From Dead to Worse

him in a stunned way. When we entered the store, he went to the nearest aisle and rubbed his head against the corner. I smiled brightly at Marcia Albanese, a wealthy older woman who was on the school board. I hadn’t seen her since she’d given Halleigh a wedding shower.
    “Who’s your friend?” Marcia asked. She was both naturally social and curious. She didn’t ask about the head rubbing, which endeared her to me forever.
    “Marcia, this is Bob Jessup, a visitor from out of town,” I said, and wished I’d prepared a story. Bob nodded at Marcia with wide eyes and held out his hand. At least he didn’t poke her with his head and demand to have his ears scratched. Marcia shook hands and told Bob she was pleased to meet him.
    “Thanks, nice to meet you, too,” Bob said. Oh, good, he sounded really normal.
    “Are you going to be in Bon Temps long, Bob?” Marcia said.
    “Oh, God, no,” he said. “Excuse me, I have to buy some shoes.” And he walked off (very smoothly and sinuously) to the men’s shoe aisles. He was wearing a pair of flip-flops Amelia had donated, bright green ones that weren’t quite big enough.
    Marcia was clearly taken aback, but I really couldn’t think of a good explanation. “See you later,” I said, and followed in his wake. Bob got some sneakers, some socks, two pairs of pants, two T-shirts, and a jacket, plus some underwear. I asked Bob what he’d like to eat, and he asked me if I could make salmon croquettes.
    “I sure can,” I said, relieved he’d asked for something so easy, and got the cans of salmon I’d need. He also wanted chocolate pudding, and that was easy enough, too. He left the other menu selections up to me.
    We had an early supper that night before I had to leave for work, and Bob seemed really pleased with the croquettes and the pudding. He looked much better, too, since he’d showered and put on his new clothes. He was even speaking to Amelia. I gathered from their conversation that she’d taken him through the websites about Katrina and its survivors, and he’d been in contact with the Red Cross. The family he’d grown up in, his aunt’s, had lived in Bay Saint Louis, in southern Mississippi, and we all knew what had happened there.
    “What will you do now?” I asked, since I figured he’d had a while to think about it now.
    “I’ve got to go see,” he said. “I want to try to find out what happened to my apartment in New Orleans, but my family is more important. And I’ve got to think of something to tell them, to explain where I’ve been and why I haven’t been in touch.”
    We were all silent, because that was a puzzler.
    “You could tell ’em you were enchanted by an evil witch,” Amelia said glumly.
    Bob snorted. “They might believe it,” he said. “They know I’m not a normal person. But I don’t think they’d be able to swallow that it lasted so long. Maybe I’ll tell them that I lost my memory. Or that I went to Vegas and got married.”
    “You contacted them regularly, before Katrina?” I said.
    He shrugged. “Every couple of weeks,” he said. “I didn’t think of us as close. But I would definitely have tried after Katrina. I love them.” He looked away for a minute.
    We kicked around ideas for a while, but there really wasn’t a credible reason he would have been out of touch for so long. Amelia said she was going to buy Bob a bus ticket to Hattiesburg and he would try to find a ride from there into the most affected area so he could track down his people.
    Amelia was clearing her conscience by spending money on Bob. I had no issue with that. She should be doing so; and I hoped Bob would find his folks, or at least discover what had happened to them, where they were living now.
    Before I left for work, I stood in the doorway of the kitchen for a minute or two, looking at the three of them. I tried to see in Bob what Amelia had seen, the element that had attracted her so powerfully. Bob was thin and not particularly tall, and his inky hair naturally lay flat to his skull. Amelia had unearthed his glasses, and they were black-rimmed and thick. I’d seen every inch of Bob, and I realized Mother Nature had been generous to him in the man-bits department, but surely that wasn’t enough to explain Amelia’s ardent sexcapades with this guy.
    Then Bob laughed, the first time he’d laughed since he’d become human again, and I got it. Bob had white, even teeth and great lips, and when he smiled, there was a