeping next to him. He threw his arm over her and pulled her close, but there was no response, no pleasant grown or reciprocal snuggle. She was out.
He pushed the light button on his watch and checked the time. It was almost noon. The room was so dark that the watch dial floated in his vision for a few seconds after he released the button. He went to the bathroom and fumbled around until he found the light switch. A single fluorescent tube clicked and sputtered and finally ignited, spilling a fuzzy green glow through the door into the bedroom.
She looks dead, he thought. Peaceful, but dead. Then he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. I look dead too.
It took him a minute to realize that it was the fluorescent lighting that had sucked the life out of his face, not his vampire girlfriend. He affected a serious glare and thought about how they would describe him in a hundred years, when he was really famous and really dead.
Like so many great writers before him, Flood was known for his troubled countenance and sickly pallor, especially under fluorescent lighting. Those who knew him said that even in those early years, they could sense that this thin, serious young man would make his presence known as a great man of letters as well as a sexual dynamo. His legacy to the world was a trail of great books and broken hearts, and although it is well known that his love life was his downfall, he felt no regret, as illustrated in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech: “I have followed my penis into hell and returned with the story.”
Tommy bowed deeply before the mirror, careful to keep the Nobel Prize medal from banging the sink, then began to interview himself, speaking clearly and slowly into his toothbrush.
“I think it was shortly after my first successful bus transfer that I realized the City was mine. Here I would produce some of my greatest work, and here I would meet my first wife, the lovely but deeply disturbed Jody…”
Tommy waved the microphone/toothbrush away as if the memories were too painful to recall, but actually he was trying to remember Jody’s last name. I should know her maiden name, he thought, if just for historical purposes.
He glanced into the bedroom where the lovely but deeply disturbed Jody was lying naked and half-covered on the bed. He thought, She won’t mind if I wake her up. She doesn’t have to be at work or anything.
He approached the bed and touched her cheek. “Jody,” he whispered. She didn’t stir.
He shook her a bit. “Jody, honey.”
Nothing.
“Hey,” he said, taking her shoulders. “Hey, wake up.” She didn’t respond.
He pulled the covers off her as his father used to do to him on cold winter mornings when he wouldn’t get up to go to school. “Up and at ’em, soldier—ass in the air and feet on the floor,” he said in his best drill-sergeant bark.
She looked really great lying there naked in the half-light from the bathroom. He was getting a little turned on.
How would I feel, he thought, if I woke up and she was making love to me? Why, I believe that I would be pleasantly surprised. I think that would be better than waking up to frying bacon and the Sunday funnies. Yes, I’m sure she’ll be pleased.
He crawled into bed with her and ventured a tentative kiss. She was a little cold and didn’t move a muscle, but he was sure she liked it. He ran a finger down the valley between her breasts and over her stomach.
What if she didn’t wake up? What if we do it and she doesn’t wake up at all? How would I feel if I woke up and she told me that we had done it while I slept? I’d be fine with it. A little sad that I missed things, but I wouldn’t be mad. I’d just ask her if I had a good time. Women are different, though.
He tickled her just to get a reaction. Again, she didn’t move.
She’s so cold. With her not moving at all it might be a little morbid. Maybe I should wait. I tell her that I thought about it and decided that it wouldn’t be courteous. She’ll like that.
He sighed deeply, got out of bed and pulled the covers over her. I should buy her something, he thought.
Jody snapped into consciousness and bit down on something hard. She opened her eyes and saw Tommy sitting on the edge of the bed. She smiled.
She reached for whatever was in her mouth.
Tommy caught her hand. “Don’t bite down. It’s a thermometer.” He checked his watch, then pulled the thermometer out of her mouth and read it. “Ninety-five point two. You’re on your way.”
Jody sat up and looked at the thermometer. “On my way to what?”
He smiled bashfully. “On your way to body temperature. I bought you an electric blanket. It’s been on for like six hours.”
She ran her hand over the blanket. “You’ve been warming me up?”
“Pretty cool, huh?” Tommy said. “I went to the library and got books too. I’ve been reading all afternoon.” He picked up a stack of books and began to shuffle through them, reading the titles and handing each to her in turn. “A Reader’s Guide to Vampirism, Vampire Myths and Legends, Those That Stalk the Night—kind of an ominous title, huh?”
She held the books as if they were made of wormy fruit. The covers depicted monstrous creatures rising from coffins, attacking women in various states of undress, and hanging around castles perched on barren mountains. The letters in the titles dripped blood. “These are all about vampires?”
“That’s just the nonfiction that they had on hand. I ordered a bunch more through the library exchange. Check out some of the fiction.” He picked up another stack from the floor.
“A Feast of Blood; Red Thirst; Fangs; Dracula; Dracula’s Dream; Dracula’s Legacy; Fevre Dream; The Vampire Lestat—there must have been a hundred novels.”
Jody, a little overwhelmed, stared at the books. “There seems to be a theme here on the covers.”
“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Vampires seem to have an affinity for lingerie. Do you have any particular craving for sexy nightgowns?”
“Not really.” Jody had always thought it a little silly to spend a lot of money on something that you only put on long enough for someone to take it off you. Evidently, though, if you went by these book covers, vampires looked at lingerie as garnish.
“Okay,” Tommy said, picking up a notebook from the floor and making a check mark. “No lingerie fetish. I’ve made a list of vampire traits with boxes to check either ‘fact’ or ‘fiction.’ Since you missed the lecture, I guess we’ll have to just test them.”
“What lecture?”
Tommy put down his pen and looked at her as if she’d gotten into th
e express lane with a cartful of groceries and a two-party check. “Everybody knows that there’s always an orientation lecture in vampire books. Usually it comes from some old professor guy with an accent, but sometimes it’s another vampire. You obviously missed the lecture.”
“I guess so,” Jody said. “I must have been busy chasing women in lingerie.”
“That’s okay,” Tommy said, returning to the list. “Obviously you don’t have to sleep in your native soil.” He checked it off. “And we know that everyone you bite doesn’t necessarily turn into a vampire.”
“No, a jerk, maybe…”
“Whatever,” Tommy said, moving on in the list. “Okay, sunlight is bad for you.” He made a check mark. “You can enter a house without being invited. How about running water?”
“What about it?”
“Vampires aren’t supposed to be able to cross running water. Have you tried crossing any running water?”
“I’ve taken a couple of showers.”
“Then that would be fiction. Let me smell your breath.” He bent close to her.
She turned her head and shielded her mouth. “Tommy, I just woke up. Let me brush my teeth first.”
“Vampires are supposed to have the ‘fetid breath of a predator,’ or, in some cases, ‘breath like the rotting smell of the charnel house.’ C’mon, give us a whiff.”
Jody reluctantly breathed in his face. He sat up and considered the list.
“Well?” She asked.
“I’m thinking. I need to get the dictionary out of my suitcase.”
“What for?”
“I’m not sure what a charnel house is.”
“Can I brush my teeth while you look?”
“No, wait, I might need another whiff.” He went to his suitcase and dug out the dictionary. While he looked up charnel house, Jody cupped her hand and smelled her own breath. It was pretty foul.
“Here it is,” he said, putting his finger on the word. “‘Noun. A mausoleum or morgue. A structure where corpses are buried or stored. See Morning Breath.’ I guess that we check ‘fact’ on that one.”
“Can I brush my teeth now?”
“Sure. Are you going to shower?”
“I’d like to. Why?”
“Can I help? I mean, you’re much more attractive when you’re not room temperature.”
She smiled. “You really know how to charm a girl.” She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. Tommy waited on the bed.
“Well, come on,” she said as she turned on the water.
“Sorry,” he said, leaping to his feet and wrestling out of his shirt.
She stopped him at the bathroom door with a firm hand on the chest. “One second, mister. I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Men are pigs: Fact or fiction?”
“Fact!” Tommy shouted.
“Correct! You win!” She leaped into his arms and kissed him.
CHAPTER 17
THIS MONTH’S MAKEOVER: THE FACES OF FEAR
Simon McQueen had once climbed onto the back of a ton of pissed-off beef named Muffin and been promptly stomped into mush in front of an amazed rodeo crowd, and still managed to pinch the bottom of a female paramedic as he was carried away on a stretcher, singing a garbled version of “I’ve Got Friends in Low Places.” Simon McQueen had once picked a fight with a gang of skinheads and managed to render three of them unconscious before a knife in the stomach and a jackboot to the head rendered him helpless. Simon had jumped out of an airplane, fallen off the roof of a Lutheran church, run over a police car in his pickup truck, smuggled a thousand pounds of marijuana across the border from Mexico inside a stuffed cow, and swum halfway to Alcatraz Island on a dare before the Coast Guard fished him out of the bay and revived him. Simon had done all these things without the slightest tick of fear. But tonight, laid out across register 3 in his skintight Wranglers and his endangered-species Tony Lama boots with the silver spurs, his black Stetson pulled down over his face, Simon McQueen was frightened. Frightened that one of his two great secrets was about to become known.
The other Animals were sharing tales of their weekend adventures, exaggerating aspects of binges and babes, while Clint professed to God that they knew not what they did.
Simon sat up, pushed back his Stetson and said, “Y’all wouldn’t know a piece of ass if it sloshed upside your head.”
The Animals fell silent, each trying to formulate a new and exciting way to tell Simon to fuck off, when Tommy came through the door.
“Fearless leader!” Lash exclaimed.
Tommy grinned and faked a tap-dance step. “Gentlemen,” he said. “I have reached out and touched the face of God—film at eleven.”
Simon was wildly irritated by this added distraction from his worrying. “What happened, you go down to Castro Street and get converted?”
Tommy waved the comment away. “No, Sime—I can call you Sime, can’t I? You see, last night, about this time”—he checked his watch—“there was a naked redhead hanging from the ceiling of my new loft, reading Kerouac aloud to me. If I die now, it was not all in vain. I’m ready to throw stock. How’s the truck?”
“A big one,” Troy Lee answered. “Three thousand cases. But the bitch is, the scanner is broken. We have to use the order books.”
Troy’s comment jabbed Simon like bad gas pain. He considered going home sick, but without his help the Animals would never be able to finish the truck before morning. A lump of fear rose in his throat. He couldn’t use the order books. Simon McQueen couldn’t read.
“Let’s get to it then,” Tommy said.
The Animals threw themselves into their work with an abandon they usually reserved for partying. Razor box-cutters whizzed, price guns clicked, and cardboard piled up in shoulder-high drifts at the end of the aisles.
In addition to throwing the extra-large load, they had to allow an extra hour to write their stock orders. Normally the orders were done with a bar-code scanner, but with the scanner down, each man would have to go through a huge loose-leaf order book, writing in items by hand. By 5 A.M. they had most of the stock on the shelves and Simon McQueen was considering letting his box-cutter slip and cut his leg so he could escape to the emergency room. But that might reveal a secret worse than illiteracy.
Tommy came into Simon’s aisle carrying the order book. “You better get started, Sime.” He held out the book and a pencil.
“I still got a hundred cases to throw,” Simon said, not looking up. “Let someone else start.”
“No, you’ve got the biggest section. Go ahead.” Tommy bumped Simon on the shoulder with the book.
Simon looked up, then dropped his cutter and slowly took the book from Tommy. He opened the book and stared at the page, then at the shelf, then at the book.
Tommy said, “Order light on the juices, we’ve got a lot of stock in the back room.”
Simon nodded and looked at the book, then at the shelf of vegetables before him.
Tommy said, “You’re on the wrong page, Simon.”
“I know,” Simon snapped. “I’m just finding my place.” He flipped through the pages, then stopped on a page of cake mixes and began looking at the shelf of vegetables. He could feel Tommy’s gaze on him and wished that the skinny-little-faggot-book-reading-prick-bastard would just go away and leave him alone.
“Simon.”
Simon looked up, his eyes pleading.
“Give me the book,” Tommy said. “I think I’m going to order everybody’s section tonight. It’ll give you guys more time to throw stock and I need to get more familiar with the store anyway.”
“I can do it,” Simon said.
“I know,” Tommy said, taking the book. “But why waste your talent on this bullshit?”
As Tommy walked away, Simon took his first deep breath of the night. “Flood,” he called, “I’m buying the beers after shift.”
Tommy didn’t look back. “I know,” he said.
Jody stood by the wi
ndow in the dark loft watching the sleeping bum who lay on the sidewalk across the street and cursing under her breath. Go away, you bastard, she thought. Even as she thought it, she felt a measure of security in knowing exactly where her enemy was. As long as he lay on the sidewalk, Tommy was safe at the grocery store.
She had never felt the need to protect someone before. She had always been the one looking for protection, for a strong arm to lean on. Now she was the strong arm, at least when the sun was down. She had walked Tommy down the steps and waited with him until the cab arrived to take him to work. As she watched the cab pull away, she thought, This must be how my mother felt when she put me on the school bus that first time—except that Tommy doesn’t have a Barbie lunch box. She kept an eye on the vampire lying on the sidewalk across the street.
Hours passed at the window and she asked the same questions over and over again, coming up with no solution to her problem, and no logic to the vampire’s behavior. What did he want? Why had he killed the old woman and left her in the dumpster? Was he trying to frighten her, threaten her, or was there some kind of message to it all?
“You are not immortal. You can be killed.”
If he was going to kill her, why didn’t he just do it? Why pretend to be a sleeping bum, watching her, waiting?
He has to find shelter before daylight. If I can just outlast him, maybe…Maybe what? I can’t follow him or I’ll be caught in the sunlight too.
She went to the bedroom and dug the almanac Tommy had given her out of her backpack. The sun would rise at 6:12 AM. She checked her watch. She had an hour.
She waited at the window until six o’clock, then headed out of the loft to confront the vampire. As she went through the door she instinctively reached out to click off the lights, only to realize that she hadn’t turned any on. If I live through this, she thought, I’m going to save a fortune on utilities.
She left the door at the top of the stairs unlocked, then went down the steps and propped the big fire door open with a soda can she found on the landing. She might have to get back in fast, and she didn’t want to be slowed down by keys and locks.
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