You Suck: A Love Story

“why don’t you give him to a shelter or something?”
    “Then how am I supposed to make a living?”
    “You could print up a sign that says ‘I’m poor and I lost my huge cat’? That would work on me.”
    “You may not be the best sample,” said the cat guy.
    “Look,” Tommy said, standing now and digging into his pocket. “I’ll buy the cat. I’ll give you, uh, forty-”
    The cat guy shook his head.
    “Sixty-”
    Furious head shaking…
    Tommy untangled bills from a wad he’d pulled out of his pocket, “One hundred-”
    “No.”
    “And thirty…two-”
    “No.”
    “And thirty-seven cents.”
    “No.”
    “And a paper clip.”
    “No.”
    “That’s a great offer,” Tommy insisted. “That’s like four bucks a pound!”
    “No.”
    “Well screw you, then,” Tommy said. “I don’t feel sorry for you and your huge cat.”
    “You can’t have your dollar back.”
    “Fine!” Tommy said.
    “Fine!” said the cat guy.
    Tommy took Jody by the arm and started to walk away. “That’s a huge cat,” he said.
    “Why were you trying to buy it? We’re not supposed to have pets in the loft.”
    “Duh,” Tommy said. “Dinner.”
    “Yuck.”
    “It’s a stopgap,” Tommy said. “You know that the Masai of Kenya drink the blood of their cattle with no apparent ill effect to the cow.”
    “Well, I’m sure it violates our lease if we get a cow.”
    “That’s it.”
    “What’s it?”
    “A lease.”
    Tommy swung her around and brought her back to the cat guy.
    “I want to rent the cat,” Tommy said. “You could use a break and I want to show the huge cat to my aunt who is an invalid and can’t come down here.”
    “No.”
    “One night. One hundred and thirty-two dollars and thirty-seven cents.”
    The cat guy raised an eyebrow, the grime over that eye cracked a little. “One fifty.”
    “I don’t have one fifty, you know that.”
    “Then I want to see the redhead’s hooters.”
    Tommy looked at Jody, then back at the cat guy, then back at Jody.
    “No,” Jody said calmly.
    “No,” Tommy said indignantly. “How dare you suggest it?”
    “One hooter,” countered the cat guy.
    Tommy looked at Jody. She gave him the wide, green-eyed expression that she would have described as I will slap you so far into next week that it will take a team of surgeons just to get Wednesday out of your ass.
    “No way,” Tommy said. “The redhead’s hooters are not on the table.” He grinned, looked back at Jody, then looked away, really fast.
    The cat guy shrugged. “I’ll need some kind of security deposit, like your driver’s license-”
    “Sure,” Tommy said.
    “And a credit card.”
    “No,” Jody said, pulling her jacket closed and zipping it up to her neck.
    “Nothing kinky,” said the cat guy. “I’ll know.”
    “Going to show him to my aunt, and I’ll have him back tomorrow, this time.”
    “Deal,” said the cat guy. “His name is Chet.”
    Y ou first,” Tommy said. They stood in the great room of their loft on either side of the futon, where the huge cat, a crossbreed between a Persian, a dust mop, and possibly a water buffalo, was actively shedding. Tommy had decided that he was going to be very cool about the whole blood-drinking thing,
    despite the fact that he was so amped he felt as if he could run up and down the walls. In fact, he wasn’t sure that he couldn’t run up and down the walls, that was part of what was freaking him out. Still, since coming toSan Francisco a couple of months ago, he had spent entirely too much time overreacting, and he wasn’t going to do it now-not in front of his girlfriend. Not at all, if he could help it.
    “You should go first,” Jody said. “You’ve never fed before.”
    “But you gave the old vampire some of your blood,” Tommy said. “You need it.” It was true, she had given the vampire her blood to help heal him from the damage Tommy and his friends had caused by blowing up his yacht and so forth, but he hoped she would say no again.
    “No, no, no, after you,” Jody said, with a very bad French accent. “I insist.”
    “Well, if you insist.”
    Tommy leapt to the futon and bent over the huge cat. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to go about this, but he could see the healthy red life aura around Chet, and he could hear his little kitty heart pounding. There was a crackling noise inside of his head, like someone was popping bubble wrap in his ear canal, and then there was pressure on the roof of his