Bloodsucking fiends: a love story

Frank said. "I'm on it."
    "I have to go." Tommy opened the cab door and looked back at Frank. "Can I visit them?"
    "Anytime," Frank said. "Later." He bent and picked up the crate containing Zelda.
    Tommy got in the cab. "Marina Safeway," he said. He would be a couple of hours early for work, but he didn't want to stay at the loft and risk another tirade if Jody returned. He could kill the time reading or something.
    As the cab pulled away he looked out the back window and watched Frank carrying the second crate inside. Tommy felt as if he had just abandoned his children.
    Jody thought, I guess not everything changed when I changed. Without realizing how she got there, Jody found herself at Macy's in Union Square. It was as if some instinctual navigator, activated by conflict with men, had guided her there. A dozen times in the past she had found herself here, arriving with a purse full of tear-smeared Kleenex and a handful of credit cards tilted toward their limit. It was a common, and very human, response. She spotted other women doing the same thing: flipping through racks, testing fabrics, checking prices, fighting back tears and anger, and actually believing salespeople who told them that they looked stunning.
    Jody wondered if department stores knew what percentage of their profits came from domestic unrest. As she passed a display of indecently expensive cosmetics, she spotted a sign that read: "Melange Youth Cream – Because he'll never understand why you're worth it." Yep, they knew. The righteous and the wronged shall find solace in a sale at Macy's.
    It was two weeks until Christmas and the stores in Union Square were staying open late into the evening. Tinsel and lights were festooned across every aisle, and every item not marked for sale was decorated with fake evergreen, red and green ribbon, and various plastic approximations of snow. Droves of package-laden shoppers trudged through the aisles like the chorus line of the cheerful, sleigh-bell version of the Bataan Death March, ever careful to keep moving lest some ambitious window dresser mistake them for mannequins and spray them down with aerosol snow.
    Jody watched the heat trails of the lights, breathed deep the aroma of fudge and candy and a thousand mingled colognes and deodorants, listened to the whir of the motors that animated electric elves and reindeer under the cloak of Muzak-mellowed Christmas carols – and she liked it.
    Christmas is better as a vampire, she thought.
    The crowds used to bother her, but now they seemed like… like cattle: harmless and unaware. To her predator side, even the women wearing fur, who used to grate on her nerves, seemed not only harmless, but even enlightened in this heightened sensual world.
    I'd like to roll naked on mink, she thought. She frowned to herself. Not with Tommy, though. Not for a while, anyway.
    She found herself scanning the crowds, looking for the dark aura that betrayed the dying-prey – then caught herself and shivered. She looked over their heads, like an elevator rider avoiding eye contact, and the gleam of black caught her eye.
    It was a cocktail dress, minimally displayed on an emaciated Venus de Milo mannequin in a Santa hat. The LBD, Little Black Dress: the fashion equivalent of nuclear weapons; public lingerie; effective not because of what it was, but what it wasn't. You had to have the legs and the body to wear an LBD. Jody did. But you also had to have the confidence, and that she'd never been able to muster. Jody looked down at her jeans and sweatshirt, then at the dress, then at her tennis shoes. She pushed her way through the crowd to the dress.
    A rotund, tastefully dressed saleswoman approached Jody from behind. "May I help you?"
    Jody's gaze was trained on the dress as if it were the Star of Bethlehem and she was overstocked with frankincense and myrrh. "I need to see that dress in a three."
    "Very good," the woman said. "I'll bring you a five and a seven as well."
    Jody looked at the woman for the first time and saw the woman looking at her sweatshirt as if it would sprout tentacles and strangle her at any moment.
    "A three will be fine," Jody said.
    "A three might be a bit snug," the woman said.
    "That's the idea," Jody said. She smiled politely, imagining herself snatching out handfuls of the woman's tastefully tinted hair.
    "Now let's get the item number off of that," the woman said, making a show of holding the tag so that Jody could see the price. She sneaked a look