Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

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 ketchup 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