You Suck: A Love Story

palace.
    She paused in the automatic doors, despite the fact that she felt like she was turning blue under her blue, dressed as she was in a silver lame minidress and six-inch clear Lucite heels, none of it protecting her from the frigid wind coming off the Bay, whipping through the Marina Safeway parking lot. Thinking she’d probably spend most of her time naked, she hadn’t packed forSan Francisco weather.
    “I’ve never even been toBabylon,” she said. “But I’m open to new experiences.” She licked her lips and stepped to where her breasts were within an inch of Clint’s chest.
    He turned and bolted to the office, chanting, “Get thee behind me, get thee behind me, get thee behind me,” the whole way.
    “However you want it, baby,” said Blue. She decided she’d think of him as Freaked, the paranoid dwarf.
    “Barry will show you to the break room,” Lash said. He’d become the new leader of the Animals, mainly because he tended to be the most sober. “Jeff, send the limo back and lock the doors. Drew, make some coffee. Gustavo, see what the situation is on the floors. We may need you to throw stock on the shelves.”
    They stood there, looking at him. Stoned. Drunk. Baffled. Blue would think of Barry, the little, prematurely bald guy, as her special dwarf, Baffled. She smiled.
    Clint peeked over the three-quarter wall of the office. “Hey, you guys. You should know that the Emperor was here last night. He says that Tommy Flood is a vampire.”
    “Huh?” Lash said.
    “He’s a vampire. That girl of his, she didn’t leave town. She changed him.”
    “Get the fuck outta here,” said Jeff.
    Clint nodded furiously. “It’s true.”
    “Well, fuck,” said the others, in an unsynchronized chorus.
    “Meeting,” Lash announced. “Gentlemen, take your seats.” He looked apologetically to Blue. “This shouldn’t take long.”
    “I’ll make coffee,” she said.
    “Uh…” Lash seemed concerned. “Blue, we’re kind of on a budget from here on out.”
    “Coffee’s free,” Blue said. She turned and started heading to the back of the store. “I’ll find it.”
    T he Animals watched Blue walk away and, when she turned the corner, gathered by the registers. Clint unlocked the office door and came out. “So, we have to notify those cops, so they can help us hunt him down.”
    Lash looked at the Animals, who looked back. Lash raised an eyebrow. The others nodded. Lash put his arm around Clint’s shoulders. “Clint, the guys and I have discussed it, and we’d all like to do something for you.”
    Clint ran back in the office and slammed the door. “No! We have to destroy the agents of Satan.”
    “Right. Of course. We’ll get right on that. But first I’d like you to ask yourself something, Clint. And I’d like you to answer not as the born-again man that you are now, but from that little boy that’s inside of all of us.”
    “Okay,” Clint said, peeking over the office door.
    “Clint, haven’t you ever wanted to bone a Smurf?”
    J ody heard Tommy come in the security door downstairs and met him on the stairs with a big hug and a backbreaking kiss.
    “Wow,” Tommy said.
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m really good now. I was just checking on William. I think he pooped himself.”
    “I’m so sorry, Tommy. I shouldn’t have left you on your own this soon.”
    “It’s okay. I’m okay. Hey, you have something on your dress.”
    Jody was still wearing the little black dress. Some of the dust that was James O’Mally was still clinging to it near the hemline. “Oh, I must have bumped up against something.”
    “Let me get that for you,” Tommy said, brushing at her thigh, then starting to raise the dress up past her waist.
    Jody caught his hand. “Horndog!”
    Chet the huge shaved cat looked up for a second, then put his head back down on William’s chest and went back to sleep.
    “But you left me on my own,” Tommy said, trying to sound sad, but smiling too much to make it work.
    “You’re fine.” She looked at her watch. “We only have about forty minutes till sunup. We can talk while we get ready for bed.”
    “I’m ready for bed now,” Tommy said.
    She led him up the stairs into the loft, through the great room, the bedroom, and into the bathroom. She grabbed her toothbrush off the sink and tossed Tommy his. She pasted, then chucked the tube to him.
    “Do we still have to floss?” Tommy asked. “I mean, what’s the point of being immortal if we have to