You Suck_ A Love Story Part 2

"Then how am I supposed to make a living?"

"You could print up a sign that says 'I'm poor and I lost my huge cat'? That would work on me."

"You may not be the best sample," said the cat guy.

"Look," Tommy said, standing now and digging into his pocket. "I'll buy the cat. I'll give you, uh, forty-"

The cat guy shook his head.

"Sixty-"

Furious head shaking...

Tommy untangled bills from a wad he'd pulled out of his pocket, "One hundred-"

"No."

"And thirty...two-"

"No."

"And thirty-seven cents."

"No."

"And a paper clip."

"No."

"That's a great offer," Tommy insisted. "That's like four bucks a pound!"

"No."

"Well screw you, then," Tommy said. "I don't feel sorry for you and your huge cat."

"You can't have your dollar back."

"Fine!" Tommy said.

"Fine!" said the cat guy.

Tommy took Jody by the arm and started to walk away. "That's a huge cat," he said.

"Why were you trying to buy it? We're not supposed to have pets in the loft."

"Duh," Tommy said. "Dinner."

"Yuck."

"It's a stopgap," Tommy said. "You know that the Masai of Kenya drink the blood of their cattle with no apparent ill effect to the cow."

"Well, I'm sure it violates our lease if we get a cow."

"That's it."

"What's it?"

"A lease."

Tommy swung her around and brought her back to the cat guy.

"I want to rent the cat," Tommy said. "You could use a break and I want to show the huge cat to my aunt who is an invalid and can't come down here."

"No."

"One night. One hundred and thirty-two dollars and thirty-seven cents."

The cat guy raised an eyebrow, the grime over that eye cracked a little. "One fifty."

"I don't have one fifty, you know that."

"Then I want to see the redhead's hooters."

Tommy looked at Jody, then back at the cat guy, then back at Jody.

"No," Jody said calmly.

"No," Tommy said indignantly. "How dare you suggest it?"

"One hooter," countered the cat guy.

Tommy looked at Jody. She gave him the wide, green-eyed expression that she would have described as I will slap you so far into next week that it will take a team of surgeons just to get Wednesday out of your a.s.s I will slap you so far into next week that it will take a team of surgeons just to get Wednesday out of your a.s.s.

"No way," Tommy said. "The redhead's hooters are not on the table." He grinned, looked back at Jody, then looked away, really fast.

The cat guy shrugged. "I'll need some kind of security deposit, like your driver's license-"

"Sure," Tommy said.

"And a credit card."

"No," Jody said, pulling her jacket closed and zipping it up to her neck.

"Nothing kinky," said the cat guy. "I'll know."

"Going to show him to my aunt, and I'll have him back tomorrow, this time."

"Deal," said the cat guy. "His name is Chet."

You first," Tommy said. They stood in the great room of their loft on either side of the futon, where the huge cat, a crossbreed between a Persian, a dust mop, and possibly a water buffalo, was actively shedding. Tommy had decided that he was going to be very cool about the whole blood-drinking thing, despite the fact that he was so amped he felt as if he could run up and down the walls. In fact, he wasn't sure that he couldn't run up and down the walls, that was part of what was freaking him out. Still, since coming to San Francisco a couple of months ago, he had spent entirely too much time overreacting, and he wasn't going to do it now-not in front of his girlfriend. Not at all, if he could help it.

"You should go first," Jody said. "You've never fed before."

"But you gave the old vampire some of your blood," Tommy said. "You need it." It was true, she had given the vampire her blood to help heal him from the damage Tommy and his friends had caused by blowing up his yacht and so forth, but he hoped she would say no again.

"No, no, no, after you," Jody said, with a very bad French accent. "I insist."

"Well, if you insist."

Tommy leapt to the futon and bent over the huge cat. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to go about this, but he could see the healthy red life aura around Chet, and he could hear his little kitty heart pounding. There was a crackling noise inside of his head, like someone was popping bubble wrap in his ear ca.n.a.l, and then there was pressure on the roof of his mouth, painful pressure, and more crackling. He felt something give and two sharp points poking his lower lip. He pushed back from the cat and grinned at Jody, who yelped and jumped back a step.

"Fangth," Tommy said.

"Yes, I can see that," Jody said.

"Why'd you jump? Do they look thupid?"

"You startled me, is all," Jody said, looking away from him like he was an arc welder or a total eclipse and full eye contact might blind her. She waved him on. "Go, go, go. Be careful. Not too hard."

"Right," Tommy said. He grinned again and she s.h.i.+ed away.

Tommy turned back, braced the cat, who seemed much less freaked by this process than the two vampires in the room, and bit.

"Thuppt, thuppt, ack!" Tommy stood up and started brus.h.i.+ng at his tongue to remove cat hair. "Yuck!"

"Hold still," Jody said, going to him and brus.h.i.+ng the loose, damp cat hair away from his face. She went to the kitchen counter and came back with a gla.s.s of water and a paper towel, which she used to wipe at Tommy's tongue. "Just use the water to rinse. Don't swallow it. You won't be able to keep it down."

"I'm not going to thwollow it, my mouf is full of cat hair."

Once he had rinsed, Jody picked the last of the hairs from his mouth, and in doing so, she p.r.i.c.ked one of her fingers on Tommy's right fang.

"Ouch." She pulled her finger away and put it in her mouth.

"Oh, jeez," Tommy said. He pulled her finger out of her mouth and put it in his. His eyes rolled back in his head and he moaned through his nose.

"Oh, I don't think so," Jody said. She grabbed his hand and bit into his forearm, attaching herself to him like a remora to a shark.

Tommy growled, flipped her around, and threw her facedown on the futon, his arm still in her mouth. She flipped her hair to the side and he sank his teeth into her neck. She screamed, but the shriek was muted, bubbling out on Tommy's b.l.o.o.d.y forearm. Chet, the huge cat, hissed and bolted across the room, through the bedroom door, to wedge himself under the bed, as the sounds of straining leather, tearing denim, and screaming predators filled the loft.

The irony, that it sounded like a huge catfight, was completely lost on the huge cat.

4.

Red and White and Dead All Over Kapoc stuffing and chicken feathers lay in great, fluffy drifts across the room, along with the shreds of their clothing, the futon cover, pieces of a fuzzy, Muppet-skin rug, and the crushed remains of a couple of cheap-a.s.s Pier 1 paper lanterns. Sparks crackled from the bare wires over the breakfast bar, where the pendulum light fixtures used to hang. The loft looked as if someone had thrown a hand grenade into the middle of a teddy-bear orgy and the only survivors had had their fur blown off.

"Well, that was different," Jody said, still a little breathless. She was lying across the coffee table, looking out the window at a streetlight from an upside-down angle, naked except for one sleeve of her red leather jacket. She was smeared with blood from head to toe, and even as Tommy watched, the scratches and fang marks on her skin were healing over.

"If I'd known," Tommy said, panting, "I'd have grown a foreskin a long time ago." He lay across the room where she had thrown him, sprawled on a pile of books and kindling that had once been a bookshelf, also smeared with blood and covered in scratches-wearing only a sock.

As he pulled a pencil-sized splinter of bookcase out of his thigh, Tommy thought that he might have been a little hasty about yelling at Jody for turning him into a vampire. Although he couldn't really remember much of it, he was pretty sure he'd just had the most amazing s.e.x ever. Apparently what he had read about vampire s.e.x being all about drinking the blood and nothing else-it was just another myth like the changing into a bat and the inability to cross running water.

"Did you know that was going to happen?" Tommy asked.

"I had no idea," Jody said, still on the coffee table, and looking more to Tommy every minute like a murder victim, except that she was talking, and smiling. "I was going to make you buy me dinner and take me to a movie first."

Tommy chucked the b.l.o.o.d.y bookcase splinter at her. "I don't mean did you know we were going to do it, I mean did you know that it was going to be like that?"

"How would I know that?"

"I thought maybe the night you spent with the old vampire..."

Jody sat up. "I didn't do do him, Tommy, I just spent the night with him trying to find out about how to be a vampire. And his name is Elijah." him, Tommy, I just spent the night with him trying to find out about how to be a vampire. And his name is Elijah."

"Oh, so now you're on a first-name basis."

"Oh, for the love of G.o.d, Tommy, would you stop thinking? You're taking what was an amazing experience and sucking all the life out of it."

Tommy fidgeted on his pile of rubble and started to pout, but winced when he tried to push out his lower lip and it caught on his fangs. She was right. He'd always been like that, always overthinking, overa.n.a.lyzing. "Sorry," he said.

"You have to just be part of the world now," Jody said softly. "You can't put everything into categories, separate yourself from experience by putting words on it. Like the song says, let it be let it be."

"Sorry," Tommy said again. He tried to push the thoughts out of his head, closed his eyes, and listened to his heartbeat, and Jody's heartbeat coming from across the room.

"It's okay," Jody said. "s.e.x like that does sort of beg for a postmortem."

Tommy smiled, his eyes still closed. "So to speak."

Jody stood up and crossed the room to where he was sitting. She offered him her hand to help him up. "Careful, the back of your head is kind of stuck in the drywall."

Tommy turned his head and heard plaster cracking. "I'm still starving."

She pulled him to his feet. "I'm feeling a little drained myself."

"My bad," Tommy said. He could remember now, her blood pulsing into him, at the same time that his was pulsing into her. He rubbed a place on his shoulder where the punctures from her fangs hadn't quite healed yet.

She kissed the spot he was rubbing. "You'll heal faster when you've had fresh blood."

Tommy felt an ache, like a sudden cramp in his stomach. "I really need to eat."