Шарлин Харрис - Dead until Dark

"Oh," said Arlene in a hushed voice, as if Bubba could be listening in the broad daylight.

"I do feel safer with Bubba in the woods," I said, which was more or less true.

"Oh, he doesn't stay in the house?" Charlsie asked, clearly a little disappointed.

"God, no!" I said, then mentally apologized to God for taking his name in vain. I was having to do that a lot lately. "No, Bubba stays in the woods at night, watching the house."

"Was that true about the cats?" Arlene looked squeamish.

"He was just joking. Not a great sense of humor, huh?" I was lying through my teeth. I certainly believed Bubba en­joyed a snack of cat blood.

Arlene shook her head, unconvinced. It was time to change the subject. "Did you and Rene have fun on your evening out?" I asked.

"Rene was so good last night, wasn't he?" she said, her cheeks pink.

A much-married woman, blushing. "You tell me." Arlene enjoyed a little ribald teasing.

"Oh, you! What I mean, he was real polite to Bill and even that Bubba."

"Any reason why he wouldn't be?"

"He has kind of a problem with vampires, Sookie." Arlene shook her head. "I know, I do, too," she confessed when I looked at her with raised eyebrows. "But Rene really has some, prejudice. Cindy dated a vampire for a while, and that just made Rene awful upset."

"Cindy okay?" I had a great interest in the health of some­one who'd dated a vamp.

"I haven't seen her," Arlene admitted, "but Rene goes to visit every other week or so. She's doing well, she's back on the right track. She has a job in a hospital cafeteria."

Sam, who'd been standing behind the bar loading the re­frigerator with bottled blood, said, "Maybe Cindy would like to move back home. Lindsey Krause quit the other shift be­cause she's moving to Little Rock."

That certainly focussed our attention. Merlotte's was be­coming seriously understaffed. For some reason, low-level service jobs had dropped in popularity in the last couple of months.

"You interviewed anyone else?" Arlene asked. "I'll have to go through the files," Sam said wearily. I knew that Arlene and I were the only barmaids, waitresses, servers, whatever you wanted to call us, that Sam had hung on to for more then two years. No, that wasn't true; there was Susanne Mitchell, on the other shift. Sam spent lots of time hiring and occasionally firing. "Sookie, would you have a look through the file, see if there's anyone there you know has moved, anyone already got a job, anyone you really rec­ommend? That would save me some time."

"Sure," I said. I remembered Arlene doing the same thing a couple of years ago when Dawn had been hired. We had more ties to the community than Sam, who never seemed to join anything. Sam had been in Bon Temps for six years now, and I had never met anyone who seemed to know about Sam's life prior to his buying the bar here.

I settled down at Sam's desk with the thick file of appli­cations. After a few minutes, I could tell I was really making a difference. I had three piles: moved, employed elsewhere, good material. Then I added a fourth and fifth stack: a pile for people I couldn't work with because I couldn't stand them, and a pile for the dead. The first form on the fifth pile had been filled out by a girl who'd died in a car accident last Christmas, and I felt sorry for her folks all over again when I saw her name at the top of the form. The other application was headed "Maudette Pickens."

Maudette had applied for a job with Sam three months before her death. I guess working at Grabbit Kwik was pretty uninspiring. When I glanced over the filled-in blanks and noticed how poor Maudette's handwriting and spelling had been, it made me feel pitiful all over again. I tried to imagine my brother thinking of having sex with this woman—and filming it—was a worthwhile way to spend his time, and I marvelled at Jason's strange mentality. I hadn't seen him since he'd driven off with Desiree. I hoped he'd gotten home in one piece. That gal was a real handful. I wished he'd settle down with Liz Barrett: she had enough backbone to hold him up, too.

Whenever I thought about my brother lately, it was to worry. If only he hadn't known Maudette and Dawn so well! Lots of men knew them both, apparently, both casually and carnally. They'd both been vampire bitten. Dawn had liked rough sex, and I didn't know Maudette's proclivities. Lots of men got gas and coffee at the Grabbit Kwik, and lots of men came in to get a drink here, too. But only my stupid brother had recorded sex with Dawn and Maudette on film.

I stared at the big plastic cup on Sam's desk, which had been full of iced tea. "The Big Kwencher from Grabbit Kwik" was written in neon orange on the side of the green cup. Sam knew them both, too. Dawn had worked for him, Maudette had applied for a job here.

Sam sure didn't like me dating a vampire. Maybe he didn't like anyone dating a vampire.

Sam walked in just then, and I jumped like I'd been doing something bad. And I had, in my book. Thinking evil of a friend was a bad thing to do.

"Which is the good pile?" he asked, but he gave me a puzzled look.

I handed him a short stack of maybe ten applications. "This gal, Amy Burley," I said, indicating the one on top, "has experience, she's only subbing at the Good Times Bar, and Charlsie used to work with her there. So you could check with Charlsie first."

"Thanks, Sookie. This'll save me some trouble."

I nodded curtly in acknowledgment.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You seem kind of distant today."

I looked at him closely. He looked just like he always did. But his mind was closed to me. How could he do that? The only other mind completely closed to me was Bill's, because of his vampire state. But Sam was sure no vampire.

"Just missing Bill," I said deliberately. Would he lecture me about the evils of dating a vampire?

Sam said, "It's daytime. He couldn't very well be here."

"Of course not," I said stiffly, and was about to add, "He's out of town." Then I asked myself if that was a smart thing to do when I had even a hint of suspicion in my heart about my boss. I left the office so abruptly that Sam stared after me in astonishment.

When I saw Arlene and Sam having a long conversation later that day, their sidelong glances told me clearly that I was the topic. Sam went back to his office looking more worried than ever. But we didn't have any more chitchat the rest of the day.

Going home that evening was hard because I knew I'd be alone until morning. When I'd been alone other evenings, I'd had the reassurance that Bill was just a phone call away. Now he wasn't. I tried to feel good about being guarded once it was dark and Bubba crawled out of whatever hole he'd slept in, but I didn't manage it.

I called Jason, but he wasn't home. I called Merlotte's, thinking he might be there, but Terry Bellefleur answered the phone and said Jason hadn't been in.

I wondered what Sam was doing tonight. I wondered why he never seemed to date much. It wasn't for want of offers, I'd been able to observe many times.

Dawn had been especially aggressive.

That evening I couldn't think of anything that pleased me.

I began wondering if Bubba was the hitman—hitvampire?—Bill had called when he wanted Uncle Bartlett bumped off. I wondered why Bill had chosen such a dim-witted creature to guard me.

Every book I picked up seemed wrong, somehow. Every television show I tried to watch seemed completely ridicu­lous. I tried to read my Time and became incensed at the determination to commit suicide that possessed so many nations. I pitched the magazine across the room.

My mind scrabbled around like a squirrel trying to get out of a cage. It couldn't light on anything or be comfortable anywhere.

When the phone rang, I jumped a foot. "Hello?" I said harshly.