"You drank my blood!"
"Yeah, well, I'm sorry about that."
"You didn't even ask."
"And you didn't protest, either."
"I thought it was a sex thing."
"It was."
"It was?" He stopped pouting and looked up at her. "Does that turn you on?"
Jody thought, Why are men never prepared for the toxic radiation of afterglow? Why can't they ride it through without becoming detached whiners or aggressive jerks? They don't get it, that cuddling afterward has nothing to do with warm, fuzzy feelings; it's just the most intelligent way to ride the wave of post-coital depression.
"Tommy, I came so hard, my toes curled. No man has ever made me feel like that before." How many times have I said that? she thought.
"Yeah?"
She nodded.
He smiled, feeling proud of himself. "Let's do it again."
"No, we need to talk."
"Okay. But then…"
"Put on your clothes."
Tommy scampered naked out of the bedroom to get a fresh pair of jeans from his suitcase. As he dressed, the infinite possibilities of life swam through his head. Only a week ago he had been staring down the barrel of a life spent in a factory town — of a union job, of a series of financed Fords, a mortgage, too many kids, and a wife who'd go to fat. Sure, there was a certain nobility in being responsible and raising a family — seeing that they never did without. But when his father told him on his eighteenth birthday that he needed to start planning his retirement, he felt his future tighten on him like an anaconda. His father had made it clear that the money for college wasn't there — so after he went to the City and starved, he could come home and get a job down at the factory and get down to the business of being an adult. But not now. He was a City guy now, part of the world; he was involved with a vampire, and the danger of living a normal, boring life had passed completely. He knew he should be afraid, but he was too elated to think about it.
He slid into his jeans and ran back to the bedroom, where Jody was getting dressed. "I'm hungry," he said. "Let's go out and get something to eat."
"I can't eat," she said.
"Not at all?"
"Not as far as I know. I can't even keep a glass of water down."
"Wow. Do you have to have blood every day?"
"I don't think so."
"Does it have to be — I mean, can you use animals, or does it have to be people?"
Jody thought about the moth she had eaten and felt as if she'd just downed a cocktail mixed of two parts shame and five parts disgust, with a twist of nausea. "I don't know, Tommy. I didn't exactly get an instruction book."
He was bouncing around the room like a hyperactive child. "How did it happen? Did you sell your soul to Satan? Am I going to turn into a vampire? Are you in a coven or something?"
She wheeled on him. "Look, I don't know. I don't know anything. Let me get dressed and we'll go get something for you to eat. I'll explain then, okay?"
"Well, you don't have to bite my head off."
"Maybe I do," she snarled, surprised at the acid in her voice.
Tommy backed away from her, his eyes wide with fear. She felt horrible. Why did I say that? This was happening too often, this loss of control — showing her burned hand to the bum on the bus, knocking Kurt out, eating the moth, and now threatening Tommy; none of it seemed to be by choice. It was as if vampirism carried with it a crampless case of rattlesnake PMS.
"I'm sorry, Tommy. This has been hard."
"It's okay." He picked up the jeans she had destroyed and began emptying the pockets. "I guess these are done for." He pulled out the business card that the motel manager had given him. "Hey, I forgot to tell you. This cop wants to talk to you."
Jody stopped in the middle of tying her shoes. "Cop?"
"Yeah, an old lady was killed at the motel last night. There were a zillion cops around when I got there this morning. They wanted to talk to everyone that was staying in the motel."
"How was she killed, Tommy? Do you know?"
"Somebody broke her neck and…" He stopped and stared at her, backing away again toward the bathroom.
"What?" she demanded. "Her neck was broken and what?"
"She'd lost a lot of blood," he whispered. "But there weren't any wounds." He bolted into the bathroom and shut the door.
Jody could hear him throw the lock. "I didn't kill her, Tommy."
"That's fine," he said.
"Open the door. Please."
"I can't, I'm peeing." He turned on the water.
"Tommy, come out, I'm not going to hurt you. Let's go get you something to eat and I'll explain."
"You go ahead," he said. "I'll catch up to you. Wow, I really had to go. Must have been all that coffee I drank today."
"Tommy, I swear I didn't know anything about this until you told me."
"Look at this," he said through the door, "I found that crucifix I lost last week. And what's this? My lucky vial of holy water."
"Tommy, stop it. I'm not going to hurt you. I don't want to hurt anybody."
"Oh, my garlic wreath. I wondered where I'd put that." Jody grabbed the door knob and yanked. The doorjamb splintered and the door came away in her hand. Tommy dived into the tub and peeked over the edge at her.
She said, "Let's go get you something to eat. We need to talk." He pulled himself up slowly, ready to dive down the drain if she made a move. She backed away.
He looked at the ruined doorjamb. "We're going to lose our deposit now; you know that, right?" Jody threw the door aside and offered her hand to help him out of the tub. "Can I buy you some fries? I'd really like to watch you eat some French fries."
"That's weird, Jody."
"Compared to what?"
They walked to Market Street where, even at ten o'clock, the sidewalks were crowded with bums and hustlers and teams of podiatrists who had escaped the Moscone Convention Center to seek out burgers, pizzas, and beer in the heart of the City. Jody watched the heat ghosts trailing the street people while Tommy handed out coins like a meter-maid angel trying to atone for a lifetime of giving chickenshit tickets.
He dropped a quarter into the palm of a half-fingered glove worn by a woman who was pretending to be a robot, but who looked more like a golem newly shaped from gutter filth. Jody noticed a black aura around the woman, as she had seen around the old man on the bus; she could smell disease and the rawness of open lesions and she almost pulled Tommy away.
A few steps away she said, "You don't have to give them all money just because they ask, you know."
"I know, but if I give them money I don't see their faces when I'm about to fall asleep."
"It doesn't really help. She'll just spend it on booze or drugs."
"If I was her, so would I."
"Good point," Jody said. She took his arm and led him into a burger joint named No Guilt: orange Formica tables over industrial-gray carpet, giant backlit transparencies of food glistening with grease, and families gleefully clogging their arteries together. "Is this okay?"
"Perfect," Tommy said.
They took a table by the window and Jody trembled while Tommy ordered a brace of burgers and a basket of fries.
She said, "Tell me about the woman who was killed."
"She had a dog, a little gray dog. They found them both in the dumpster at the motel. She was old. Now she'll always be old."
"Pardon?"
"People always stay the age that they died at. My big brother died of leukemia when I was six. He was eight. Now when I think of him, he's always eight, and he's still my big brother. He never changes, and the part of me that remembers him never changes. See. What about you?"
"I don't have any brothers or sisters."
"No, I mean, are you going to stay the same? Will you always look like this now?"
"I haven't thought about it. I guess it could be true. I know I heal really fast since it happened."
The waitress brought Tommy's food. He squirted ketc
hup on the fries and attacked. "Tell me," he said around a mouthful of burger.
Jody started slowly as she watched his every bite with envy, telling him first about her life before the attack, of growing up in Monterey and dropping out of community college when her life didn't seem to be moving fast enough. Then of moving to San Francisco, of her jobs and her loves and the few life lessons she had learned. She told him about that night of the attack in too much detail, and in the telling she realized how little she understood about what had happened to her. She told him about waking up, and of how her strength and senses had changed, and it was here that words began to fail her — there were no words to describe some of the things she had seen and felt. She told him about the call at the motel and about being followed by the other vampire. When she had finished she felt more confused than when she had started.
Tommy said, "So you're not immortal. He said that you could be killed."
"I guess; I don't seem to change. All my childhood scars are gone, the lines on my face. My body seems to have lifted a little."
Tommy grinned. "You do have a great body."
"I could lose five pounds," Jody said. She inhaled sharply and her eyes went wide, as if she'd just remembered some explosives she'd left in the oven. "Oh my God!"
"What?" Tommy looked around, thinking she had seen something frightening, something dangerous.
"This is horrible."
"What is it?" Tommy insisted.
"I just realized — I'm always going to be a pudgette. I have jeans I'll never get into. I'm always going to need to lose five pounds."
"So what, every woman I've ever known thought she needed to lose five pounds."
"But they have a chance, they have hope. I'm doomed."
"You could go on a liquid diet," Tommy said.
"Very funny." She pinched her hip to confirm her observation. "Five pounds. If he'd only waited another week to attack. I was on the yogurt-and-grapefruit diet. I would have made it. I'd be thin forever." She realized that she was obsessing and turned her attention to Tommy. "How's your neck, by the way?"
He rubbed the spot where she had bitten him. "It's fine. I can't even feel a mark."
"You don't feel weak?"
"No more than usual."
Jody smiled. "I don't know how much I… I mean, I don't have any way of measuring or anything."
"No, I'm fine. It was kind of sexy. I just wonder how I healed so fast."
"It seems to work that way."
"Let's try something." He held his hand by her face. "Lick my finger."
She pushed his hand away. "Tommy, just finish eating and we can go home and do this."
"No, it's an experiment. My cuticles get split from cutting boxes at the store. I want to see if you can heal them." He touched her lower lip. "Go ahead, lick."
She snaked out a tentative tongue and licked the tip of his finger, then took his finger in her mouth and ran her tongue around it.
"Wow," Tommy said. He pulled his finger out and looked at it. His cuticle, which had been split and torn, had healed. "This is great. Look."
Jody studied his cuticle. "It worked."
"Do another." He thrust another finger in her mouth.
She spit it out. "Stop that."
"Come on." He pushed at her lips. "Pleeeeze."
A big guy in a Forty-Niners sweatshirt leaned over from the table next to them and said, "Buddy, do you mind? I've got my kids here."
"Sorry," Tommy said, wiping vampire spit on his shirt. "We were just experimenting."
"Yeah, well, this isn't the place for it, okay?"
"Right," Tommy said.
"See?" Jody whispered. "I told you."
"Let's go home," Tommy said. "I've got a blister on my big toe."
"No fucking way, writer-boy."
"It's low in calories," Tommy coaxed, prodding her foot with his sneaker. "Good, and good for you."
"Not a chance."
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 bebop-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 groan 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 whe
n 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'll 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.
"Good morning," he said.
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?"
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