the door and say, 'you have one of two choices. Either get out now or be carried out. You have 'til three to decide. Two!'"
Truck stood frozen a moment, body rigid, head craned forward, eyes glaring like Rasputin's. Laughter filled the room.
"Way to go, Truck," Kern said. "Man! I would've loved to have been there."
Truck relaxed and smiled at Kern. "It was fuckin' beautiful, man. It was retribution, not just for me, but for all my brother and sister cabbies."
"How was your night, Al?" Nicole asked.
I picked up a handful of charge slips, all reading "U-Ride" on the "charge to" line. "A bit of U-Ride Hades for me, too. But I did have one cash passenger who tipped pretty well."
"How well?" Nicole asked.
"Well, what is it I can say? Some tips are like snacks and some tips are like meals."
Nicole smiled broadly. And with apparent understanding.
****
We spent the last couple hours before sunrise on the north shore ofLakeMonona , wrapped in a blanket, staring up at the stars. It was a clear, mild night, warm for early May. A waxing quarter-moon cast a long reflection off the lake, pointing arrow-like at the State Capitol, which loomed brilliant white, surrounded by traffic lights blinking yellow and red. All was quiet. Within earshot, a few ducks quacked.
"Dinner?" Nicole inquired, pointing toward the ducks.
"I am well sated. They may quack in peace."
Above, the constellations lay in stark contrast to their black background, their ancient light old enough to make even a thousand-year-old vampire feel not quite so old, nor quite so wise.
Nicole took my hand. "I think I'd like to live forever." Her voice had a certain far-off, musing quality.
"Eternity is a long time," I replied. "And immortality is a double-edged sword. On the positive, there is what I have seen. And, on the negative, there is also what I have seen."
"Riddles." She pressed closer to me, trying to use me as a shield against the chill of the coming dawn. Even wrapped in a blanket, I could feel her begin to shiver a bit.
"You are cold," I observed. "Perhaps, we should leave."
Ebony had begun to yield to royal blue. It was time to depart. Dawn would not come for quite some time yet, but we would want some time at my apartment before the dawn's first rays sapped from me all my strength. As we approached my car, a broadside posted to a telephone pole attracted my attention.
The posting bore a full-color photo of a young woman, blonde and angelic. Under her picture, in large, bold letters, lay the word, "Missing."
"She's probably already dead," Nicole said bitterly.
The poster offered a $500 reward for information leading to her safe return. Apparently, Dawn Stevens of the Delta Gamma sorority, a sophomore at the university, had been missing since April 5. I remembered reading a short item about her in one of theMadison dailies. Her sorority sisters had gone out that night. She had stayed home. When her sisters returned, she was gone and had not been seen since.
"Violence is tearing your nation apart," I said, suddenly feeling an urge to rant and rave pedantically. "Your inner cities full of violence, with teens bringing guns to school, so many young faces plastered on milk cartons and posters like this. And all those serial killers. Centuries ago, before people routinely traveled the world, it was not like that. Their communities were their world. People felt responsible to their community, and if they did not, the community was swift in its punishment. Now, with all this freedom of movement, that responsibility is gone, and these killers feel free to indulge the whims of their rampant id."
"Well, that's pretty prosaic, Al," Nicole replied sharply. "But what gets lost in your world-according-to-Al is that this fucker is doing this to women, and that's something that's always been an accepted part of patriarchal society. Even in your precious communities of yesterday."
I shook my head, but held my peace. Though I did not completely agree with her assessment, it somehow seemed best to be conciliatory; our time so short, so precious; why squander it? "Where do these monsters come from?"
"Monsters?" Nicole answered quickly. "Hell, you outta know something about that. Do you believe any of those rumors about the bodies of those women being drained of blood?"
"No." We climbed into myToyota . I started the engine and commenced the short drive to my apartment.
"Think it could be a vampire?" Nicole asked.
"I seriously doubt that. One of my own would have to