Club Dead

a pile of ashes in some barbecue pit? I thought of his dark brown hair, the thick feel of it beneath my fingers. I considered the secrecy of his planned return. After what seemed like a minute or two, I glanced at the clock on the stove. I’d been sitting at the table, staring into space, for over an hour.
    I should go to bed. It was late, and cold, and sleeping would be the normal thing to do. But nothing in my future would be normal again. Oh, wait! If Bill were gone, my future would be normal.
    No Bill. So, no vampires: no Eric, Pam, or Bubba.
    No supernatural creatures: no Weres, shape-shifters, or maenads. I wouldn’t have encountered them, either, if it hadn’t been for my involvement with Bill. If he’d never come into Merlotte’s, I’d just be waiting tables, listening to the unwanted thoughts of those around me: the petty greed, the lust, the disillusionment, the hopes, and the fantasies. Crazy Sookie, the village telepath of Bon Temps, Louisiana.
    I’d been a virgin until Bill. Now the only sex I might possibly have would be with JB du Rone, who was so lovely that you could almost overlook the fact that he was dumb as a stump. He had so few thoughts that his companionship was nearly comfortable for me. I could even touch JB without receiving unpleasant pictures. But Bill . . . I found that my right hand was clenched in a fist, and I pounded it on the table so hard, it hurt like hell.
    Bill had told me that if anything happened to him, I was to “go to” Eric. I’d never been sure if he was telling me that Eric would see to it that I received some financial legacy of Bill’s, or that Eric would protect me from other vampires, or that I’d be Eric’s . . . well, that I’d have to have the same relationship with Eric that I had with Bill. I’d told Bill I wasn’t going to be passed around like a Christmas fruitcake.
    But Eric had already come to me, so I didn’t even have the chance to decide whether or not to follow Bill’s last piece of advice.
    I lost the trail of my thought. It had never been a clear one anyway.
    Oh, Bill, where are you? I buried my face in my hands.
    My head was throbbing with exhaustion, and even my cozy kitchen was chilly in this small hour. I rose to go to bed, though I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I needed Bill with such gut-clenching intensity that I wondered if it was somehow abnormal, if I’d been enchanted by some supernatural power.
    Though my telepathic ability provided immunity from the vampires’ glamour, maybe I was vulnerable to another power? Or maybe I was just missing the only man I’d ever loved. I felt eviscerated, empty, and betrayed. I felt worse than I had when my grandmother had died, worse than when my parents had drowned. When my parents had died, I’d been very young, and maybe I hadn’t fully comprehended, all at once, that they were permanently gone. It was hard to remember now. When my grandmother had died a few months ago, I had taken comfort in the ritual surrounding death in the South.
    And I’d known they hadn’t willingly left me.
    I found myself standing in the kitchen doorway. I switched off the overhead light.
    Once I was wrapped up in bed in the dark, I began crying, and I didn’t stop for a long, long time. It was not a night to count my blessings. It was a night when every loss I’d ever had pressed hard on me. It did seem I’d had more bad luck than most people. Though I made a token attempt to fend off a deluge of self-pity, I wasn’t too successful. It was pretty much twined in there with the misery of not knowing Bill’s fate.
    I wanted Bill to curl up against my back; I wanted his cool lips on my neck. I wanted his white hands running down my stomach. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted him to laugh off my terrible suspicions. I wanted to tell him about my day; about the stupid problem I was having with the gas company, and the new channels our cable company had added. I wanted to remind him that he needed a new washer on the sink in his bathroom, let him know that my brother, Jason, had found out he wasn’t going to be a father after all (which was good, since he wasn’t a husband, either).
    The sweetest part of being a couple was sharing your life with someone else.
    But my life, evidently, had not been good enough to share.

Chapter Three
    W HEN THE SUN came up, I’d managed a half hour of sleep. I started to rise and make some coffee, but there didn’t seem to be much point. I just stayed in bed. The phone rang