You Suck: A Love Story

some coffee, too. Whole beans. We’re almost out.”
    So I did. And when I caught up with her, she was halfway across the parking lot, headed back toward Ghirardelli Square, and little pieces of safety glass were still shining in her hair and she smiled at me when I caught up and I just couldn’t help myself, because that was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Ever! And I was all, “Countess, I love you.”
    And she put her arm around me and kissed me on the forehead and goes, “Let’s get Tommy.”
    I guess I’ll start feeling my vampyre powers tomorrow night, but right now I feel like a total fucking loser. But I am so going to rule when school starts again.

18 – Nobody Likes a Dead Whore
    Finding her boyfriend tied naked to an upright bed frame, covered in blood, with a dead, blue dominatrix at his feet would be enough to rattle some women’s confidence in the stability of their relationship. Some women might even take it as a sign of trouble. But Jody had been single for a number of years-she’d dated rock musicians and stockbrokers-and was conditioned to unusual bumps on the road of romance, so she simply sighed and kicked the hooker in the ribs-more as a conversation opener than a confirmation that the ho was dead-and said, “So, rough night?”
    “Awk-ward,” Abby sang, peeking in the door, then immediately swinging back into the hallway.
    “I forgot my safety word,” Tommy said.
    Jody nodded. “Well, that had to be embarrassing.”
    “She beat me.”
    “You okay?”
    “Yeah. But it hurt. A lot.” Tommy looked past Jody toward the door. “Hi, Abby!”
    Abby swung around the corner. “Lord Flood,” she said, with a nod and a little grin. Then she looked down at the body, her eyes went wide, and she swung back out into the hall.
    “How’re your sister’s lice?” Tommy said.
    “Shampoo didn’t work.” Abby called, without looking in. “We had to shave her head.”
    “Sorry about that.”
    “It’s okay. She looks kind of cool, in a ‘Make a Wish kid’ kind of way.”
    Jody said. “Abby, why don’t you come in and shut the door? If someone walks by and looks in, it might, oh, I don’t know, freak them out a little.”
    “’Kay,” said Abby. She stepped in and palmed the door shut behind her, as if the clicking of the door latch might actually be the thing that would attract attention.
    “I think I killed her,” Tommy said. “She was beating me, and she wanted me to bite her, so I did. I think I drained her dry.”
    “Well, she’s dead all right.” Jody reached down and tossed the blue hooker’s arm up. It fell back to the floor. “But you didn’t drain her.”
    “I didn’t?”
    “She’d be dust if you did. Heart attack or stroke or something. Looks like most of her blood went on you and the carpet.”
    “Yeah, I sort of tore her throat out and she fell before I could finish.”
    “Well, what did she expect? You were tied up.”
    “You don’t seem that bothered by it. I thought you’d be jealous.”
    “Did you ask her to bring you here and beat you until you snapped and killed her?”
    “Nope.”
    “Did you encourage her to beat you until you snapped and killed her?”
    “Of course not.”
    “And you didn’t get off on her beating you until you snapped and killed her.”
    “Honestly?”
    “You’re naked and chained to a bed frame, and I’m just inches away from both a riding crop and your genitals. I think honesty would be a good policy.”
    “Well, honestly, the killing part was kind of a turn-on.”
    “But not sexual.”
    “No way. It was totally homicidal lust.”
    “Then we’re okay.”
    “Really, you’re not mad?”
    “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
    “I should feel bad about it, I know, but I don’t.”
    “That happens.”
    “Some bitches just need killing,” Abby said, looking briefly at Tommy, then realizing he was naked under all that blood, looking away quickly.
    “There you go,” Jody said. She stepped up and began to undo his restraints. They were double bands of fleece and nylon, with heavy metal shackles locked over them. “What did she buy these for, to handcuff a grizzly bear? Abby, check the body for a key.”
    “Nuh-uh,” Abby said, staring down at the dead blue hooker.
    Jody noticed that the kid was focused on the breasts, which were defying gravity, and apparently death itself, by standing there at complete attention. “Those aren’t real,” Jody said.
    “I knew that.”
    “She was a very mean