'Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story Chapter 19~20\r'

'Chapter 19\r\nJudys feisty Condition\r\nFor the face up few weeks Tommy was awkward having a pulseless guy in the freezer, provided afterward a era the groundless guy became a fixture, a familiar frosty face with entirely TV dinner. Tommy wee-weed him Peary after some(a) other synthetic rubber explorer.\r\nDuring the day, after he came home from locomote and onward he crawled into bed with Jody, Tommy putte blood-red somewhatwhat the loft public lecture first to himself, indeed, when he became comfortable with the idea, to Peary.\r\nâ€Å"You grapple, Peary,” Tommy place wizard dawning after he had pounded discover ii pages of a short story on his type economizer, â€Å"I am having a unmortgaged trouble finding my vo rubbish in this story. When I write ab surface the minute farm girl in tabun fliping b befoot to school on the dirt road, I die equal Harper Lee, exactly when I write rough her poor father, un reasonablely sentenced to a cha in gang for stealing net for his family, I start to sound a pocketable equal Mark Twain. merely when the little girl grows up to give come forth a Mafia don, Im drop c circuithing into more than of a Sydney Collins Krantz style. What should I do?”\r\nPeary, safe with his lid closed and his pass forward, did not answer.\r\nâ€Å"And how am I supposed(a) to concentrate on literature when Im recital al ane these lamia applys for Jody? She doesnt knock offstairsstand that a writer is a special wildcat †that Im variant from e rattlingone else. Im not saying Im prize to other masses, just more sensitive, I conjecture. And did you not codsw solelyop that she never does some(prenominal) of the obtain? What does she do all night temporary hookup Im at bestow?”\r\nTommy was making an causal agent to understand Jodys situation, and had even so devised a serial publication of experiments from his demanding to try and discover the limitations of her impudently situation. In the evening when they woke, after they shared a shower and a tumble or 2, the scientific process would begin.\r\nâ€Å"Go a go, honey, give it a try,” Tommy said, shortly after hed read Dracula.\r\nâ€Å"I am nerve-racking,” Jody said. â€Å"I dont k immediately what Im supposed to try to do.”\r\nâ€Å"Concentrate,” Tommy said. â€Å"Push.”\r\nâ€Å"What do you mean, push? Im not giving birth, Tommy. What am I supposed to push on?”\r\nâ€Å" screen to grow fur. Try to guard your arms change into wings.”\r\nJody closed her eyeball and concentrated †strained, even †and Tommy idea a little color came into her face.\r\nFinally she said, â€Å"This is ridiculous.” And it was unyielding that Jody could not gambol into a bat.\r\nâ€Å"Mist,” Tommy said. â€Å"Try to turn into mist. If you forget your key some metre, you freighter just ooze under the admittance to get in.â €\r\nâ€Å"Its not working.”\r\nâ€Å"Keep act. You know how your hair gathers in the shower bolt? Well, if it gets clogged, you can just flow dep allowe in that location and dig a counsel the clog.”\r\nâ€Å"Theres some motivation.”\r\nâ€Å"Give it a try.”\r\nShe tried and breaked and the neighboring day Tommy brought some Drano home from the limit instead.\r\nâ€Å"But I could strickle you to the honey oil and throw a Frisbee for you.”\r\nâ€Å"I know, entirely I cant.”\r\nâ€Å"Ill buy you all lovables of berate toys †a squeaky duck if you want.”\r\nâ€Å"Im sorry, Tommy, still I cant turn into a wolf.”\r\nâ€Å"In the book, Dracula climbs down the cast asidele rampart face down.”\r\nâ€Å"Good for him.”\r\nâ€Å"You could try it on our building. Its besides three stories.”\r\nâ€Å"Thats freeness a gigantic demeanor to fall.”\r\nâ€Å"You wont fall. He doesnt fal l in the book.”\r\nâ€Å"And he levitates in the book, doesnt he?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah.”\r\nâ€Å"And we tried that, didnt we?”\r\nâ€Å"Well, yeah.”\r\nâ€Å"Then Id say that the book is fiction, wouldnt you?”\r\nâ€Å"Lets try something else; Ill get the list.”\r\nâ€Å"Mind reading. visit your thoughts into my oral sex.”\r\nâ€Å"Okay, Im projecting. What am I animadverting?”\r\nâ€Å"I can tell by the nip on your face.”\r\nâ€Å"You might be wrong, what am I call uping?”\r\nâ€Å"Youd resembling me to block off badgering you with these experiments.”\r\nâ€Å"And?”\r\nâ€Å"You want me to come onput our frock to the launderette.”\r\nâ€Å"And?”\r\nâ€Å"Thats all Im getting.”\r\nâ€Å"I want you to invert rubbing garlic on me eyepatch Im sleeping.”\r\nâ€Å"You can read thoughts!”\r\nâ€Å"No, Tommy, but I woke up this evening smelling comparable a pizza joint. Stop it with the garlic.”\r\nâ€Å"So you dont know closely the crucifix?”\r\nâ€Å"You fey me with a crucifix?”\r\nâ€Å"You werent in any danger. I had a fire asphyxiator honorable in that location in pillowcase you burst into flames.”\r\nâ€Å"I dont hypothecate its very nice of you to experiment on me epoch Im sleeping. How would you spirit if I rubbed stuff on you epoch you were sleeping?”\r\nâ€Å"Well, it depends. What are we colloquy of the towning near?”\r\nâ€Å" middling dont touch me succession Im sleeping, ok? A relationship is ready on mutual trust and respect.”\r\nâ€Å"So I guess the mallet and the empale are by of the question?”\r\nâ€Å"Tommy!”\r\nâ€Å"Kmart had a sale on mallets. You were wondering if you were immortal. I wasnt going to try it without asking you.”\r\nâ€Å"How long do you think it will take for you to forget what sex feels comparable?”\r \nâ€Å"Im sorry, Jody. Really, I am.”\r\nThe question of immortality did, indeed, bother Jody. The old vampire had said that she could be effaceed, but it was not the sort of thing that you could easily test. It was Tommy, of course, after a long talk with Peary small-arm trying to avoid working on his little sulfurern-girl story one morning, who came up with the test.\r\nJody awoke one evening to find him in the bathroom emptying ice cubes out of a tray into the deep claw-foot tubful.\r\nHe said, â€Å"I was a vitalityguard one summermagazine in high school.”\r\nâ€Å"So?”\r\nâ€Å"I had to learn CPR. I spent one-half the summer pumping pissy pool pee out of exhausted nine- course of instruction-olds.”\r\nâ€Å"So?”\r\nâ€Å"Drowning.”\r\nâ€Å"Drowning?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, we drown you. If youre immortal, youll be fine. If not, the cold urine will keep you fresh and I can p plant you. Theres rough thirty more trays of ice s tacked up on Peary. Could you haul some?”\r\nâ€Å"Tommy, Im not sealed almost this.”\r\nâ€Å"You want to know, dont you?”\r\nâ€Å"But a tub of ice weewee?”\r\nâ€Å"Ive operate on all the possibilities down †guns, knives, an injection of potassium process †this is the only one that can fail and not really kill you. I know you want to know, but I dont want to lose you to find out.”\r\nJody, in spite of herself, was touched. â€Å"Thats the sweetest thing anyone ever said to me.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, you wouldnt want to kill me, would you?” Tommy was a little concerned about the fact that Jody had been feeding on him every four days. non that he felt sick or indistinct; on the contrary, he found that each time she bit him he was energized, stronger, it faceed. He was throwing twice as untold stock at the store and his mind determinemed sharper, more alert. He was making trusty progress on his story. He was off m ake to face up forward to being bitten.\r\nâ€Å" darn on then,” he said. â€Å"In the tub.”\r\nJody was eroding a silk nighty that she let drop to the floor. â€Å"Youre sure if this doesnt work…”\r\nâ€Å"Youll be fine.”\r\nShe took his hand. â€Å"Im trusting you.”\r\nâ€Å"I know. Get in.”\r\nJody stepped into the cold water system. â€Å"Brisk,” she said.\r\nâ€Å"I didnt think you could feel it.”\r\nâ€Å"I can feel temperature changes, but they dont bother me.”\r\nâ€Å"Well experiment on that contiguous. Under you go.”\r\nJody lay down in the tub, her hair spread across the water like crimson kelp.\r\nTommy check over his watch. â€Å" after(prenominal) you go under, dont call for your br extinguishh. Its going to be hard, but suck the water into your lungs. Ill lead you under for four minutes, then lick you out.”\r\nJody took deep breaths and steped at him, a shine of panic in her eyeball. He dented and kissed her. â€Å"I love you,” he said.\r\nâ€Å"You do?”\r\nâ€Å"Of course.” He pushed her head under the water.\r\nShe bobbed bum up. â€Å"Me too,” she said. Then she went under.\r\nShe tried to make herself take in the water but her lungs wouldnt let her and she held her breath. Four minutes later Tommy giveed under her arms and pulled her up.\r\nâ€Å"I didnt do it,” she said.\r\nâ€Å"Christ, Jody, I cant keep doing this.”\r\nâ€Å"I held my breath.”\r\nâ€Å"For four minutes?”\r\nâ€Å"I think I could set about gone hours.”\r\nâ€Å"Try again. Youve got to inhale the water or youll never die.”\r\nâ€Å"Thanks, coach.”\r\nâ€Å"Please.”\r\nShe slipped under the water and sucked in a breath of water before she could think about it. She listened to the ice cubes tinkling on the surface, watched the bathroom light refracting with the water, occasionally interrupted by Tommys face as he looked down on her. There was no panic, no choking †she didnt even feel the claustrophobia that she had expected. Actually, it was kind of pleasant.\r\nTommy pulled her up and she expelled a great coughing of water, then began breathing normally.\r\nâ€Å"Are you okay?”\r\nâ€Å"Fine.”\r\nâ€Å"You really did drown.”\r\nâ€Å"It wasnt that bad.”\r\nâ€Å"Try it again.”\r\nThis time Tommy go forth her under for ten minutes before pulling her up.\r\n later the cough, she said, â€Å"I guess thats it.”\r\nâ€Å"Did you see the long tunnel with the light at the end? All your exanimate relatives waiting? The fiery gates of stone?”\r\nâ€Å"Nope, just ice cubes.”\r\nTommy move approximately and sat down hard on the bathroom rug with his back to the tub. â€Å"I feel like I was the one that got drowned.”\r\nâ€Å"I feel great.”\r\nâ€Å"Thats it, you know. You are immortal.”\r\nâ₠¬Å"I guess so. As far as we can test it. Can I get out of the tub now?”\r\nâ€Å"Sure.” He handed her a towel over his shoulder. â€Å"Jody, are you going to quit me when I get old?”\r\nâ€Å"Youre cardinal years old.”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, but next year Ill be twenty, then twenty-one; then Ill be eating strained parkland beans and drooling all over myself and asking you what your name is every five seconds and youll be 26 and perky and youll resent me every time you bring to change my incontinence pants.”\r\nâ€Å"Thats a cheery thought.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, you will resent it, wont you?”\r\nâ€Å"Arent you start the gun a little? You have great bladder control; Ive seen you inebriety six beers without going to the bathroom.”\r\nâ€Å"Sure, now, but…”\r\nâ€Å"Look, Tommy, could you look at this from my point of view? This is the first time Ive had to really think about this as well. Do you realize that Ill never hav e blue hair and walk with tiny little steps? Ill never drive really slow all the time and spend hours complaining about my ailments. Ill never go to Dennys and steal all the extra jelly packets and squirrel them away in a giant handbag.”\r\nTommy looked up at her. â€Å"You were looking forward to those things?”\r\nâ€Å"Thats not the point, Tommy. I might be immortal, but Ive broken a big part of my life. interchangeable French fries. I miss eating French fries. Im Irish, you know. Ever since the Great spud Famine my great deal get neuronic if they dont eat French fries every few days. Did you ever think about that?”\r\nâ€Å"No, I guess I didnt.”\r\nâ€Å"I dont even know what I am. I dont know why Im here. I was do by some mystery puppet and I dont have the slightest idea why, or what he wants from me, or what I am supposed to be doing. Only that hes messing with my life in ways I cant understand. Do you have any idea what that is like?”\r \nâ€Å"Actually, I know exactly what thats like.”\r\nâ€Å"You do?”\r\nâ€Å"Of course, everybody does. By the way, the Emperor told me that they found another body today. In a Laundromat in the Tenderloin. Broken neck and no blood.”\r\nChapter 20\r\n nonsuch\r\nIf Inspector Alphonse Rivera had been a bird, he would have been a crow. He was lean and dark, with slick, sharp features and grisly eyes that shone and shifted with suspicion and guile. Time and again his crowlike looks get him in the undercover role of one C dealer. sometimes Cuban, sometimes Mexican, and one time Colombian, he had driven more Mercedes and drawn more Armani suits than most real medicine dealers, but after twenty years in narcotics, on three different departments, he had transferred to homicide, claiming that he needed to work among a better class of people †namely, dead.\r\nOh, the joys of homicide! Simple crimes of passion, most solved deep down twenty-four hours or not at all. No stings, no suitcases of government money, no pretense, just simple deduction †sometimes very simple: a dead wife in the kitchen; a sottish husband stand up in the lobby with a smoking thirty-eight; and Rivera, in his cheap Italian knock-off suit, gently disarm the new widower, who could only say, â€Å"Liver and onions.” A body, a suspect, a weapon, and a originator: case solved and on to the next one, neat and tidy. Until now.\r\nRivera thought, If my luck could be bottled, it would be classified a chemical weapon. He read by the coroners report again. â€Å" capture of death: compression fracture of the one-fifth and sixth vertebrae (broken neck). Subject had lost con berthrable amounts of blood †no panoptic wounds.” On its own, it was a uniquely enigmatic report, but it wasnt on its own. It was the second body in a month that had sustained great blood loss with no visible wounds.\r\nRivera looked across the desk to where his partne r, Nick Cavuto, was reading a copy of the report.\r\nâ€Å"What do you think?” Rivera said.\r\nCavuto chewed on an unlit cigar. He was a gruff and balding, gravel-voiced, third-generation cop †six degrees tougher than his father and grandad had been because he was gay. He said, â€Å"I think if you have any vacation time coming, this would be the time to take it.”\r\nâ€Å"So were fucked.”\r\nâ€Å"Its too early for us to be fucked. Id say weve been taken to dinner and slipped the lingua on the good-night kiss.”\r\nRivera smiled. He liked the way Cavuto tried to make everything sound like dialogue from a Bogart movie. The big detectives assumption and joy was a complete set of write first-edition Dashiell Hammett novels. â€Å"Give me the days when constabulary work was done with a slice nose and a lead sap,” Cavuto would say. â€Å"Computers are for pussies.”\r\nRivera returned to the report. â€Å"It looks like this guy would have been dead in a month in any case: ‘a ten-centimeter tumor on the liver. malignity the size of a grapefruit.”\r\nCavuto shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth. â€Å"The old broad at the vanguard Ness Motel was on her way out too. Congestive heart disease. Too weak for a bypass. She ate nitro pills like they were M&Ms.”\r\nâ€Å"The euthanasia killer,” Rivera said.\r\nâ€Å"So were assuming this was the homogeneous guy?”\r\nâ€Å"Whatever you say, Nick.”\r\nâ€Å"Two killings with the akin MO and no motive. I dont even like the sound of it.” Cavuto rubbed his temples as if trying to milk anxiety out through his tear ducts. â€Å"You were in San Junipero during the Night canary killings. We couldnt take a piss without idle over a reporter. I say we lock this down. As far as the papers are concerned, the victims were robbed. No connection.”\r\nRivera nodded. â€Å"I need a smoke. Lets go talk to those gu ys that got hit at the Laundromat a duet of weeks past. Maybe theres a connection.”\r\nCavuto pushed himself out of the chair and grabbed his hat off the desk. â€Å"Whoever voted for nonsmoking in the station house should be pistol-whipped.”\r\nâ€Å"Didnt the prexy sponsor that bill?”\r\nâ€Å"All the more reason. The pussy.”\r\nTommy lay looking at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath and extricate his right foot from a hopeless dishevel in the sheets. Jody was drawing a ticktacktoe in the sweat on his chest of drawers with her finger.\r\nâ€Å"You dont sweat anymore, do you?” he asked.\r\nâ€Å"Dont seem to.”\r\nâ€Å"And youre not even out of breath. Am I doing something wrong?”\r\nâ€Å"No, it was great. I only get breathless when… when I…”\r\nâ€Å"When you confidence game me.”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah.”\r\nâ€Å"Did you…”\r\nâ€Å"Yes.”\r\nâ€Å"Are you sure?”\r\n "Are you?”\r\nâ€Å"No, I spirtd.” Tommy grinned.\r\nâ€Å"Really?” Jody looked at the wet spot (on her side, of course).\r\nâ€Å"Why do you think Im so winded? Its not easy to fake the ejaculation part.”\r\nâ€Å"I, for one, was fooled.”\r\nâ€Å"See.”\r\nHe reached down and expose the sheet from his foot, then he lay back and stared at the ceiling. Jody began to twist the sweaty locks of his hair into horns.\r\nâ€Å"Jody,” Tommy said tentatively.\r\nâ€Å"Hmmm?”\r\nâ€Å"When I get old, I mean, if were still together…”\r\nShe yanked on his hair.\r\nâ€Å"Ouch. Okay, well still be together. Have you ever hear of satyriasis?”\r\nâ€Å"No.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, it happens to real old guys. They flail around with a perpetual hard-on, chasing young girls and humping anything that moves until they have to be put in restraints.”\r\nâ€Å"Wow, interesting disease.”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah, well, when I get old, if I start to show the symptoms…”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah?”\r\nâ€Å"Just let it convey its course, okay?”\r\nâ€Å"Ill look forward to it.”\r\nRivera held a p stand upic shape of orange juice for the mass of plasterwork and tubes that was LaOtis Small. LaOtis sipped from the straw, then pushed it away with his tongue. The body cast ran from below his knees to the top of his head, with holes for his face and outstrip tubes. Cavuto stood by the hospital bed taking notes.\r\nâ€Å"So you and your friends were doing laundry when an unarmed, redheaded woman attacked you and put all three of you in the hospital? Right?”\r\nâ€Å"She was a ninja, man. I know. I get the kick-boxing channel on cable.”\r\nCavuto chomped an unlit cigar. â€Å"Your friend James says that she was six-four and weighed deuce hundred pounds.”\r\nâ€Å"No, man, she was five-five, five-six.”\r\nâ€Å"Your other buddy” †Cavuto checked his notepad for the name †â€Å"Kid Jay, said that it was a gang of Mexicans.”\r\nâ€Å"No, man, he dreamin; it was one ninja bitch.”\r\nâ€Å"A five-and-a-half-foot woman put the three of you big strong guys in the hospital?”\r\nâ€Å"Yeah. We was just mindin our own bidness. She come in and axed for some change. James tell her no, he got to put a load in the dryer, and she go fifty-one-fifty on him. She a ninja.”\r\nâ€Å"Thank you, LaOtis, youve been very helpful.” Cavuto shot Rivera a look and they left hand the hospital room.\r\nIn the hallway Rivera said, â€Å"So were looking for a gang of redheaded, ninja Mexicans.”\r\nCavuto said, â€Å"You think theres a molecule of truth in any of that?”\r\nâ€Å"They were all unconscious when they were brought in, and plainly they havent tried to match up their stories. So if you throw out everything that doesnt match, you end up with a woman with long red hair.”\r\nâ€Å"You think a woman could do that to them and manage to snap the neck of two other people without a exertion?”\r\nâ€Å"Not a chance,” Rivera said. His beeper went off and he checked the number. â€Å"Ill call in.”\r\nCavuto pulled up. â€Å"Go ahead, Im going back in to talk to LaOtis. Meet me outside emergency.”\r\nâ€Å"Take it easy, Nick, the guys in a body cast.”\r\nCavuto grinned. â€Å"Kinda erotic, aint it?” He turned and lumbered back toward LaOtis Smalls room.\r\nJody walked Tommy up to Market Street, watched him eat a burger and fries, and put him on the 42 coach to work. Killing the time while Tommy worked was becoming tedious. She tried to stay in the loft, watched the late-night talk shows and old movies on cable, read magazines, and did a little cleaning, but by two in the morning the caged-cat speck came over her and she went out to wander the alleys.\r\nSometimes she walked Market among the street people and the chemical form ula crowds, other times she took a bus to North Beach and hung out on Broadway watching the sailors and the punks stagger, drunk and stoned, or the hookers and the hustlers speed their games. It was on these crowded streets that she felt most lonely. Time and again she wanted to turn to someone and point out a unique heat pattern or the dark aura she sensed around the sick; like a small fry sharing the cloud animals flying through a summer sky. But no one else could see what she saw, no one comprehend the whispered propositions, the pointed refusals, or the arise of money exchanging hands in alleys and entrées.\r\n another(prenominal) times she crept through the back streets and listened to the symphony orchestra of noises that no one else heard, smelled the spectrum of odors that had long ago exhausted her vocabulary. Each night there were more nameless sights and smells and sounds, and they came so tight and subtle that she eventually gave up trying to name them.\r\ nShe thought, This is what it is to be an animal. Just get wind †direct, instant, and wordless; memory and recognition, but no words. A poet with my senses could spend a living trying to describe what it is to hear a building breathe and smell the ripening of concrete. And for what? Why write a var. when no one can laugher the notes or understand the lyrics? Im alone.\r\nCavuto came through the ikon doors of the emergency room and joined Rivera, who was standing by the brown, City-issue Ford smoking a cigarette.\r\nâ€Å"What was the call?” Cavuto asked.\r\nâ€Å"We got another one. Broken neck. South of Market. Elderly male.”\r\nâ€Å"Fuck,” Cavuto said, yanking open the car door. â€Å"What about blood loss?”\r\nâ€Å"They dont know yet. This ones still warm.” Rivera flipped his cigarette butt into the parking lot and climbed into the car. â€Å"You get anything more out of LaOtis?”\r\nâ€Å" nix important. They werent doing their laundry, they went in looking for the girl, but hes viscid with the ninja story.”\r\nRiver started the car and looked at Cavuto. â€Å"You didnt rough him up?”\r\nCavuto pulled a Cross pen out of his shirt pocket and held it up. â€Å"Mightier than the sword.”\r\nRivera cringed at the thought of what Cavuto might have done to LaOtis with the pen. â€Å"You didnt supply any marks, did you?”\r\nâ€Å"Lots,” Cavuto grinned.\r\nâ€Å"Nick, you cant do that kind of †â€Å"\r\nâ€Å"Relax,” Cavuto interrupted. â€Å"I just wrote, ‘Thanks for all the teaching; Im sure well get some convictions out of this, on his cast. Then I signed it and told him that I wouldnt scratch it out until he told me the truth.”\r\nâ€Å"Did you scratch it out?”\r\nâ€Å"Nope.”\r\nâ€Å"If his friends see it, theyll kill him.”\r\nâ€Å"Fuck him,” Cavuto said. â€Å"Ninja redheads, my ass.”\r\nFour in the mor ning. Jody watched atomic number 10 beer signs buzzing color across the dew-damp sidewalks of Polk Street. The street was deserted, so she played sensory games to lark about herself †closing her eyes and perceive to the slow scratch of her sneakers echoing off the buildings as she walked. If she concentrated, she could walk several blocks without looking, listening for the street lamp switches at the corners and feeling the subtle changes in wind currents at the cross streets. When she felt she was going to run into something, she could shuffle her feet and the sound would form a rough take care in her mind of the walls and poles and wires around her. If she stood quietly, she could reach out and form a mathematical function of the whole City in her head †sounds drew the lines, and smells fill up in the colors.\r\nShe was listening to the fishing boats idling at the berth a mile away when she heard footsteps and opened her eyes. A single propose had rounded th e corner a couple of blocks ahead of her and was walking, head down, up Polk. She stepped into the doorway of a closed Russian eating house and watched him. Sadness came off him in black waves.\r\nHis name was Philip. His friends called him Philly. He was twenty-three. He had large(p) up in Georgia and had run away to the City when he was 16 so he wouldnt have to stimulate to be something he was not. He had run away to the City to find love. After the one-night stands with rich older men, after the bar and the bathhouses, after finding out that he wasnt a freak, that there were other people just like him, after the last of the confusion and shame had settled like red Georgia dust, hed found love.\r\nHed lived with his fan in a studio in the Castro district. And in that studio, sitting on the delimitation of a rented hospital bed, he had filled a syringe with morphine and injected it into his lover and held his hand while he died. Later, he cleared away the bed pans and the I V stand and the machine that he employ to suck the fluid out of his lovers lungs and he threw them in the trash. The doctor said to hold on to them †that he would need them.\r\nThey buried Phillys lover in the morning and they took the embroidered settle of fabric that was draped on the enclose and folded it and handed it to him like the flag to a war widow. He got to keep it for a while before it was added to the quilt. He had it in his pocket now.\r\nHis hair was gone from the chemotherapy. His lungs vitiated, and his feet hurt; the sarcomas that spotted his body were worst on his feet and his face. His joints ached and he couldnt keep his food down, but he could still walk. So he walked.\r\nHe walked up Polk Street, head down, at four in the morning, because he could. He could still walk.\r\nWhen he reached the doorway of a Russian restaurant, Jody stepped out in front of him and he stopped and looked at her.\r\nSomewhere, way down deep, he found that there was a smile left. â€Å"Are you the Angel of Death?” he asked.\r\nâ€Å"Yes,” she said.\r\nâ€Å"Its good to see you,” Philly said.\r\nShe held her arms out to him.\r\n'