Charlaine Harris - Midnight Crossroad

It seemed possible in Midnight.

“Ridiculous,” he muttered.

“What?” said Chuy, across Joe.

“The amount I’ve eaten is ridiculous,” Manfred said. “You’d think I was a starving dog.” Too late, he noticed his half-full plate contrasted with Chuy’s empty one.

Chuy laughed. “I always figure if I only eat here two or three times a week and I’m careful all my other meals, I’m okay,” he said. “And you’d be surprised how many times I have to lift things in the store . . . plus, taking turns with Joe walking the dog, and doing yard work. I keep telling myself I need to start jogging, but Rasta won’t pick up the pace when we’re out.” And Chuy was off and running . . . about the dog.

Once Rasta was the topic of conversation, Manfred didn’t have to say a word. He’d observed that a small percentage of pet owners are simply silly about their pets, especially the owners who don’t have human kids in residence. Part of that silliness lay in assuming other people would find stories about the pet as fascinating as the owner did. But (Manfred had always figured) there were a lot worse things to make false assumptions about.

For example, he found it far more pleasant to think about a little fluffy dog than to wonder what two strangers were doing at Home Cookin. Two lurking strangers. And it was far better to consider Rasta’s history of constipation than the cold hand gripping his own under the table. When Joe turned to ask Chuy a question about a television show they’d watched, Manfred was left alone with his acute anxiety.

He didn’t want to offend the terrifying Lemuel, but he wasn’t used to holding hands with a guy. Manfred liked to think of himself as cool and comfortable with all sexual orientations, but the grip Lemuel had on his fingers was hard to interpret. It was not a caress, but it didn’t seem like a restraint, either.

So Manfred took a sip of his water left-handed and hoped his face wasn’t all weird.

“Manfred,” Fiji said, “do you watch a lot of television?”

She was trying, very kindly, to draw him back into the conversation, since Joe and Chuy had transitioned from the dog’s bowels to an argument about Survivor with Teacher.

“I have one,” Manfred said.

Even Olivia laughed, though Manfred noticed that while he’d been preoccupied with Lemuel, she’d edged her chair out from the table, perhaps so she could rise quickly. She’d also told Joe and Chuy she sided with Teacher on the Survivor issue (whatever it was), and she’d angled her chair to align with Teacher’s, so she could see the men by the door without turning her head too much.

“She has a gun,” Lemuel said in that voice that was audible to Manfred alone.

“I figured,” Manfred said. He was feeling unaccountably tired. Suddenly he figured it out. “You leeching ?”

“I’m sorry, yes.” Lemuel turned his head to look at Manfred. His flaxen hair brushed his collar. “I am a bit unusual.”

“No shit,” Manfred muttered.

Lemuel smiled. “Absolutely none.”

“Don’t they have a bottle of blood here for you? Wouldn’t that help?”

“I can’t tolerate the synthetics. They come up as fast as they go down. I can drink the real stuff in any method of delivery. Energy is just as good.”

“You got enough, now? Think you can let go?”

“Sorry, fellow,” Lemuel whispered, and the cold hand slid away.

Manfred thought, I feel like a pancake that’s been run over by a tank . He wasn’t sure he could get up and walk out of the restaurant. He decided it would be a sound idea to sit right where he was for a few minutes.

“Drink,” said the sepulchral whisper, and Manfred carefully reached for his glass of water. But the white hand interposed a glass of a dark beverage full of ice. Manfred put it to his lips, discovering the glass contained sweet tea, very sweet tea. Normally he would not have been interested, but suddenly that seemed like exactly what he’d been longing for. He drank the whole thing. When he put down his empty glass, he caught sight of Joe’s startled face.

“Thirsty,” he said brusquely.

“I guess so,” Joe said, looking a little puzzled and concerned.

Manfred felt much better after a moment or two.

“Eat,” whispered Lemuel. Though his hands were still a little shaky, Manfred now finished his dinner completely. His plate was as bare as Chuy’s.

“I got my second wind,” he said sociably to Chuy and Joe (though why he had to cover for Lemuel, he couldn’t have expressed in words). “I think I missed lunch, too. I’m going to have to watch that.”

“I wish skipping meals was my problem,” Joe said, patting his gut. “The older I get, the more my metabolism slows down.”

That sparked a discussion about treadmills that engaged the whole table. Manfred was only obliged to look attentive. He wanted to leave, so he could get back to his house and think about what had just happened—decide if he was angry at Lemuel “borrowing” from him, if he was cool with it, or if he should make an “okay for one time but don’t do it again” speech. At the same time, he was sure he needed to sit for a while longer.

Everyone at the table had finished eating now, and only Bobo ordered coffee. Teacher ordered cherry pie, and at Lemuel’s urging Manfred got the coconut pie. Creek brought it to him. She was as pleasant with him as she was with everyone else—no more. But no less, he told himself.

Well, he hadn’t ever imagined it would be easy to make an impression on her, even though he was the only male close to her age in Midnight. A girl as amazing as Creek would know she had plenty of options just down the road.

And that was what flipped him over to the “cool with it” option about the incident with Lemuel. Creek liked Lemuel well enough to call him “Uncle.” So she wouldn’t be disposed to date anyone who publicly freaked out about Lemuel being an energy-sucking vampire.

Manfred was relieved to find a practical reason for doing what he instinctively felt was the right thing. After all, if you live next door to an apex predator, you shouldn’t go around poking him with a stick.

Fiji rose to depart, and a chorus of protests went up. (This group was as clannish as it was disparate, Manfred thought.) “Guys, I have to get home and feed Mr. Snuggly,” she said, and there was a collective groan. She raised her hands, laughing. “Okay, it’s a silly name, but I inherited the name along with the cat,” she said. “I think he’s gonna live forever.”

Bobo, Chuy, and Joe began a mild argument about how long Mildred Loeffler had owned Mr. Snuggly before she passed away. Fiji lingered long enough to chip in some solid information. The vet’s records indicated that Mr. Snuggly had lived with Mildred for a year before her demise, that he had been a kitten when Aunt Mildred had taken him in for his first shots; that set the cat’s age at four years. “So Mr. Snuggly’s in the prime of his life,” she finished, and putting a careful ten dollars by her plate, she left.

There seemed to be no moon that night. The plate glass windows were filled with blackness. “Should I walk back with her?” Manfred asked in a low voice. “Or would that be, you know, sexist?”

“That would be sexist,” Olivia said. She smiled around the table. “But I’ll step outside to watch until she gets to her house.”

Manfred didn’t believe for one minute that Olivia’s real purpose was to ensure Fiji’s safe journey back to her cottage. Fiji was safe, and Olivia knew it. Manfred was sure Olivia was going to the door to examine the two strangers more closely.

What a complicated evening it had turned out to be. “Is every evening here like this?” he asked Lemuel.