He smiled bashfully. "On your way to body temperature. I bought you an electric blanket. It's been on for like six hours."

She ran her hand over the blanket. "You've been warming me up?"

"Pretty cool, huh?" Tommy said. "I went to the library and got books too. I've been reading all afternoon." He picked up a stack of books and began to shuffle through them, reading the titles and handing each to her in turn. "A Reader's Guide to Vampirism; Vampire Myths and Legends; Those That Stalk the Night — kind of an ominous title, huh?"

She held the books as if they were made of wormy fruit. The covers depicted monstrous creatures rising from coffins, attacking women in various states of undress, and hanging around castles perched on barren mountains. The letters in the titles dripped blood. "These are all about vampires?"

"That's just the nonfiction that they had on hand. I ordered a bunch more through the library exchange. Check out some of the fiction." He picked up another stack from the floor.

"A Feast of Blood; Red Thirst; Fangs; Dracula; Dracula's Dream; Dracula's Legacy; Fevre Dream; The Vampire Lestat — there must have been a hundred novels."

Jody, a little overwhelmed, stared at the books. "There seems to be a theme here on the covers."

"Yeah," Tommy said. "Vampires seem to have an affinity for lingerie. Do you have any particular craving for sexy nightgowns?"

"Not really." Jody had always thought it a little silly to spend a lot of money on something that you only put on long enough for someone to take it off you. Evidently, though, if you went by these book covers, vampires looked at lingerie as garnish.

"Okay," Tommy said, picking up a notebook from the floor and making a check mark. "No lingerie fetish. I've made a list of vampire traits with boxes to check either 'fact' or 'fiction. Since you missed the lecture, I guess we'll have to just test them."

"What lecture?"

Tommy put down his pen and looked at her as if she'd gotten into the express lane with a cartful of groceries and a two-party check. "Everybody knows that there's always an orientation lecture in vampire books. Usually it comes from some old professor guy with an accent, but sometimes it's another vampire. You obviously missed the lecture."

"I guess so," Jody said. "I must have been busy chasing women in lingerie."

"That's okay," Tommy said, returning to the list. "Obviously you don't have to sleep in your native soil." He checked it off. "And we know that everyone you bite doesn't necessarily turn into a vampire."

"No, a jerk, maybe…"

"Whatever," Tommy said, moving on in the list. "Okay, sunlight is bad for you." He made a check mark. "You can enter a house without being invited. How about running water?"

"What about it?"

"Vampires aren't supposed to be able to cross running water. Have you tried crossing any running water?"

"I've taken a couple of showers."

"Then that would be fiction. Let me smell your breath." He bent close to her.

She turned her head and shielded her mouth. "Tommy, I just woke up. Let me brush my teeth first."

"Vampires are supposed to have the 'fetid breath of a predator, or, in some cases, 'breath like the rotting smell of the charnel house. C'mon, give us a whiff."

Jody reluctantly breathed in his face. He sat up and considered the list.

"Well? "she asked.

"I'm thinking. I need to get the dictionary out of my suitcase."

"What for?"

"I'm not sure what a charnel house is."

"Can I brush my teeth while you look?"

"No, wait, I might need another whiff." He went to his suitcase and dug out the dictionary. While he looked up "charnel house," Jody cupped her hand and smelled her own breath. It was pretty foul.

"Here it is," he said, putting his finger on the word. "'Noun. A mausoleum or morgue. A structure where corpses are buried or stored. See morning breath! I guess that we check 'fact' on that one."

"Can I brush my teeth now?"

"Sure. Are you going to shower?"

"I'd like to. Why?"

"Can I help? I mean, you're much more attractive when you're not room temperature."

She smiled. "You really know how to charm a girl." She got out of bed and went into the bathroom. Tommy waited on the bed.

"Well, come on," she said as she turned on the water.

"Sorry," he said, leaping to his feet and wrestling out of his shirt.

She stopped him at the bathroom door with a firm hand on the chest. "One second, mister. I have a question for you."

"Shoot."

"Men are pigs: fact or fiction?"

"Fact!" Tommy shouted.

"Correct! You win!" She leaped into his arms and kissed him.

Chapter 17

This Month's Makeover: The Faces of Fear

Simon McQueen had once climbed onto the back of a ton of pissed-off beef named Muffin and been promptly stomped into mush in front of an amazed rodeo crowd, and still managed to pinch the bottom of a female paramedic as he was carried away on a stretcher, singing a garbled version of "I've Got Friends in Low Places." Simon McQueen had once picked a fight with a gang of skinheads and managed to render three of them unconscious before a knife in the stomach and a jackboot to the head rendered him helpless. Simon had jumped out of an airplane, fallen off the roof of a Lutheran church, run over a police car in his pickup truck, smuggled a thousand pounds of marijuana across the border from Mexico inside a stuffed cow, and swum halfway to Alcatraz Island on a dare before the Coast Guard fished him out of the bay and revived him. Simon had done all these things without the slightest tic of fear. But tonight, laid out across register 3 in his skintight Wranglers and his endangered-species Tony Lama boots with the silver spurs, his black Stetson pulled down over his face, Simon McQueen was frightened. Frightened that one of his two great secrets was about to become known.

The other Animals were sharing tales of their weekend adventures, exaggerating aspects of binges and babes, while Glint professed to God that they knew not what they did.

Simon sat up, pushed back his Stetson, and said, "Y'all wouldn't know a piece of ass if it sloshed upside your head."

The Animals fell silent, each trying to formulate a new and exciting way to tell Simon to fuck off, when Tommy came through the door.

"Fearless Leader!" Lash exclaimed.

Tommy grinned and faked a tap-dance step. "Gentlemen," he said. "I have reached out and touched the face of God — film at eleven."

Simon was wildly irritated by this added distraction from his worrying. "What happened, you go down to Castro Street and get converted?"

Tommy waved the comment away. "No, Sime — I can call you Sime, can't I? You see, last night, about this time" — he checked his watch — "there was a naked redhead hanging from the ceiling of my new loft, reading Kerouac aloud to me. If I die now, it was not all in vain. I'm ready to throw stock. How's the truck?"

"A big one," Troy Lee answered. "Three thousand cases. But the bitch is, the scanner is broken. We have to use the order books."

Troy's comment jabbed Simon like bad gas pain. He considered going home sick, but without his help the Animals would never be able to finish the truck before morning. A lump of fear rose in his throat. He couldn't use the order books. Simon McQueen couldn't read.

"Let's get to it then," Tommy said.

The Animals threw themselves into their work with an abandon they usually reserved for partying. Razor box-cutters whizzed, price guns clicked, and cardboard piled up in shoulder-high drifts at the ends of the aisles.

In addition to throwing the extra-large load, they had to allow an extra hour to write their stock orders. Normally the orders were done with a bar-code scanner, but with the scanner down, each man would have to go through a huge loose-leaf order book, writing in items by hand. By 5 A.M. they had most of the stock on the shelves and Simon McQueen was considering letting his box-cutter slip and cutting his leg so he could escape to the emergency room. But that might reveal a secret worse than illiteracy.