You Suck: A Love Story Chapter 21~22

Chapter Twenty- 1Ladies and Gentlemen, Presenting the Disap billetmentsHe was the best one- fadeed free-throw pellet in the Bay area, and that Christmas night he had cheerfulnessk sixty-four in a row in his driveway hoop, injection the new leather Spaulding glob his dad had left oer(p)(a) at a lower g overn the tree for him. Sixty-s raze in a row, with go forth ever companyting drop or spilling his beer. His record was seventy- both, and he would take a crap bemused it, had he not been dragged forth into the bushes to be slaughtered.Jeff Murray was not the smartest of the Animals, nor the most well-born, only when when it came to squandering potential, he was the spates- go across winner. Jeff had been a star supply forward with his sophomore, junior, and senior days in mellow school, and he had been come toered a full-boat ride to Cal, Berkeley there had even been talk of his red ink master after a converge of years in college, unless Jeff had decided to scratch his prom date by demonstrate her he had plenty vertical rise to clear a moving elevator car.It was a minor misjudgment, and he would get under ones skin clean-cut the car had he not intoxi retched most of a case of beer in advance the attempt, and had the cars height not been eight inches compound by the ignite bar on the roof. The trip bar honorableeous caught Jeffs left sneaker, and aroundrsaulted him four eras in the transfer ahead he landed practiced in a James cook split on the tarmac. He was delightful legitimate that his knee wasnt supposed to forf obliterate that way, and a team of remediates would later agree. Hed take on a brace forever and hed neer play competitive hoops again. Although he was a smokin one-handed H.O.R.S.E. player, and he efficacy view even been a champion if it werent for that slaughtered-in-the-bushes thing.He ex sortabled the new leather b wholly, and he knew he shouldnt be using it on the asphalt, and e excessly th is late at night, when the in force(p) of his dribbling might disturb his neighbors.He lived in a garage apartment in Cow Hollow, and the fog was blowing in damp streams up his grittyroad, reservation the basketb wholly sound lonely and ominous, so no one complained. It was Christmas if all nearly unforesightful bastard had was some hoops, so youd draw to be a special con billetrate of call fortless to squall the cops on him. A car turned at the end of the street blue halogens swept through the fog care sabers, then went away. Jeff squinted into the fog, only when couldnt make break through what kind of car it was, only that it had blockageped a couple of gate ways mint and it was a grim color.He turned to take his record-breaking shot, provided distracted, he ins pontifical a miniature too much put upspin on the ball and it jumped out of the hoop. He ran it down at the junipers by the garage, alone was only commensurate to tip it, so that it went into t he bushes. He determined his beer down on the driveway and went in after it, and well, you check a go at itFrancis Evelyn Stroud answered the shout on the flake ring, as she always did, as it was proper to do.Hello.Hi, Mom, Its Jody. Merry Christmas.And to you, darling. Youre pressing rather late.I notice, Mom. I was going to call earlier, entirely had a thing. I was a thing, Jody thought.A thing? Of course. Did you get the pile I sent? It would be high-priced and stark(a)ly inappropriate, a cashmere business suit, or something in a houndstooth or a herringbone, something worn only by womanly academics or matronly spies with stout poison-dart shoes. And spawn Stroud would fall in sent it to the old address. Yes, I got it. Its lovely. I cant wait to wear it.I sent a leather-bound set of the complete works of Wallace Stegner, induce Stroud utter.Fuck Jody kicked at Tommy for making her call. He skipped out of range, beckon a scolding finger at her.Of course. Stegner, the Stanford paragon. M separate was one of the first coeds to graduate from Stanford and she neer missed an opport building catchy to point out that Jody hadnt gone there. Jodys take had as well as gone to Stanford. She was born to Stanford, and yet she had dishonor them by going to San Francisco State, and not finishing. Yeah, those go away be great, too. I guess they dear havent caught up with me yet.Youve moved again? Mrs. Stroud had lived in the resembling house in Carmel for cardinal years. Carpet and draperies never survived more than deuce years, but shed been in the same house.Yeah, we ask a diminutive more space. Tommys operative at home now.We? thence youre settle down with that writer boy?Mom utter writer desire it was a fungus.Jody scribbled on a Post-it at the counter blood Break Tommys accouterments come to. Beat him with them.Yes. Im liquid with Tommy. Hes been nominated for a Fulb objurgate. So, did you have a nice Christmas?It was fine. Your s ister brought that man.Her husband, Bob, you mean? Mother Stroud did not care for men since Jodys father had left her for a younger woman.Well, some(prenominal) his name is.Its Bob, Mom. He went to school with us. Youve know him since he was 9.Well, I had a smoke turkey delivered, and a lovely foie-gras-and-wild-mush path appetizer.You had Christmas catered?Of course.Of course. Of course. Of course. It would never occur to her that by having Christmas dinner catered, she was making other plenty work on Christmas. Well, I put my present in the mail, Mom. Id better go. Tommys macrocosm honored at a dinner tonight because of his coarse in reportect.On Christmas?Oh, what the fuck. Hes Jewish.She could hear the intake of intimation on the other end of the telephone. This is the light version, Mom, imagine how scandalized you be if I told you he was dead and that I killed him.You didnt give tongue to me that. legitimate I did. You must be losing details. Gotta go, Mom. I gotta h elp Tommy get his penis acuate in before the dinner. Bye. She hung up.Tommy had been dancing bleak in depend of her for most of the phone call. When she hung up he stopped. Did I reference that I worry to the highest degree your ethical equilibrium?Said the zany who was beneficial playing buff the scrotum with my red masturbate plot I was making the bouncy Christmas call to my convey?Admit it. Youre a little turned on.Dr. move pull McComber, the Ohm-budsman, the resident pharmacist and medical adviser to the Animals, was afraid of the dark. The fear had crept up on him, same(p) a hash brownie, and coldcocked him with an inescapable paranoia after four years on the night crew at the Marina Safeway. social occasion was, he awoke in the evening, to the pervasive sustain lights in his garage apartment in the Marina, then drove four blocks under the streetlights to the brightly lit Safeway, then got foundationp polish despatch work in the morning when the sun was we ll off the horizon, to return to his grow-lit apartment, to breathe with a sit downin mask in place. He encountered darkness so infrequently that it actualizemed give care a menacing stranger when he did.On Christmas night, round midnight, force sat among a jungle of five-foot-tall pot plants in his living room, wearing sunglasses and notice a movie on cablegram around the special relationship mingled with the lady of an English manor and her chimney sweep. (Because of his work schedule, and the constant demand to stay wasted, move found it difficult to come up a girlfriend. Until the Animals found Blue, his sex vitality had been a largely solitary affair, and (sigh) simply had become so once again.) to each one clip the chimney sweeps sooty hand smacked the powdered bottom of the lady of the manor, Drew grieved a little that dusky handprint on alabaster flank falling analogous a shadow on his erotic soul. There was arousal, but no joy. sorry and lonely wood did tent his hemp-fiber committal pants.Then, as if scripted by Erecto, the munificently Endowed Pizza Delivery graven image of Improbable Trysts, there was a smasher at Drews door. Rather than answer the door directly, Drew ad undecomposeded himself and ambled through the ganja forest to a small movie screen in his kitchenette a boob tube peephole. Hed installed it in the days before his doctor had given him the prescription that made him a quasilegal medical marijuana grower (patient complains that globe harshes his mellow prescribe 2 grams halter every three hours by inhalation, ingestion, or suppository).Sure enough, as if he had called in an order, the video screen revealed a nauseous but slightly blonde basis up(a) on his doorstep in a conservative blue cocktail dress and heels. She might have alone come from a party or a dinner out her tomentum was pinned up with tiny blue bows. She might have shown up to audition for the role of the lady of the manor.Drew keye d the intercom. Hi. Are you sure you have the right house?I conceive of so, said the girl. Im smell for Drew. She smiled into the camera. Perfect teeth.Jeez, Drew said, then realizing that he had said it allowed, he cleared his throat and said, Ill be right there.He smoothed his erection down, pushed his whisker behind his ears, and in five want strides he was through the forest and at the front door. At the last second he regained the sunglasses, pushed them up on his head, smiled broadly, and threw propagate the door, releasing a wide channelize of ultraviolet light into the night fog.The pretty blonde dropped her smile, then screamed as she ebullition into flames and leapt out of the light. Drew ran out into the dark to save her.Chapter Twenty-twoBeing the Chronicles of Abby customaryPathetic Nosferatu NoobsicleWell, except for the murder, Christmas was like a slow drag over broken glass I now actually know the ennui of passing timelessness in center boredom take a nd hurling to-furky all day, stuck with Ronnie and Mom until like six, when Jared came over. His father has a fresh family with little crumb-snatcher goisters, so they like forget about him as soon as the squeaky and presents start in the morning. He fagged the whole day re overtakeing The Nightmare ahead Christmas dish aerial in his room and have cloves. His room is wholly sacrosanct since he told his rents that he couldnt guarantee that he wouldnt be masturbating to gay porn if anyone came in. (Hes so gilded sometimes I could stand on my head and flick the bean right there at the dinner display panel and my mom would be all, Honey, Christmas is family time, we should be unitedly and make me finish in front of everyone.)So, we like watched The Nightmare Before Christmas disc with Mom and Ronnie until they fell asleep on the couch then Jared and I move some rattling cool tribal tattoos on Ronnies shaved head with incantation Marker, but only like in red and drear, s o they look real.Then he was all, We should go get some coffee my aunt gave me a hundred-dollar Starbucks pass on card for Christmas.And I hate it when people brag about their Christmas presents, because its completely change and materialistic. So, I was all, Yeah, well, Id love to, but I am now one of the chosen, so I have duties.And he was all, No way, youre Jewish?And I was all, No, I am nosferatu.And he was all, You are not.And I was all, remember that sexylicious jest at from Wal parking areas. It was him. Well, actually its the Countess who brought me into the sacred circumstances of sanguinity.And he was all, You didnt even call me?Im sorry, Jared, but you are of an inferior species now.So he goes, I know, I totally suck.And I know hes going to go all tragico-emo on me. So I say, debauch me a Mochaccino and Ill reveal to you our dark ways and stuff.We leave a note look that Jared has impregnated me and were running off together to combine a satanic cult, so my mother wont panic when she wakes up, because shes totalitarian about expiration notes. Then we head to the SOMA. scarcely apparently, the holy fucking country shuts down on Christmas, slammed under the oppressive iron fist of the baby Jesus, so out of nine Starbucks we try, all are closed.And Jared is all, Take me to meet them. I want to be in the dark fold, too.And I was all, No way, loser, your hair is totally flat. Which it was. He only had the one spike in front, and his sculpting gel had like failed hours ago, so in his PVC raincoat, he kinda looked like a black lacquer coatrack like you absorb in Chinatown, but that wasnt why I couldnt take him to see the Countess and my Dark Lord. I just couldnt. I knew the Countess would freak out if she apothegm I was exploiting her exquisite adorn to show off for a friend, so I was all, Its very secret. But Jared started to loom and brood at the same time, which he can totally pull off because he practices, so I started to tactile sensat ion like a malodorous dope upon of mashed assholes, as Lautramont so capably put it. (Shut up, Lily says it sounds more romantic in French.)So I let him come, but I told him he had to say remote across the street. But when we came around the break of the Dark Lords block, there was a jest at in a yellow tracksuit stand in the middle of the street. Just standing there, with his hood up and his head down, face like he was going to stand there forever. And he turned really slow in our direction.Jared was all, Wanksta rappa, in my ear, and he giggled that high-pitched little-girl giggle he does sometimes thats like violence catnip to other guys. (Which is why Jared has to carry a foot-long ambiguous dagger in his boot, which he calls his Wolf-fang. luckily it doesnt give him any false trustingness and he is still a total puss, but he likes the attention he gets when doormen take it away from him at clubs.)Anyway, I view my vampyre senses were, like, on edge, because I could ju st tell that this wasnt your normal hip-hop guy standing in the middle of a deserted street in a three-hundred-dollar tracksuit at midnight on Christmas night, so I grabbed Jareds arm and pulled him hazard around the corner.And Im all, Dude. Shields up. Creep. Stealth. net profile.So we peek around the corner, totally cloaked this time, and the tracksuit guy is like over by the door of the loft, and person is odorer out. Its the crusty old drunk guy with the Brobdingnagian shaved cat, and he has his unit out, like hes going to take a leak, which I could have gone another(prenominal) sixteen years without seeing. And Tracksuit grabs him like hes a rag doll and pulls his head back by the hair, and bites him on the neck. And when he does, I can see that its not a hip-hop guy at all, but some crusty w fool awaye vampyre, his fangs were like visible from space. So the huge cat guy is thrashing and screaming and scatter whiz all over the place and I can hear the huge cat hissing be hind the door, and Jared grabs me by my messenger bag and starts pulling me away, down the street. So thats all I saw.And Jared was all, Whoa.And I was all, Yeah.And as soon as we got a few blocks away, I pulled out my electric cell and called the Countesss cell, but it went right to voice mail. So now were at a special midnight showing of The Nightmare Before Christmas at the Metreon, drinking a huge diet Coke to calm our nerves tour we wait for a return call from my vampyre coven. (Jared forgot his inhaler and has been gasping since we saw the attack. Its so embarrassing. pot are like looking at, and Ive moved a couple of seats over so they wont think Im giving him a hand job or something.) I am totally overcome with dread and foreboding, and the time passes like a seeping transmittal on a pestilential hilltop piercing. So we wait. I wish we had some pot. More later.Oh yeah, and Mom got me a green Care Bear for Christmas I totally love it.Youre sure this is where you left it ? Jody was looking up and down the Embarcadero. There were no people out on the street the performers and hustlers were long gone. She could hear the Bay span humming in the distance, a fogsignal started to low over in Alameda. A BART train burped out of a tunnel onto the street a block away, headed toward the ballpark, empty. A police cruiser turn out of Market Street strafed them with its headlights before heading past the Ferry construction toward Fishermans Wharf. Tommy waved to the cops.Yeah. I was right here and my watch went off. He weighed a ton. It would have taken a bunch of guys to move him.Jody saw something shining on the bricks near her feet and crouched down to touch the source. Metal filings of some manner. She drub her finger and came up with a applications programme of yellowish metallic particles on her fingertip. Unless someone cut it up.Who would do that? Who would cut a statue up and steal the pieces?Doesnt matter. Maybe thieves, peradventure city work ers. If someone cut that dye shell, one of two things happened. If it was daytime, Elijah fried out here in the sun. If it was dark, hes free.It wasnt light, was it?Jody shook her head. Im barb no. She saw a light pattern among the bricks a few steps away and crouched down again. There was a fine, grayish powder between the bricks. She nasal some between her fingers and shook her head. For sure no.What? What is that?She brushed her finger off on her jeans and dug into her jacket pocket. Tommy, remember I told you that you didnt drink the whore dry because she wouldnt have been there if you had?Yeah.Well, thats because when a lamia drains someone when we drain someone, they turn to a fine gray powder. I cant rationalize why, but it looks like that. Feels like that. She pointed to the plaster lines between the bricks.Tommy knelt down and touched the powder, looked up. How do you know that?You know how I know that?Youve killed people.She shrugged. Just a couple. And they were si ck. Terminal. They were asking for it, sort of.So thats why you werent upset about the hooker?She pulled her cell phone out of her jacket pocket, then held it behind her back and twisted back and forth looking at her feet, like a little girl creation interrogated about how Mommys lamp got broken. Are you mad?Im a little disappointed. actually? Im really sorry. You would have done the same thing if youd been there.Im just disappointed that you didnt feel that you could trust me.You were having a hard time with your change. I didnt want to bother you.But it wasnt sexual or anything, right? suddenly not. Purely nutritional. She didnt think it necessary to tell him about kissing the old man. It would just confuse things.Well, I guess its o.k., then. I guess if you had to.He stood and she ran to him and kissed him. I cant tell you how glad I am to have that off my chest.Yeah, wellHang on. She held up a finger and hit the power button on her phone.Calling your mom to tell her she was ri ght about your cosmos a tramp?Im calling the kid.Abby?Yeah. I need to tell her to stay away from our place. Elijah is going to start messing with us like before.Jody watched as the little icons on her phone showed that it was searching for a signal. But she said she wasnt coming by tonight. Its Christmas.I know she said that, but I think she may come by anyway.why?Well, she has a thing for me, I think. I bit her last night.You bit Abby?Yeah. I told you, I was hurt. I needed God, youre such(prenominal) a blood slut.I knew youd be mad.Well, its Abby, for fucks sake. Im her dark lord.Look, a voice mail.Elijah Ben Sapir formulate the twitching, pee-spraying alcoholic across the street, where he bounced off the metal garage door of the foundry and back out to the curb, where his head knocked the side mirror off an illegally position Mazda.Then the vampire walked with exaggerated steps, his arms held out from his sides like a bad stage monster to try to backup the urine-sotted velo ur fabric of his tracksuit from contacting his skin. Although he had experience all manner of filth and dialog box in his eight hundred years, and had, in fact, spent whole days conceal naked under loamy smut to escape the sun, he didnt remember being quite so put off as he was at being pissed on by his lunch. maybe it was that he only had one set of clothes now, and there was no gilt racing yacht with a full insistence to retire to, or perhaps it was that he had spent the day between two urine-stained mattresses under an unconscious junkie while police searched the hotel around him. Hed just hit his limit, thats all.Hed known the desk clerk would give him up to the police, so as soon as he had gone to his room, the vampire had transcendental his tracksuit in the corner of the closet, gone to mist, then slipped under the door into the beside room and in between the mattress and box springs of a semiconscious junkie. Hed gone back to straight just as sunrise put him out for the day.At sundown, he was affect at how elated he was to rule the tracksuit still in the closet, after he fed off the junkie (just a sip) and snapped his neck. (Leaving more or less a greeting card to the homicide inspectors who had attacked him with the others at the yacht club.) Now his precious tracksuit was all cover in whiz and he was furious.He stalked over to where hed thrown the seat and snatched him up by the ankle. Elijah was not tall by modern standards, but he found that if he held the bums ankle high above his head, he could shake him sufficiently to get the job done.Youre not even her minion, are you? Elijah banged the bums head against the sidewalk to mark his question.Please, said the bum. My huge cat Thud, crump, thud on the sidewalk. A little shake. Change, a few bills, a lighter, and a bottleful of Johnny Walker rained out of the bums pockets.Youre just her little moo cow, arent you? I tasted her on you.Theres a kid, said the moo cow. A spooky little girl. She takes care of them.Them?Elijah flung the bum against the garage and proceeded to pick up the change and the bills on the sidewalk. The steel door next to the garage door opened and a burly bald man in overalls stepped out on the sidewalk, smacking a lead-tipped tire thumper on his palm. You motherfuckers making enough noise out here?Elijah bare his fangs and hissed at the biker, then leapt to the wall over the garage door and clung there, facedown, above the bikers head.The biker looked up at the vampire, down at the monotonous bum, then at the damaged Mazda. Well, okay then, he said. I can see you fellas still have some turd to work out. He slipped back into the foundry and slammed the door.Elijah dropped to his feet and headed up the street, not even bothering to stop to snap the moo cows neck. How could he have been so stupid? He wasnt going to terrorize her by killing a food source. He needed to queer her minion, just as he had with the boy. How could he have known that shed actually bring out him and choose the boy? Turn the boy? It wouldnt happen again.Amid all the anger, the hunger, and the excitement at having a purpose, Elijah Ben Sapir felt a crimp of heartache. He had begun this adventure thinking himself the fauna master now he was all entangled in the strings. Making mistakes.No worry. He cocked his head and focused. Past the techy breath of the moo cow, the buildings settling, the Bay link humming, and a thousand hearts drubbing in the lofts around him, he could hear the retreating steps of the little girl and her friend.