Bloodsucking fiends (7 page)

Chapter 10 – Walking, Talking, and

Bumping in the Night

Coit Tower jutted out of Telegraph Hill like a giant phallus. Impressive as it was, all lit up and overlooking the City, it made Tommy feel nervous, inferior, and pressured to perform. She had as much as admitted that she was going to take him to bed – had even offered to solve the problem of the Wongs. She was a dream come true. It scared the hell out of him.

She took his hand and looked out over the City. "It's pretty, isn't it. We're lucky it's a clear night."

"Your hand is freezing," he said. He put his arm around her and pulled her close. God, I'm smooth, he thought, a complete stud. I'm making a move on an older woman – an older woman with money. Now what? My arm is lying on her shoulder like a dead fish. I'm a geek. If I could just turn my mind off until it's all over. Just get shit-faced and do it. No, not that. Not again.

Jody stiffened. She thought: I'm not cold. I haven't been cold since I changed, nor warm, for that matter. Kurt used to say I was always cold. How strange. I can see the heat around Tommy but there's none around me.

"Feel my forehead," she said to Tommy.

Tommy said, "Jody, we don't have to do this if you're not ready. I mean, maybe, like you said, we should just be roommates. I don't want to pressure you."

"No, feel my forehead and see if I have a fever."

"Oh." He put his hand on her forehead. "You're as cold as ice. Do you feel okay?"

Oh my God! How could I have been so stupid? She tore away from him and began pacing. The guy outside her apartment, the laughing man on Kearny Street, he had been cold. And so was she. How many vampires were out there that she hadn't seen?

"What's the matter?" Tommy asked. "Did I say something wrong?"

I've got to tell him, she thought. He's not going to trust me if I keep it from him.

She took his hand again. "Tommy, I think you ought to know. I'm not exactly what I seem to be."

He stepped back. "You're a guy, aren't you? I knew it. My dad warned me that this could happen here."

Maybe not, she thought.

"No, I'm not a guy."

"Are you sure?"

"Are you?"

"There's no need to get nasty."

"Well, how would you feel if I asked you if you were a girl?"

Tommy hung his head. "You're right. Sorry. But how would you feel if five Chinese women asked you to marry them? Things like that don't happen in Indiana. I can't even go back to my room."

"I can't either," she said.

"Why not?"

"Give me a minute to think, okay?"

She didn't want to go back to the motel on Van Ness again. The vampire knew she had been there. But he'd probably know even if she moved.

"Tommy, we need to get you a motel room."

"Jody, I'm getting mixed messages here."

"No, don't take it wrong. I don't want to send you back to that room with the Wongs. I think we should get you a room."

"I told you, I don't get paid -"

"My treat. It'll be an advance on your new job as my assistant."

Tommy sat down on the sidewalk and stared up at the lighted shaft of Coit Tower. He thought, I have no idea what I am supposed to be or what I'm supposed to do. First she wants me for my body, then she wants me as an employee, then she doesn't want me at all. I don't know whether I'm supposed to kiss her or fill out an application. I feel like one of those nervous little dogs from an electroshock test. Here's a bone, Spot. Zap! You didn't really want that, did you?

He said, "Whatever you want me to do, I'll do."

"Okay," Jody said. "Thanks." She bent and kissed him on the forehead.

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do, she thought. If we go to a motel and go to bed together, then he'll have to go to work, and when he comes back in the morning he'll come back to the room, open the door, and the sunlight will hit me. Bursting into flames is no way to impress someone on the first date. Separate rooms is the only way to go. He's going to get fed up and leave me like all the rest.

"Tommy, can you go get your stuff tomorrow?"

"Whatever you say."

"I can't explain now, but I might be in a little trouble and I have a lot of things to do. I need you to do a lot of things for me tomorrow. Can you do that after working all night?"

"Whatever you say," he said.

"I'm going to get you a room at my motel. I won't be around until tomorrow night. I'll meet you at the motel office at sunset. When you come back to the room in the morning, the papers for my car will be on the bed, okay?"

"Whatever you say." Tommy looked dazed. He stared into his lap.

"I'll give you money for an apartment. Try to find a place that's furnished. And no windows in the bedroom. Try to keep it under two thousand a month."

Tommy didn't look up. "Whatever you say."

I've taken over his mind, she thought. It's just like in the movies, when the vampire can control people's actions. I don't want that. I don't want to force him with my will. It's not fair. He was helpless enough, but now I've turned him into a zombie. I want help, but I don't want this. I wonder if there's enough of his mind left even to function, or if I've ruined him.

"Tommy," she said sternly, "I want you to climb to the top of the tower and jump off."

He looked up. "Are you out of your mind?"

She threw her arms around him, kissed him, and said, "Oh, I'm so glad I didn't turn you into a vegetable."

"I'll give you time," he said.

Jody stood outside the four-story apartment building on Chestnut, watching and listening. There were no lights on in Kurt's apartment. Already it had become Kurt's apartment, not hers, not theirs. The moment she asked Tommy out, she had transferred whatever dreams and delusions she attached to being a couple to Tommy. It was always that way for her. She didn't like to be alone.

She and Tommy had walked Telegraph Park talking about their past lives and avoiding the subject of a singular, future life until it was time for Tommy to go to work. Jody had called a cab from a pay phone and dropped Tommy off at the store with a kiss and a promise. "I'll see you tomorrow night."

It was only when she got out of the cab at the motel that she realized that the registration and pink slip for her car were still at Kurt's.

Why didn't I take a damn key when I left?

She toyed with the idea of ringing the bell, but the thought of looking Kurt in the eye after what she had done to him… No, she'd have to get in on her own. Going through the two fire doors and the security bolts wasn't an option.

The building was a pseudo-Victorian, the facade decorated with prefabricated bolt-on gingerbread. Jody tried to imagine herself climbing the front of the building and shuddered. To her relief, the side panels on the fourth-floor bay window were closed. No way in there.

There was a five-foot-wide alley between Kurt's building and the one next to it. The bedroom window was on that side. No gingerbread for handholds there.

She went to the alley and looked up. The bedroom window was open and the wall was as smooth as polished stone. She eyed the space between the two buildings. With her hands against one side and her feet against the other, she could spider her way up the wall. She'd seen guys climbing chimney crevices at Yosemite that way. Experienced climbers, with equipment. Not secretaries who avoided escalators for fear of breaking a heel.

She focused on the open window and listened. The sound of someone breathing deeply, sleeping. No, it was the sound of two people sleeping. "You bastard."

She leaped into the air and caught herself between the two buildings, six feet off the ground, her feet against one, hands against the other. She was amazed that she could do it, but it wasn't that hard. It wasn't hard at all. She tested her weight against the tension in her limbs and it felt solid. She held herself with one hand while she pulled her skirt up over her hips with the other, then she tried a tentative step up.

Hand, foot, hand, foot. When she paused to look down she was right under Kurt's window, forty feet off the ground, with only a garbage can and a stray cat to break her fall. She tried to catch her breath, then realized that she wasn't out of breath. She felt as if she could hold herself there for hours if she needed to. But the fear of falling pushed her on.
You're not immortal. You can still be killed
.

She pushed the screen loose from the window with her left hand, got a grip on the windowsill, then loosed the tension in her legs and swung down against Kurt's building. Hanging by one hand, she removed the screen with the other and lowered it to the floor inside, then pulled herself up to the windowsill, where she crouched and looked around the room. Two people were in the bed. She could see their heat signatures rising through the covers and being dissipated by the cold breeze coming through the window. No wonder I complained about the cold. She stepped into the room and waited to see if the sleepers stirred. Nothing.

She moved to the side of the bed and looked at the woman with almost scientific detachment. It was Susan Badistone. Jody had met her at Kurt's office picnic and had disliked her immediately. Her straight blond hair was spread over the pillow. Jody twisted a lock of her own curly red hair around her finger. So this is what he wanted. And that's an after-market nose if I've ever seen one. But it's all about appearances, isn't it, Kurt?

Jody grabbed the covers and lifted them far enough to look under. She's got the body of a twelve-year-old boy. Oh Kurt, you should have let her finish the surgery schedule before you brought her home.

She let the covers fall and Susan stirred. Jody backed away from the bed slowly. She had kept all of her papers in an expandable file under the sink in the bathroom. She went to the bathroom and palmed the cabinet open. The file was still there. She grabbed it and headed for the window.

"Who's there?" Kurt said. He sat up in bed and stared into the dark.

Jody ducked below the light coming in the window and watched him.

"I said, who's there?"

"What's a matter?" a groggy Susan said.

"I heard something."

"It's nothing, honey. You're just jumpy after what that horrible woman did to you."

I could snap her scrawny blond neck, Jody thought. Then, in thinking it, in knowing that she could actually do it, she was no longer angry. I'm not "that horrible woman," she thought. I'm a vampire, and no amount of plastic surgery, or breeding, or money will ever make you my equal. I am a god.

For the first time since the transformation Jody felt calm, comfortable in her own skin. She waited there in the dark until they fell asleep again, then she climbed out the window and replaced the screen. She stood on the window ledge and threw the expandable file on the roof, then leaped up, grabbed the gutter, and pulled herself onto the roof.

At the back of the building she found a steel ladder that went all the way to the ground. The climb between the two buildings had been completely unnecessary.

Okay, not a particularly smart god, but at least a god who has her original nose.

Chapter 11 – Lather, Rinse, Repent

The Animals were humming the wedding march when Tommy walked in the store. Tommy was rattled from the cab ride from Telegraph Hill. Evidently the cabdriver, who had a nervous tic and the habit of screaming, "The fuckers!" at indeterminate intervals and for no particular reason, felt that if you weren't going to top a hill without all four wheels leaving the ground and land in a shower of sparks, you might as well not top it at all, and, in fact, should avoid it by taking a corner on two wheels and crushing your passengers against the doors. Tommy was sweat-soaked and a little nauseated.

"Here comes the bride," Troy Lee said.

"Fearless Leader," Simon said, "you look like you just left a three-toweler." Simon measured the success of any social event by the number of towels it took to clean up afterward. "Was a time in my life," Simon would say, "when I only owned one towel and I never had any fun."

"You're not still pissed at me?" Tommy asked.

"Hell, no," Simon said. "I had me a three-toweler myself tonight. Took two choir girls from Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt out in the truck and taught them the fine art of slurping tadpoles."

"That's disgusting."

"No, it ain't. I didn't kiss 'em afterward."

Tommy shook his head. "Is the truck in?"

"Only fourteen hundred cases," Drew said. "You'll have plenty of time to plan the wedding." He held out a stack of bride magazines to Tommy.

"No, thanks," Tommy said.

Drew chucked the magazines behind him and held out a can of whipped cream with his other hand. "Take the edge off?"

"No, thanks. Can you guys stack the truck? I've got some stuff I want to do."

"Sure enough," Simon said. "Let's go do it."

The crew headed to the stockroom. Clint stayed behind.

"Hey, Tommy," he said, his head down, looking embarrassed.

"Yeah?"

"A pallet of kosher food came in tonight. You know, getting ready for Hanukkah and everything. And it's supposed to be blessed by a rabbi."

"Yeah. So?"

"Well, I was wondering if I could say a few words over it. I mean, they're not washed in the Blood or anything, but Christ was Jewish. So…"

"Knock yourself out, Clint."

"Thanks," Clint said. Taken with the Spirit, he scurried off to the stockroom.

Tommy went to the news racks by the registers and gathered up an armload of women's magazines. Then, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that none of the Animals was watching, he took them into the office, locked the door, then sat down at the desk and began his research.

He was about to move in with a woman for the first time, and he didn't know a thing about women. Maybe Jody wasn't crazy. Maybe they were all that way and he was just ignorant. He flipped quickly through the tables of contents to get an overview of the female mind.

There was a pattern here. Cellulite, PMS, and men who don't commit were the enemies. Delightfully light desserts, marriage, and multiple orgasms were the allies.

Tommy felt like a spy, as if he should be microfilming the pages under a gooseneck lamp in some back room of a Bavarian castle stronghold, and any minute some woman in SS gear would burst in on him and tell him that she had ways of making him talk. Actually, that last part wouldn't be too bad.

Women seemed to have some collective plan, and most of it seemed to involve getting men to do stuff that they didn't want to do. He skimmed an article entitled: "Tan Lines: Sexy Contrast or Panda Bear Shame? – A Psychologist's View," then flipped to one entitled: "Men's Love for Sports Analogies: How to Use Vince Lombardi to Make Him Put the Seat Down." ("When one player falls in, the whole team gets a wet butt.") He read on: "When it's fourth and ten and Joe Montana decides to go for it, would his linemen tell him that they won't go to the store to get him tampons? I don't think so." And: "Of course Richard Petty doesn't want to wear a helmet, but he can't drive without protection either." By the time Tommy got to the warnings about never using Wilt Chamberlain or Martina Navratilova as examples, he was completely disenchanted. How could you deal with a creature as devious as woman?

He turned the page and his heart sank even further. "Can You Tell Him He's a Lousy Lay?: A Quiz."

Tommy thought, This is exactly the kind of thing that made me stay a virgin until I was eighteen.

1. It's the third date and you're about to have an intimate moment, but when he drops his shorts you notice he's less blessed than you expected. Do you:

A: Point and laugh.

B: Say, "Wow! A real man at last." Then turn and snicker to yourself.

C: Say, "Is that what they mean by microbiology?"

D: Just go ahead with it. He might be shamed into making a commitment. And what do you care if all your sons are nicknamed Peewee?

2. You decide to do the dread deed, and just as things are starting to get hot he comes, rolls over, and asks, "Was it good for you?" You:

A: Say, "God, yes! That was the best seventeen seconds of my life!"

B: Say, "Sure, as good as it gets for me with a man."

C: Put a Certs in your navel and say, "That's for you, Mr. Bunnyman. You can have it on your way back up, after the job is finished."

D: Smile and throw his car keys out the window.

3. After fumbling in the dark, he thinks he's found the spot. When you tell him that's not it, he forges ahead anyway. You:

A: Grab the lamp off the nightstand and beat him with it until he gets off you.

B: Grab the lamp off the nightstand and beat him to death with it.

C: Grab the lamp off the nightstand, turn it on, and say, "Would you look where you're at?"

D: Wait patiently until he finishes, wishing the whole time that you had a lamp on your nightstand.

The phone in the office rang. Tommy closed the magazine.

"Marina Safeway."

"Tommy, is that you?" Jody asked.

"Yeah, I have on my phone voice."

"Look, you're registered into room two-twelve at the Van Ness Motel – the corner of Chestnut and Van Ness. There's a key waiting for you in the office. The papers and keys for my car are on the bed. I left some papers for you to take to Transamerica and some money too. I'll meet you at the motel office a little after sunset."

"What room are you in?"

"I don't think I should say."

"Why? I'm not going to come in and jump you or anything."

"It's not that. I just want things to be right."

He took a deep breath. "Jody?"

"Yes."

"Is there a lamp on the nightstand in your room?"

"Sure, it's bolted down. Why?"

"No reason," Tommy said.

Suddenly, from the back of the store, the Stones belted out "Satisfaction" from a boom box cranked to distorted fuzz level. Tommy could hear the Animals chanting, "Kill the pig!" in the background.

"I've got to go," he said. "I'll see you tomorrow night."

"Okay. Tommy, I had a nice time tonight."

"Me too," he said. He hung up and thought: She's evil. Evil, evil, evil. I want to see her naked.

Jeff, the failed power forward, burst into the office. "The truck is stacked, dude. The ski boat is charged! We're talking luau in the produce aisle."

The Clark 250, self-propelled, professional floor-maintenance machine, is a miracle of janitorial design. Approximately the size of a small desk, the Clark 250 sports two rotating scrub disks at the front of the machine, as well as an onboard reservoir that distributes soap and water, and a squeegeed vacuum that sucks it up. It is propelled by two overpowered electric motors that will drive its gum-rubber tires over any flat surface, wet or dry. A single operator, walking behind the Clark 250, can, in less than an hour, scrub four thousand square feet of floor, and buff it to a shine in which he can see his soul, or so the brochure claims. What the brochure neglects to mention is that if the squeegee is retracted and the vacuum turned off, a single operator can slide along behind the Clark 250 on a river of soapy froth. The Animals called the machine the ski boat.

When Tommy came around the corner of aisle 14, he saw Simon, shirtless, wearing his cowboy hat, cooking weenies over thirty cans of Sterno on a stainless-steel rack that normally was used to display potato chips.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning," Simon said, waving a barbecue fork. "It smells like victory."

"Cowabunga!" Drew screamed. He was sliding through two inches of soapsuds behind the ski boat, towing Lash toward a makeshift ramp by a length of clothesline. Lash hit the ramp, went airborne, and flipped in the air with a battle cry of "Workman's Comp!"

Tommy stepped aside as Lash landed on his chest and plowed a drift of suds with his face. Drew powered down the boat. "Eight-two," Barry shouted. "Nine-one," said Clint. "Nine-six," said Drew. "Quatro-uno," said Gustavo.

"A four-one from the Mexican judge," Simon said into his barbecue-fork microphone. "That's got to hurt his chances for getting into the finals, Bob."

Lash spit out a mouthful of soap and coughed. "The Mexican judges are always tough," he said. He wore a beard of suds that made him look like a thin, wet version of Uncle Remus.

Tommy helped Lash to his feet. "Are you okay?"

"He's fine," Simon said. "His personal trainer is here." Simon grabbed a coconut off the shelf and lopped the top off with a huge knife from the meat department. "Dr. Drew," he said, holding the coconut out to Drew, who took a pint of rum from his hip pocket and splashed some in the shell.

"Down this," Simon said, handing the coconut to Lash. "Kill the pig, partner."

The Animals chanted "Kill the pig" until Lash had downed the whole drink, coconut milk and rum washing streams though his beard of suds at the corners of his mouth. He stopped to breathe and threw up.

"Nine-two!" Barry shouted.

"Nine-four," Drew said.

"Six-one," Simon drawled. "Penalty points for chunks."

"Fuego," Gustavo said.

Simon jumped in Gustavo's face. "Fuego? What fucking number is Fuego? You can be disqualified as a judge, you know?"

"Fuego," Gustavo said, pointing over Simon's shoulder to the chip rack, where three dozen weenies had burst into flames and were spewing black smoke.

The smoke alarm went off with a Klaxon scream, drowning out the Rolling Stones.

"It rings into the fire department," Drew shouted in Tommy's ear. "They'll be at the door in a minute. It's your job to head them off, Fearless Leader."

"Me? Why me?"

"That's why you make the big bucks."

"Kill that stereo and put out the fire," Tommy yelled. He turned and was heading for the front door just as Clint came out of the stockroom.

"The kosher stuff is all blessed, and I prayed over some of the gentile food for good measure. You know, Tom, the guys said that you might be getting married, and I'm getting my minister card in the mail soon, so if you need -"

"Clint," Tommy interrupted, "clean-up in the produce aisle." He went to the front door, unlocked it, and went outside to wait for the fire department. The bay was socked in with fog and the beam from the lighthouse on Alcatraz cut a swath across Fort Mason and the Safeway parking lot. Tommy thought he could make out the figure of someone standing under one of the mercury lights. Someone thin, dressed in dark clothing.

A fire truck pulled into the parking lot, siren off, its flashing red lights cutting the fog. As the fire truck's headlights swept across the lot, the dark figure dodged and ran, staying just ahead of the lights. Tommy had never seen anyone run that fast. The thin guy seemed to cover a hundred yards in only a few seconds. A trick of the fog, Tommy thought.