and squeezing. The blond’s red face was turning a mottled mixture.
“Hey, man, let go!” the blond protested. “I didn’t mean nothing.”
“You don’t touch anyone who works here. That’s the rule.” Rene might be short and slim, but anyone there would have put his money on our local boy over the beefier visitor.
“Okay, okay.”
“Apologize to the lady.”
“To Crazy Sookie?” His voice was incredulous. He must have been here before.
Rene’s hand must have tightened. I saw tears spring into the blond’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Sookie, okay?”
I nodded as regally as I could. Rene let go of the man’s hand abruptly and jerked his thumb to tell the guy to take a hike. The blond lost no time throwing himself out the door. His companion followed.
“Rene, you should have let me handle that myself,” I said to him very quietly when it seemed the patrons had resumed their conversations. We’d given the gossip mill enough grist for at least a couple of days. “But I appreciate you standing up for me.”
“I don’t want no one messing with Arlene’s friend,” Rene said matter-of-factly. “Merlotte’s is a nice place, we all want to keep it nice. ’Sides, sometimes you remind me of Cindy, you know?”
Cindy was Rene’s sister. She’d moved to Baton Rouge a year or two ago. Cindy was blond and blue-eyed: beyond that I couldn’t think of a similarity. But it didn’t seem polite to say so. “You see Cindy much?” I asked. Hoyt and the other man at the table were exchanging Shreveport Captains scores and statistics.
“Every so now and then,” Rene said, shaking his head as if to say he’d like it to be more often. “She works in a hospital cafeteria.”
I patted him on the shoulder. “I gotta go work.”
When I reached the bar to get my next order, Sam raised his eyebrows at me. I widened my eyes to show how amazed I was at Rene’s intervention, and Sam shrugged slightly, as if to say there was no accounting for human behavior.
But when I went behind the bar to get some more napkins, I noticed he’d pulled out the baseball bat he kept below the till for emergencies.
GRAN KEPT ME busy all the next day. She dusted and vacuumed and mopped, and I scrubbed the bathrooms—did vampires even need to use the bathroom? I wondered, as I chugged the toilet brush around the bowl. Gran had me vacuum the cat hair off the sofa. I emptied all the trash cans. I polished all the tables. I wiped down the washer and the dryer, for goodness’s sake.
When Gran urged me to get in the shower and change my clothes, I realized that she regarded Bill the vampire as my date. That made me feel a little odd. One, Gran was so desperate for me to have a social life that even a vampire was eligible for my attention; two, that I had some feelings that backed up that idea; three, that Bill might accurately read all this; four, could vampires even do it like humans?
I showered and put on my makeup and wore a dress, since I knew Gran would have a fit if I didn’t. It was a little blue cotton-knit dress with tiny daisies all over it, and it was tighter than Gran liked and shorter than Jason deemed proper in his sister. I’d heard that the first time I’d worn it. I put my little yellow ball earrings in and wore my hair pulled up and back with a yellow banana clip holding it loosely.
Gran gave me one odd look, which I was at a loss to interpret. I could have found out easily enough by listening in, but that was a terrible thing to do to the person you lived with, so I was careful not to. She herself was wearing a skirt and blouse that she often wore to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead meetings, not quite good enough for church, but not plain enough for everyday wear.
I was sweeping the front porch, which we’d forgotten, when he came. He made a vampire entrance; one minute he wasn’t there, and the next he was, standing at the bottom of the steps and looking up at me.
I grinned. “Didn’t scare me,” I said.
He looked a little embarrassed. “It’s just a habit,” he said, “appearing like that. I don’t make much noise.”
I opened the door. “Come on in,” I invited, and he came up the steps, looking around.
“I remember this,” he said. “It wasn’t so big, though.”