Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

"Stands to reason," John said.

"Get one at high noon this time of year, I bet she cooks," said Neal.

"But what about winter? Be like sticking your johnson in a Slurpee."

"It'd be different, that's for sure." He shrugged and sucked down an oyster. Then his eyes bugged and he swallowed fast. "Eyes left, gentlemen," he said. "I mean really left!"

We looked.

"Christ in a coffee shop," John said. "She looks like…she looks just like…"

"…Daryl Hannah," I said. "Oh my god."

And for a moment I thought the tall, willowy blonde peering in through the window really was Daryl Hannah. The resemblance was utterly uncanny. The long, wild hair, those thick, parted lips, that graceful neck, those big, bottomless eyes.

Neal damn near knocked over his scotch.

"She's looking right at us!" he whispered.

She was.

I was loaded enough to shoot her a smile and raise my glass. Neal and John just gawked at her.

"Know what, fellas? I'm not sure she's looking at us," John said. "I think she's looking at you, slugger!" He slapped me on the back. Hard. Scotch spilled. Ice tinkled in the glass.

But he was right. It was me she was looking at. Our eyes held for a moment.

And then she was gone.

John slapped me again, easier this time. "Don't take it too hard, old buddy. You know the babes. One minute you're Mr. Chick Magnet, you're fucking Fabio for a second, and then…"

"Chopped liver," said Neal.

"That's right, chopped liver. Maybe she caught one of your two grey hairs. Thought you were old enough to be her daddy."

"I am old enough to be her daddy."

"Nah," said Neal. "She took one look at our man here and realized he was out of her league. That she's outclassed all the way. Huffed off probably to pout about it."

"No she didn't," said John. He was looking over my shoulder. "Huh?"

"She didn't huff off. She's coming in."

I turned and there were those eyes on me again, directly focused on mine like lasers coming toward me. There was something deliberate and almost predatory about the way she walked. The designer jeans were so tight they looked sewn onto her hips and legs. Long, long legs. Daryl Hannah legs. I get my share I guess but I knew I didn't deserve this. God was either smiling or laughing at me. I didn't know which.

She stopped directly in front of us and her gaze took us all in. "Who's got the balls to buy me a drink?" she said.

"Why does it take balls?" I said. First thing that came to mind. The scotch speaking.

"Because after a couple I might be more than you can handle. When we go back to my place, that is."

I guess we all came pretty close to losing our drinks through our noses on that one.

Bar-tramp , I thought. Either that or a prostitute . Though I'd never seen a whore who looked as good as she did. But when they came onto you that hard, you knew something was wrong. Ordinarily it was an instant turn-off. Not with her, though. Not with some Daryl Hannah look-alike. With this one it went the other way. You just had to play it through. See where it went.

"You sure know how to make an impression, lady," John said. "Thanks. I'll have a Hurricane. Who's buying?"

I was. I introduced her to John and Neal and told her my name. She shook hands like a man, hard and abrupt.

"And you?" I said.

She laughed. "You care about my name? You guys really give a damn about my name? Come on. That's not what you care about."

The smile softened it some but she was still being an asshole. Haughty, arrogant, maybe buzzing on something stronger than a Hurricane — whatever the hell that was. Maybe even crazy. In a bar you got used to seeing them now and then.

She asked what we did for a living. Another turn-off under most circumstances, asking right off the top that way. But we told her. Artist, cameraman, writer. She didn't seem particularly interested or particularly uninterested either. Just seemed to take it in. Normally you tell a woman you're a writer the next question is what do you write. Not with this package. She nodded and drank and pretty soon the first one was gone so I ordered her another.

Her long slim fingers plucked at a piece of Neal's grilled octopus and she swallowed it down. Didn't ask. Just took. Her privilege.

John offered her his barstool. She said she'd stand, thank you. And that was fine with us because leaning on the bar the way she was her breasts were straining one way through the tank top and her butt the other. In those jeans it was a sight to see. She was beautiful.

I didn't like her one bit. But she was beautiful.

Her blonde hair glowed, a luscious fog about her head. She smelled like musk and roses. Her eyes were so damn bright they seemed to blur like neon whenever she moved her head.

Men are from Mars, they say. And women are from Venus. War on the one side, love on the other. Well, sometimes that's simply not the case. Sometimes it's the woman who wants a conquest, sexually speaking. Wants sex the way a man will. Doesn't care to be wined and dined, doesn't want to hold hands in the park and get flowers on Valentine's Day, couldn't care less for kissy-face and all that lovey-dovey bullshit.

She wanted what we wanted. You didn't see it every day. It was intriguing.

"I know what you're thinking," she said to me.

"Huh?"

"I know what you're thinking. You do play the game, don't you? Most of you guys do."

"What game? What am I thinking?"

Her entire face seemed to give off light. "You're thinking, 'is she or isn't she?'"

I just looked at her. I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. "Is she or isn't she what?" John slurred. By now he was piss-drunk. Her gaze scanned us.

"Is she or isn't she dead?"

She reached over for Neal's cocktail fork and no! I thought as she buried the fork into the wide-open palm of her left hand, slamming it through like a ball into a baseball glove and suddenly I could see the tiny pitchfork tines sticking out the other side.

No blood.

She didn't even flinch.

She just kept looking at me. And smiled.

"Fooled you, didn't I. All three of you."

I think we breathed then. I know what we must have looked like, open-mouthed, staring down at her hand while she pulled the fork out again and tossed it on Neal's plate. There were still a couple of oysters there. She held her hand up and turned it, showing us the bloodless punctures. "Fooled us?" Neal said. "Ma'am, that's an understatement."

What you have to realize is that for us this girl was a fucking bombshell, and I don't just mean in the looks department. If anybody in this freaky city were experts on telling the dead from the living we figured it was us, or at least that we were well into the running. And we didn't have a clue — not with her. She was right. She'd fooled us all completely. "Your skin," I said, "your hair…?"

"Diet supplements. Magnesium, Vitamin E and Potassium mostly. Some of us are learning." She sighed. "Okay, boys, who wants to blow this pit stop and get on with it?"

"Wait a minute," I said. "If you're dead, how come you're drinking…whatever the hell it is you're drinking and…?"

"Eating octopus?" Her eyes narrowed. "You believe everything you hear? What? We can't go into bars but you can? We don't like a drink now and then? You buy into all those moronic stories about how we can't eat anything but human flesh? Isn't that the same thing as saying all Irish are drunks, all blacks like watermelon? I'd hoped you guys were a little more evolved than that."

I saw her point. She was whitebread just like us but now that she was dead she was different too, she'd slipped into a new minority group — and one we little understood. So who were we to make judgments about her?

"It's a different society now," I said. "We hear things about you, you hear things about us. I guess the only way any of us is going to get it right is to talk to one another."