Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

application is accepted?"
    "Okay," Tommy said. He entered the loft, leaving her standing on the landing.
    The loft was roughly the size of a handball court. It had an island kitchen in the middle, and windows ran along one wall from floor to ceiling. There was an old rug, a futon, and a low plastic coffee table in the open area near the kitchen. The back wall was lined with empty bookshelves, broken only by a single door to the bedroom.
    The bookshelves did it. Tommy wanted to live here. He could see the shelves filled with Kerouac, and Kesey, and Hammett, and Ginsberg, and Twain, and London, and Bierce, and every other writer who had lived and written in the City. One shelf would be for the books he was going to write: hardbacks in thirty languages. There would be a bust of Beethoven on that shelf. He didn't really like Beethoven, but he thought he should have a bust of him.
    He resisted the urge to shout, "I'll take it!" It was Jody's money. He had to check the bedroom for windows. He opened the door and went in. The room was as dark as a cave. He flipped the light switch and track lighting along one wall came on. There was an old mattress and box springs on the floor. The walls were bare brick. No windows.
    Through another door was a bathroom with a freestanding sink and a huge claw-foot tub that was stained with rust and paint. No windows. He was so excited, he thought he would wet himself.
    He ran out into the main living area where Alicia was standing with her hand on her hip, mentally shoving him into the pigeonhole of abusive barbarism she had made for him.
    "I'll take it," Tommy said.
    "You'll have to fill out an -"
    "I'll give you four thousand dollars in cash, right now." He pulled the wad of bills out of his jeans.
    "How many keys will you need?"

Chapter 14 – Two Losts Do Not
    Make a Found
    Consciousness went off like a flashbulb of pain: a dull ache in her head, sharp daggers in her knees and her chin. Jody was slumped in the shower. The water was still running – had been running on her all day. She crawled out of the shower stall on her hands and knees and pulled towels out of the rack.
    She sat on the bathroom floor and dried herself, blotting away the water with rough terry cloth. Her skin felt tender, almost raw. The towels were damp from fourteen hours of steam. The ceiling dripped and the walls ran with condensation. She braced herself against the sink and climbed to her feet, then opened the door and stumbled through the room to the bed.
    Be careful what you ask for, she thought. All the regret about waking up a little too alert, coming out of sleep like a gunshot, came back on her. She hadn't thought about falling asleep in the same way. She must have been in the shower at sunup, dropped to the shower floor, and stayed there throughout the day.
    She sat up on the bed and gently touched her chin. Pain shot up her jaw. She must have hit it on the soap dish when she went out. Her knees were bruised as well.
    Bruised? Something was wrong. She jumped to her feet and went to the dresser. She turned on the light and leaned into the mirror, then yelped. Her chin was bruised blue, with a corona of yellow. Her hair was hopelessly tangled and she now had a small bald spot where the water had worn away at her scalp.
    She backed away and sat back on the bed, stunned. Something was wrong, seriously wrong, beyond her injuries. It was the light. Why had she turned on the light? The night before she would have been able to see herself in the mirror by the light filtering in under the bathroom door. But it was more than that. It was a tightness in her mouth, pressure, like when she had first gotten braces as a child.
    She ran her tongue over her teeth and felt the points breaking through the roof of her mouth just behind her eyeteeth.
    She thought, I'm breaking down from lack of… She couldn't even make herself think it. This will get worse. Much worse.
    Now she could feel the hunger, not in her stomach, but in her entire body, as if her veins were going to collapse on themselves. And there was a tension in her muscles, as if piano strings were tightening inside her body, sharpening her movements, making her feel as if she would jump through a window any second.
    I've got to calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down.
    She repeated the mantra to herself as she got up and walked to the phone. It seemed to take an incredible effort to push the zero button and wait for the desk clerk to come on.
    "Hi, this is