You Suck: A Love Story

Emperor, have you seen William?”
    “William of the huge and recently shaven cat?”
    “That’s the one.”
    “Why yes, we crossed his path not long ago. He was at the liquor store at Geary andTaylor. He seemed very enthusiastic about purchasing some scotch. More energetic than I’ve seen him in many years.”
    “That was how long ago?” She stopped petting Lazarus and stood.
    “Little more than an hour ago.”
    “Thank you, Your Majesty. You don’t know where he was going?”
    “I should think to find a safe place to drink his dinner. Although I can’t claim to know him well, I don’t think William passes the evening in the Tenderloin often.”
    Jody patted the Emperor’s shoulder, and he took her hand.
    “I’m so sorry, dear.”
    “Sorry? About what?”
    “When I saw you and Thomas the other night, I noticed. It’s true, isn’t it? Thomas has changed.”
    “No, he’s still a doofus.”
    “I mean he is one of your kind now?”
    “Yes.” She looked up the street. “I was alone,” she said.
    The Emperor knew exactly how she felt. “I told one of his crew from the Safeway, Jody. I’m sorry, I was frightened.”
    “You told the Animals?”
    “The born-again one, yes.”
    “And how did he react?”
    “He was worried for Thomas’s soul.”
    “Yeah, that would be Clint’s reaction. You don’t know if he told the other Animals?”
    “I would guess yes, by now.”
    “Okay, don’t worry, then, Your Highness. It’s okay. Just don’t tell anyone else. Tommy and I are leaving the City just like we promised those police detectives. We just have to get things in order.”
    “And the other-the old vampire?”
    “Yes. Him, too.”
    She turned and strode away, heading into the Tenderloin, her boot heels clacking on the sidewalk as she kept her pace just below a run.
    The Emperor shook his head and rubbed Lazarus behind the ears. “I should have told her about the detectives. I know that, old friend.” There was only so much weakness he could confess to at one time-that, too, a fault. The Emperor resolved to sleep somewhere cold and damp to night, perhaps in the park by theMaritimeMuseum, as penance for his weakness.
    T here was no way she was going to remember his new mobile number. It was five in the morning before Tommy had finished moving all of the furniture, books, and clothes. Now the new loft looked almost exactly like the old loft had looked, except that it didn’t have a working phone line. So Tommy sat on the counter of the old loft, looking at the three bronze statues and waiting for Jody to call.
    Just the three statues left to move: Jody, the old vampire, and the turtle. The old vampire looked fairly natural. He’d been unconscious when he’d been bronzed, but Tommy had the biker sculptors downstairs pose him as if he was in midstep, out for a stroll. Jody was posed with her hand on her hip, her head thrown back as if she’d just tossed her long hair over her shoulder, smiling.
    Tommy turned his head to the side, getting perspective. She didn’t look skanky. What made Abby say the statue was skanky? Sexy, well yes. Jody had been wearing some very low-cut jeans and a crop top when he’d posed her for the electroplating, and the bikers had insisted upon exposing more of her cleavage than was probably decorous, but what could you expect from a couple of guys who specialized in making high-end garden gnomes acting out the Kama Sutra?
    Okay, she looked a little skanky, but he didn’t see how that was a bad thing. He had actually been delighted when she came streaming out of the ear holes to materialize, stark naked, in front of him. If she hadn’t killed him, it would have been the fulfillment of a sexual fantasy he’d nurtured for a long time. (There had been this old TV show he’d watched as a kid, about a beautiful genie who lived in a bottle-well, Tommy had done some serious bottle polishing over that one.) So the Jody statue stayed. But the old vampire, Elijah, that was a different story. There was a real creature in there. A real scary creature. What ever bizarre events had brought them to this spot had been set off by Elijah Ben Sapir. He was a reminder that neither he-Tommy-nor Jody had chosen to be vampires. Neither had chosen to live out the rest of their days in the night. Elijah had taken their choices away from them, and replaced them with a whole new set of scarier, bigger choices. The first of which was how the hell do you deal with the fact that you have