Christopher Moore - You Suck

As Tommy dragged the bronzed vampire down Mission Street, he considered his future. What would he do? He had a lot of time to fill, and after a while, figuring out new ways to jump Jody would only fill up a part of his nights. He was going to have to find a purpose. They had money—cash the vampire had given Jody when he turned her—and what was left of the money from the sale of Elijah's art, but eventually that would run out. Maybe he should get a job. Or become a crime fighter.

That's it, he would use his powers for good. Maybe get an outfit.

After a few blocks Tommy noticed that Elijah's toe, the one that was dragging on the sidewalk, was starting to wear away. The bikers had warned Tommy that the bronze shell was pretty thin. It wouldn't do to unleash a claustrophobic and hungry ancient vampire when you were the guy who had imprisoned him, so Tommy stood the vampire on the corner for a minute while he dug through a trash bin until he found some heavy-duty plastic Big Gulp cups, which he fitted on the vampire's dragging foot as skid protection.

"Ha!" Tommy said. "Thought you had me."

A couple of guys in hip-hop wear walked by as Tommy was fitting the cups on the vampire's feet. Tommy made the mistake of making eye contact and they paused.

"Stole it from a building on Fourth," Tommy said.

The two nodded, as if they were saying, Of course, we were just wondering, and proceeded to move down the sidewalk.

They must sense my superior strength and speed, Tommy thought, so they wouldn't dare mess with me. In fact, the two had confirmed that the white boy in the ghost makeup was crazy—and what would they do with a four-hundred-pound statue anyway?

Tommy figured he'd drag the statue to the Embarcadero and toss it off the pier by the Ferry Building. If there was anyone around, he'd just stand at the rail like he was there with his gay lover, then shove the statue in when no one was looking. He felt enormously sophisticated about the plan. No one would ever think a guy from Indiana was pretending to be gay. That kind of thing just wasn't done. Tommy had known a kid once in high school who had gone up to Chicago to see the musical Rent and was never heard from again. Tommy reckoned he'd been disappeared by the local Kiwanis Club.

When he got to the Embarcadero, which ran all along the waterfront, Tommy was tempted to just chuck Elijah in the Bay right there and call it a night, but he had a plan, so he dragged the vampire that last two blocks to the promenade at the end of Market Street, where the antique streetcars, the cable cars, and the cross-bay ferries all converged in a big paved park and sculpture garden. Here, away from the buildings, the night seemed to open up to his vampire senses, take on a new light. Tommy stopped for moment, stood Elijah by a fountain, and watched heat streaming out of some grates by the streetcar turnaround. Perfect. There was absolutely no one around.

Then the beeping started. Tommy looked at his watch. Sunrise in ten minutes. The night hadn't opened up to him, it had been shutting him down. Ten minutes, and the loft was a good twenty blocks away.

Jody was quickstepping along the alleyway that came out in front of their old loft. She still had twenty minutes until sunrise, but she could see the sky lightening, and twenty minutes was cutting it too close. Tommy would be freaked. She should have taken the cell phone with her. She shouldn't have left him alone with the new minion.

She'd finally found William, passed out in a doorway in Chinatown, with Chet the huge cat sleeping on his chest. They'd have to remember not to leave William with any money from now on, if he was going to be their food source. Otherwise he'd go elsewhere for his alcohol, and that wasn't going to work. He was making his staggering way home on his own. Maybe she'd let him take a shower at the old loft—they weren't going to get their deposit back anyway.

There was still a light on in the loft. Great, Tommy was home. She'd forgotten to get a key for the new place. She was about to step out of the alley when she smelled cigar smoke and heard a man's voice. She stopped and peeked around the corner.

There was a brown Ford sedan parked across the street from their old loft, and in it sat two middle-aged men. Cavuto and Rivera, the homicide detectives that she'd made a deal with the night they'd blown up Elijah's yacht. They'd moved just in time, but then, maybe not quite. She couldn't get to the new place either. It was only a half a block away, and she'd have to cross in the open. And even then, what if it was locked?

She jumped four feet straight up when the alarm on her watch went off.

It was toward the end of their second shift after returning to the Safeway that the Animals sobered up. Lash was sitting by himself in the wide backseat of the Hummer limo, his head cradled in his hands, hoping desperately that the despair and self-loathing he was feeling was only the effect of a hangover, instead of what it really was, which was a big flaming enema of reality. The reality was, they had spent more than a half a million dollars on a blue hooker. He let the hugeness of it roll around in his head, and looked up at the other Animals, who were sitting around the perimeter of the limo, similarly posed, trying not to make eye contact with one another. They'd had nearly two semi trucks of stock to put up that night, and they'd known it was coming because they'd ordered it to make up for the time they'd been away and Clint had let the shelves get low. So they'd sobered up, put their heads down, and thrown stock like the Animals that they were. Now it was getting close to dawn and it was dawning on all of them that they might have severely fucked up.

Lash risked a sideways glance at Blue, who was sitting between Barry and Troy Lee. She'd taken Lash's apartment on Northpoint, and made him sleep on the couch at Troy Lee's, where there were about seven hundred Chinese family members, including Troy's grandmother, who, every time she passed through the room during the day, when Lash was trying to sleep, would screech, "What's up, my nigga!" and try to get him to wake up and give her a pound or a high five.

Lash had been explaining to her that it's impolite to refer to an African American as a nigga, unless one was another African-American, when Troy Lee came in and said, "She only speaks Cantonese."

"She does not. She keeps coming in and saying, 'What's up, my nigga? "

"Oh yeah. She does that to me, too. Did you give her a pound?"

"No, I didn't give her a pound, motherfucker. She called me a nigga."

"Well, she's not going to quit unless you give her a pound. It's just the way she rolls."

"That's some bullshit, Troy."

"It's her couch."

Lash, exhausted and already hungover, gave the wizened old woman a pound.

Granny turned to Troy Lee. "What's up, my nigga!" She offered and received a pound from her grandson.

"That shit is not the same!" Lash said.

"Get some sleep. We have a big load tonight."

Now half a million dollars was gone. His apartment was gone. The limo was costing them a thousand dollars a day. Lash looked out the blackout windows at the moving patchwork of shadows thrown by the streetlights, then turned to Blue.

"Blue," he said. "We have to get rid of the limo."

Everyone looked up, shocked. No one had said anything to her since they'd finished stocking. They'd brought her coffee and juice, but no one had said anything.

Blue looked at him. "Get me what I want." Not a hint of malice, not even a demand, really, just a statement of fact. "Okay," Lash said. Then to the driver he said, "Take a right up here. Head back to that building where we went last night."

Lash crawled over the divider into the front passenger seat. He couldn't see shit out the blackened windows. They'd only gone about three blocks into the SOMA district when he saw someone running. Running way, way too fast for a jogger. Running—like he was on fire—running.