Part 16 (1/2)

”Why? She's my girlfriend. I wouldn't hurt her.”

”She's my BFF,” said Jared. ”He's the one who can't be trusted.”

”I'm taking her with me. I'm not going out there without someone watching my back. Haven't you ever seen a horror movie? When you split up and go off by yourself, that's when the monster gets you.”

”I thought in this movie you were the monster,” Foo said.

”Only if you don't do what I say,” Tommy said, a little surprised to hear himself say it. ”Wake her up, Foo.”

JODY.

The last thing she remembered before burning up were the orange socks. And here they were again, fluorescent orange, highway safety orange socks, at the base of a tiny, blood-encrusted man who was fussing about at some sort of workbench.

”Well, don't you look yummy,” she said, and she was surprised at the sound of her own voice: dry, weak, and ancient.

The little man turned, startled at first, but then he composed himself, bowed, and said something in j.a.panese. Then, ”Sorry,” in English.

”It's okay,” she said. ”This isn't the first time I've woken up in a strange man's apartment where I can't remember how I got there.” This was, however, the first time she remembered where she had been on fire at the end of the night. Before it had gone quite that far, the girls she worked with held a lunchtime intervention in which each told her, frankly and sincerely, as people who loved her, that she was a drunken s.l.u.t who took all the hot guys at the TGIF bar crawl every week and she needed to knock it the f.u.c.k off. So she did.

Now, as in those days, she was disoriented, but unlike those days, it didn't even occur to her to be afraid.

The little j.a.panese man bowed again, then took a square-pointed knife from his workbench and approached her shyly, his head down, saying something that sounded very much like an apology. Jody held up her hand to wave him off, say, ”Hey, back off there, cowboy,” but when she saw her hand, an ash-white desiccated claw, the words caught in her throat. The little man paused just the same.

Her arms, her legs? She pulled up the kimono-her stomach, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s-she was shrunken, like a mummy. The effort exhausted her and she fell back into the pillow.

The little man shuffled forward and held his hand up. There was a bandage on his thumb. She watched as he raised his hand, pulled off the bandage, and put the point of the knife to the wound that was already there. She caught his knife hand and ever so gently, pushed it down.

”No,” she said, shaking her head. ”No.”

She couldn't imagine what her face might look like. The ends of her hair were like brittle red straw. What must she have looked like before he had done this, done this too much, she could see.

”No.”

With him close, she could smell the blood on him. It wasn't human. Pig. It smelled of pig, although she didn't know how she might know that. When she had been at her best she would have smelled blood on someone just walking by on the sidewalk. It wasn't only her strength that was gone, her senses were nearly as dull as when she had been human.

The little man waited. He had bowed, but did not rise up again. Wait, he held his head aside, his throat open. He was bending down so she could drink. Knowing what she was, he was giving himself to her. She touched his cheek with the back of her hand and when he looked she shook her head. ”No. Thank you. No.”

He stood, looked at her, waited. She smelled the dried blood on the back of her hand, tasted it. She had tasted it before. She felt something tacky in the corner of her mouth-yes, it was the pig blood. The hunger wrenched through her, but she fought it down. He had fed her his own blood, obviously, but also pig's blood. How long? How far had he brought her?

She gestured for him to bring her paper and something to write with. He brought her a sketch pad and a broad square carpenter's pencil. She drew a map of Union Square, then drew a crude figure of a woman and wrote down numbers, many numbers, her sizes. What about money? Rivera would have her things from the room, but she had hidden most of the money in another spot. From the brick-work in the apartment, the window frames, the angle of streetlights coming down from above, she guessed she was in a bas.e.m.e.nt apartment right near where she'd been running on Jackson Street. Nowhere else in the City looked like this, was this old. She pointed to herself and the little man and then to the map.

He took it from her and drew an X, X, then quickly drew a stick version of the Transamerica Pyramid. Yes. They were on Jackson Street. She wrote a ” then quickly drew a stick version of the Transamerica Pyramid. Yes. They were on Jackson Street. She wrote a ”$” where she'd hidden the money, then scratched it out. It was hidden in a locked electrical junction box high on a roof, where she had been able to climb easily, two floors above the highest fire escape. This frail little guy would never get there.

The little man smiled and nodded, pointing to the dollar sign. He went to his workbench, opened a wooden box, and held up a handful of bills. ”Yes,” he said.

”Okay, then, I guess you're buying me an outfit.”

”Yes,” he said.

She made a drinking gesture, then nodded. He nodded and held up the knife again.

”No, you can't afford it. Animal.” She thought about making a piggy sound, but wasn't sure that might not give him the wrong idea, so she drew a stickman on the sketch pad, then Xed it out and drew a first-grade stick piggy, a stick sheep, and a Jesus fish. He nodded.

”Yes,” he said.

”If you bring me a Christian petting zoo I'm going to be disappointed, Mr.-uh-” Well, this was embarra.s.sing. ”Well, you're not the first guy I've ever woken up with whose name I don't remember.” Then she stopped herself and patted his arm. ”I'm sounding really s.l.u.tty, I know, but the truth is I used to be afraid to sleep alone.” She looked around the little apartment, at the meticulously arranged tools on the workbench, the one pair of little shoes, and the white silk kimono he had wrapped her in.

”Thank you,” she said.

”Thank you,” he said.

”My name is Jody,” she said, pointing to herself. She pointed to him, wondering if that might not be rude in his culture. But he had already seen her nude and burned up, so perhaps they were past formality. He seemed okay with it.

”Okata,” he said.

”Okata,” she said.

”Yes,” he said, with a big smile.

His gums were receded, which made him look like he had big horse teeth, but then Jody touched her tongue to her fangs, which it seemed were not retracting in her new, dried-up state, and she realized that she should probably be less judgmental.

”Go, okay?” She pointed to the sketch pad.

”Okay,” he said. He gathered up his things, put on his stupid hat, and was ready to leave, when she called to him.

”Okata?”

”Yes.”

She made a face-was.h.i.+ng gesture and pointed to him. He went to the little mirror over the sink, looked at himself covered with blood, and laughed, his eyes crinkled into high smiles themselves. He looked over his shoulder at her, laughed again, then scrubbed his face with a cloth until he was clean and went to the door.

”Jody,” he said. He pointed to the stairs outside. ”No. Okay?”

”Okay,” she said.

When he was gone, she crawled from the futon and stumbled from there to the workbench, where she rested before trying to move farther, to look at Okata's work. Wood block prints, some finished, some with only two or three of the colors on them, proofs perhaps. They were a series, the progression of a black, skeletal monster against a yellow futon, then the gradual filling in of the figure. The care, wrapping her in the kimono, feeding her his blood. The last print was still in the sketch stage. He must have been working on it when she awoke. A sketch on thin rice paper had been glued to the wood block and he was carving away the material for the outline-the black ink in the other prints. They were beautiful, and precise, and simple, and sad. She felt a tear rise and turned so as not to drip blood on the print.

How would she tell him? Would she point at the first sketch, the one where the figure looked like a medieval woodcut of Death himself, and point to his frail chest?

”The first thing I noticed when I saw you was the life aura around you, and it was black. That's why I wouldn't let you give me your blood, Okata. You are dying.”

”Okay,” he would say. ”Thank you,” he would say, with his newly found grin.

19.