"I didn't know that," said a woman's voice.
Tommy looked up from the magazine to see the new cashier, Mara, pulling a chair out from the table. She was tall and a little thin, but large-breasted: a blue-eyed blonde of about twenty. Tommy had been expecting one of the box boys and he stared at her for a second while he changed gears. "Oh, hi. I'm Tom Flood. I'm on the night crew."
"I've seen you," she said. "I'm Mara. I'm new."
Tommy smiled. "Nice to meet you. I came in a little early to catch up on some paperwork."
"Reader's Digest?" She raised an eyebrow.
"Oh, this? No, I don't normally read it. I just spotted this article on bats and decided to check it out. They're our wild and wacky winged friends, you know?" He looked at the page as if to confirm his interest. "For instance, did you know that the vampire bat is the only mammal that has been successfully frozen and thawed out alive?"
"I'm sorry, bats give me the creeps."
"Me too," Tommy said, throwing the magazine aside. "Do you read?"
"I've been reading the Beats. I just moved here and I want to get a feeling for the City's literature."
"You're kidding. I've only been here a few months myself. It's a great city."
"I haven't had a chance to look around much. Moving and everything. I left a bad situation back home and I've been trying to adjust."
She didn't look at him when she talked. Tommy assumed at first that it was because she found him disgusting, but after studying her he realized that she was just shy.
"Have you been to North Beach? The Beats all lived there in the fifties."
"No, I don't know my way around yet."
"Oh, you have to go to City Lights Books, and Enrico's. And the bars up there all have pictures of Kerouac and Ginsberg on the walls. You can almost hear the jazz playing."
Mara finally looked up at him and smiled. "You're interested in the Beats?" Her eyes were wide, bright, and crystal-blue. He liked her.
"I'm a writer," Tommy said. It was his turn to look away. "I mean, I want to be a writer. I used to live in Chinatown, it's right next to North Beach."
"Maybe you could give me directions to some of the hot spots."
"I could show you," Tommy said. As soon as he said it he wanted to retract the offer. Jody would kill him.
"That would be wonderful, if you wouldn't mind. I don't know anyone in the City except the other cashiers, and they all have home lives."
Tommy was confused. The manager had said that she had recently lost a child. He assumed that she was married. He didn't want it to appear that he was trying to make a move on her. He didn't really want to make a move on her. But if he were still single, unattached…
No, Jody wouldn't understand. Having never had a girlfriend before, he'd never been tempted to stray. He had no idea how to deal with it. He said, "I could show you and your husband around a little and the two of you could have a night on the town."
"I'm divorced," Mara said. "I wasn't married very long."
"I'm sorry," Tommy said.
Mara shook her head as if to dismiss his sympathy. "It's a short story. I got pregnant and we got married. The baby died and he left." She said it without feeling, as if she had distanced herself emotionally from the experience — as if it had happened to someone else. "I'm trying to make a new start." She checked her watch. "I'd better get back up front. I'll see you."
She stood and started to leave the room.
"Mara," Tommy called and she turned. "I'd love to show you around if you'd like."
"I'd like that. Thanks. I'm working days for the rest of the week."
"No problem," Tommy said. "How about tomorrow night? I don't have a car, but we can meet in North Beach at Enrico's if you want."
"Write down the address." She took a slip of paper and a pen from her purse and handed it to him. He scribbled the address and handed it back to her.
"What time?" she asked.
"Seven, I guess."
"Seven it is," she said, and left the breakroom.
Tommy thought: I'm a dead man.
Jody turned in front of the mirror, admiring the way the LED fit. It was cut down to the small of her back and had a neckline that plunged to the sternum, but was held together at her cleavage with a transparent black mesh. The saleswoman stood beside her, frowning, holding larger sizes of the same dress.
"Are you sure you don't want to try the five, dear?"
Jody said, "No, this one is fine. I'll need some sheer black nylons to go with it."
The saleswoman fought down a grimace and managed a professional smile. "And do you have shoes to match?"
"Suggestions?" Jody asked, not looking away from her reflection. She thought, I wouldn't have been caught dead in something like this a few months ago. Oh hell, I'm caught dead in everything now.
Jody laughed at the thought and the saleswoman took it personally and dropped her polite smile. An edge of disgust in her voice, she said, "I suppose you could complete the look with a pair of Italian fuck-me pumps and some maroon lipstick."
Jody turned to the dowdy woman and gave her a knowing smile. "You've done this before, haven't you?"
After a visit to the shoe department, Jody found herself at the cosmetics counter where an ebullient gay man talked her into "doing her colors" on the computer. He stared at the screen in disbelief.
"Oh my goodness. This is exciting."
"What?" Jody said impatiently. She just wanted to buy some lipstick and get out. She'd satisfied her shopping Jones by reducing the woman in evening wear to tears.
"You're my first winter," said Maurice. (His name was Maurice; it said so on his badge.) "You know, I've done a thousand autumns, and I get springs out the yin-yang, but a winter… We are going to have fun!"
Maurice began piling samples of eye shadow, lipstick, mascara, and powder on the counter next to the winter color palette. He opened a tube of mascara and held it next to Jody's face. "This one's called Elm Blight, it approximates the color of dead trees in the snow. It complements your eyes wonderfully. Go ahead, dear, try it."
While Jody brushed the mascara onto her lashes, using the magnifying mirror on the counter, Maurice read from the Winter Woman's profile.
"'The Winter Woman is as wild as a blizzard, as fresh as new snow. While some see her as cold, she has a fiery heart under that ice-queen exterior. She likes the stark simplicity of Japanese art and the daring complexity of Russian literature. She prefers sharp to flowing lines, brooding to pouting, and rock and roll to country and western. Her drink is vodka, her car is German, her analgesic is Advil. The Winter Woman likes her men weak and her coffee strong. She is prone to anemia, hysteria, and suicide. " Maurice stepped back from the counter and took a deep bow, as if he had just finished a dramatic reading.
Jody looked up from the mirror and blinked, the lashes on her right eye describing a starlike Clockwork Orange pattern against her pale skin. "They can tell all of that from my coloring?"
Maurice nodded and brandished a sable brush. "Here, dear, let's try some of this blush to bring up those cheekbones. It's called American Rust, it emulates the color of a 63 Rambler that has been driven on salted roads. Very winter."
Jody leaned on the counter to allow Maurice access to her cheeks.
A half hour later she looked in the mirror, rotated now to the non-magnified side, and pursed her lips. For the first time she really looked like a vampire.
"I wish we had a camera," Maurice gushed. "You are a winter masterpiece." He handed her a small bag filled with cosmetics. "That will be three hundred dollars."
Jody paid him. "Is there somewhere I can change? I'd like to see how I look with my new outfit."
Maurice pointed across the store. "There's a changing room over there. And don't forget your free gift, dear, the Needless Notions Lotion Collection, a fifty-dollar value." Maurice held up a plastic faux-Gucci gym bag full of bottles.
"Thanks." Jody took the bag and sulked off toward the changing room. Halfway
across the store she picked up the sound of the dowdy saleswoman from evening wear and turned to see her talking to Maurice. Jody focused and could hear what they were saying over the crowd and Christmas Muzak.
"How did it go?" asked the woman.
Maurice grinned. "She went away looking like a Donner Party Barbie."
The woman and Maurice exchanged a gleeful high five.
Bitches, Jody thought.
Chapter 26
At the End of the Night…
The Emperor worked a wooden match around the end of a Cuban cigar, drawing and checking until the tip glowed like revolution.
"I don't agree with their ideology," said the Emperor, "but we must give the Marxists their due — they roll a fine cigar."
Bummer snorted and growled at the cigar, then shook himself violently, spraying the Emperor and Lazarus with a fine wet mist.
The Emperor scratched the Boston terrier behind the ears. "Settle down, little one, you needed a bath. If we vanquish our enemy, it will be through gallantry and courage, not the stench of our persons."
Shortly after sunset a member of the yacht club had given the Emperor the cigar and had invited him to use the club showers. Much to the chagrin of the club custodian, the Emperor shared his shower with Bummer and Lazarus, who left the drain hopelessly clogged with the fluff, stuff, and filth such as heroes are made of. Now they were passing the evening on the same dock on which they had slept, the Emperor savoring his cigar while the troops stood watch.
"Where do we go from here? Must we wait for the fiend to kill again before we pick up the trail?"
Bummer considered the questions, working the words over in his doggy brain looking for a «food» word. Not finding it, he began to lick his balls to remove the annoying odor of deodorant soap. Once he achieved the desired balance (of both his ends smelling roughly the same), he padded around the dock marking the mooring posts against seabound invaders. With the borders of the realm firmly established, he went in search of something dead to roll in to remove the last evidence of the shower. The right smell was near, but it was coming in off the water.
Bummer went toward the smell until he stood at the end of the dock. He saw a small white cloud bubbling out over the gunwale of a yacht moored a hundred yards away. Bummer barked to let the cloud know to stay away.
"Settle down, little one," said the Emperor. Lazarus shook some water out of his ears and joined Bummer at the end of the dock. The cloud was halfway between the yacht and the dock, pulsating and bubbling as it moved across the water toward them. Lazarus lowered his head and growled. Bummer added a high whine to the harmony.
"What is it, men?" the Emperor asked. He put his cigar out on the sole of his shoe and secured the remains in his breast pocket before limping, stiff from sitting, to the end of the dock.
The cloud was almost to the dock. Lazarus bared his teeth and snarled at it. Bummer backed away from the edge of the dock, not sure whether to bolt or stand his ground.
The Emperor looked out over the water and saw the cloud. It was not wispy at the edges, but sharply defined, more like a solid mass of gel than water vapor. "It's just a bit of fog, men, don't…"
He spotted a face forming in the cloud that changed as he watched to the shape of a giant hand, then bubbled into the head of a dog.
"Although weather is not my specialty, I would venture to guess that that is no ordinary fog bank."
The cloud undulated into the shape of a huge viper that reared up, twenty feet over the water, as if preparing to strike. Bummer and Lazarus let go with a fusillade of barking.
"Gents, let us away to the showers. I've left my sword by the sink." The Emperor turned and ran down the dock, Bummer and Lazarus close at his heels. When he reached the clubhouse he turned to see the cloud creeping over the lip of the dock. He stood, watching transfixed, as the cloud began to condense into the solid form of a tall, dark man.
The Animals began drifting into the store around midnight, and to Tommy's delight they all seemed at least as hung over as he was. Drew, tall, gaunt, and deadly earnest, had them sit on the register counters and wait for his medical diagnosis. He walked from man to man, looking at their tongues and the whites of their eyes. Then he walked toward the office and seemed to lose himself in concentration. After a moment he went into the office and came back with the truck manifest.
Drew noted the number of cases, then nodded to himself and removed a bottle of pills from his shirt pocket and handed it to Tommy. "Take one and pass it down. Who drank the tequila?"
Simon, who had pulled his black Stetson over his eyes, raised his hand with a slight moan.
"You take two, Simon. They're Valium number fives."
"Housewife heroin," said Simon.
Drew announced, "Everyone drink a quart of Gatorade, a slug of Pepto, three aspirin, some B vitamins, and two Vivarin."
Barry, the balding scuba diver, said, "I don't trust that over-the-counter stuff."
"I'm not finished," Drew said. From his shirt pocket he pulled an aluminum cigar tube, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it into his hand. A long, yellow paper cone slid out. He held it out to Tommy. It smelled like a cross between a skunk and a eucalyptus cough drop. Tommy raised an eyebrow to Drew. "What is it?"
"Don't worry about it. It's recommended by the Jamaican Medical Association. Anybody got a light?"
Simon pitched his Zippo to Drew, who handed it to Tommy.
Tommy hesitated before lighting the joint and looked at Drew. "This is just pot, right? This isn't some weird designer kill-the-family-with-a-chain-saw-and-choke-to-death-on-your-own-vomit drug, right?"
"Not if used as directed," Drew said.
"Oh. Okay." Tommy sparked the Zippo, lit the joint, and took a deep hit. Holding in the smoke — his eyes watering, his face scrunched in gargoyle determination, his limbs contorted as if he had contracted a case of the instant creeping geeks — he offered the joint to Lash, the black business major.
There was a thump on the front door, followed by an urgent pounding that rattled the windows. Tommy dropped the joint and coughed, expelling a blast of smoke and spittle in Lash's face. The Animals shouted and turned, not so much startled by the noise, but tortured by the assault on their collective hangover.
Outside the double automatic doors the Emperor pounded on the frame with his wooden sword. The dogs jumped around his feet barking and leaping as if they had treed a raccoon on the roof of the store.
Tommy, still gasping for breath, dug into his pocket for the store keys and made his way to the door. "It's okay. I know him."
"Everybody knows him," Simon said. "Crazy old fuck."
Tommy turned the key and pulled the doors open. The Emperor fell into the store. Bummer and Lazarus leaped over their master and disappeared down an aisle.
The Emperor thrashed around on the floor and Tommy had to step back to keep from having his shins whacked by the wooden sword.
"Calm down," Tommy said. "You're okay."
The Emperor climbed to his feet and grabbed Tommy by the shoulders. "We have to marshal our forces. The monster is at hand. Quickly now!"
Tommy looked back at the Animals and grinned. "He's okay, really." Then, to the Emperor, "Just slow down, okay. Can I get you something to eat?"
"There's no time for that. We must take the battle to him."
Simon called, "Maybe Drew has something to mellow him out." Drew had recovered the joint and was in the process of relighting it.
Tommy closed and locked the door, then took the Emperor by the arm and led him toward the office. "See, Your Majesty, you're inside now. You're safe. Now let's go sit down and see if we can sort this out."
"Locked doors won't stop him. He can take the form of mist and pass through the smallest crack." The Emperor addressed the Animals. "Arm yourself, while there is still time."
"Who?" Asked Lash. "Who's he talking about?"
Tommy cleared his throat. "The Emperor thinks that there's a vampire stalking the City."
; "You're shittin' me," Barry said.
"I've just seen him," the Emperor said, "at the marina. He changed from a cloud of vapor to human form as I watched. He's not far behind me, either."
Tommy patted the old man's arm. "Don't be silly, Your Highness. Even if there were vampires, they can't turn into vapor."
"But I saw it."
"Look!" Tommy said. "You saw something else. I know for a fact that vampires can't change into vapor."
"You know that for a fact?" Simon drawled.
Tommy looked at Simon, expecting to see the usual grin, but Simon was waiting for an answer.
Tommy shook his head. "I'm trying to get things under control here, Simon. You want to give me a break?"
"How do you know?" Simon insisted.
"It was in a book I was reading. You remember, Simon, you read that one too."
Simon looked as if he had just been threatened, which he had. "Yeah, right," he said, pushing his Stetson back down over his eyes and leaning back on the register. "Well, you ought to just call the loony-bin boys for your friend there."
"I'll take care of him," Tommy said. "You guys get started on the truck." He opened the office door and nudged the Emperor toward it.
"What about the men?" asked the Emperor.
"They're safe. Come on in and tell me about it."
"But the monster?"
"If he wanted to kill me, I'd be dead already." Tommy shut the office door behind them.
Big hair, Jody thought. Big hair is the way to go with this outfit. After all these years of trying to tame my hair, all I had to do was dress like an upscale hooker and I would have been fine.
She was walking up Geary Street, her fake Gucci bag of free cosmetics still in hand. There was a new club down here somewhere and she needed to dance, or at least show off a little.
A panhandler wearing a cardboard sign that read, "I am Unemployed and Illiterate (a friend wrote this for me)," stopped her and tried to sell her a free weekly newspaper.
Jody said, "I can pick that up anywhere. It's free."
"It is?"
"Yes. They give it away in every store and cafe in town."
"I wondered why they were laying out there for the taking."
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