Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

went to get the gurney."
    Tommy stared at the black bag. He'd only seen one dead person in his life, his grandfather. He hadn't liked it.
    "How did it… I mean, was it murder?"
    "I'm betting creative suicide. She broke her own neck, drained out her blood, then killed the dog and jumped into the dumpster. The ME's betting murder, though. You pick."
    Tommy was horrified. "Her blood was drained?"
    "Are you a reporter?"
    "Nope."
    "Yeah, she was about a gallon low, and no visible wounds. The ME had to go into the heart for a blood sample. He was not pleased. He likes things simple – decapitation by cable car, massive gunshot trauma – you know."
    Tommy shuddered. "I'm from Indiana. Stuff like this doesn't happen there."
    "Stuff like this doesn't happen here either, kid."
    A tall, thin guy in coroner blues came around the corner pushing a gurney with a small, gray, dead dog on it. He picked up the dog by a rhinestone leash. "What do I do with this?" he asked the big hairy guy. The dog spun slowly at the end of the leash like a fuzzy Christmas ornament.
    "Bag and tag it?" said Big Hairy.
    "A dog? That's a new one on me."
    "I don't give a shit. Do what you want."
    "Well," Tommy interrupted, "you guys have a good day." He hurried away to the bus stop. As the bus pulled up he looked back and saw the two coroners tucking the little dog into the woman's body bag.
    Tommy got off the bus at a coffeehouse near Chinatown where he had seen guys in berets scribbling in notebooks and smoking French cigarettes. If you were looking for a place to sit and stare into the abyss for a while, always look for guys in berets smoking French cigarettes. They were like road signs: "Existential Crisis, Next Right." And the incident with the body bag had put Tommy in the mood to contemplate the meaninglessness of life for a few minutes before he started hunting for an apartment. They had treated that poor woman like a piece of meat. People should have been crying and fainting and fighting over her will. It must be some sort of protection mechanism, more of that ability that city people had for ignoring suffering.
    He ordered a double mocha at the counter. A girl with magenta hair and three nose rings frothed it up while Tommy searched though a stack of used newspapers on the counter, separating the classified sections. When he paid the girl she caught him staring at her nose rings and smiled. "Thought is death," she said, handing him the mocha.
    "Have a nice day," Tommy said.
    He sat down and began flipping though the classifieds. As he read through the apartments for rent, the money in his pocket seemed to shrink. Here was the reason why people seemed so distracted. They were all worrying about making rent.
    An ad for a furnished loft caught his eye. He was a loft kind of guy. He imagined himself saying, "No, I can't hang around, I've got to get back to the loft and write." And, "Sorry, I left my wallet in the loft." And writing, "Dear Mom, I've moved into a spacious loft in fashionable SOMA."
    Tommy put the paper down and turned to a beret guy at the next table who was reading a volume of Baudelaire and building up a drift of Disc Bleu butts in the ashtray. "Excuse me," Tommy said, "but I'm new in town. Where would I find fashionable SOMA?"
    The beret guy looked irritated. "South of Market," he said. Then he picked up his book and cigarettes and walked out of the cafe.
    "Sorry," Tommy called after him. Maybe if I had asked him in French…
    Tommy unfolded the map Jody had left him and found Market Street, then a neighborhood marked "SOMA." It wasn't far from where Jody had marked the Transamerica Pyramid. He folded up the map and tore the loft ad out of the classifieds. This was going to be easy.
    As he prepared to leave, he looked up to see an enormously fat man in a purple velvet robe enter the cafe carrying a leather sample case decorated with silver moons and stars. He sat at a table near Tommy, his bulk spilling over either side of the cane chair, and began removing things from the sample case. Tommy was captivated.
    The fat man's head was shaved and there was a pentagram tattooed on his scalp. He covered his table with a piece of black satin, then placed a crystal ball on a pedestal of brass dragons in the center. Next he unwrapped a deck of tarot cards from a purple silk scarf and placed them by the crystal ball. Last he removed a sign from the sample case and set it up on the table. It read: "Madame Natasha. Palmistry, Tarot,