them going?"
She was wearing his bathrobe. About five she had relented, taken a bath, and changed. Her slender body was shapeless in the voluminous terry-cloth folds. She'd borrowed his comb and drawn her hair back into a pony tail fastened with a piece of twine.
Ruth fingered her coffee cup.
"We used to see them sometimes," she said. "We were afraid to go near them, though. We didn't think we should touch them."
"Didn't you know they'd come back after they died?"
She shook her head. "No."
"Didn't you wonder about the people who attacked your house at night?"
"It never entered our minds that they were--" She shook her head slowly. "It's hard to believe something like that."
"I suppose," he said.
He glanced at her as they sat eating silently. It was hard too to believe that here was a normal woman. Hard to believe that, after all these years, a companion had come. It was more than just doubting her. It was doubting that anything so remarkable could happen in such a lost world.
"Tell me more about them," Ruth said.
He got up and took the coffeepot off the stove. He poured more into her cup, into his, then replaced the pot and sat down.
"How do you feel now?" he asked her.
"I feel better, thank you."
He nodded and spooned sugar into his coffee. He felt her eyes on him as he stirred. What's she thinking? he wondered. He took a deep breath, wondering why the tightness in him didn't break. For a while he'd thought that he trusted her. Now he wasn't sure.
"You still don't trust me," she said, seeming to read his mind.
He looked up quickly, then shrugged.
"It's--not that," he said.
"Of course it is," she said quietly. She sighed. "Oh, very well. If you have to check my blood, check it."
He looked at her suspiciously, his mind questioning: Is it a trick? He hid the movement of his throat in swallowing coffee. It was stupid, he thought, to be so suspicious.
He put down the cup.
"Good," he said. "Very good."
He looked at her as she stared into the coffee.
"If you are infected," he told her, "I'll do everything I can to cure you."
Her eyes met his. "And if you can't?" she said.
Silence a moment.
"Let's wait and see," he said then.
They both drank coffee. Then he asked, "Shall we do it now?"
"Please," she said, "in the morning. I--still feel a little ill."
"All right," he said, nodding. "In the morning."
They finished their meal in silence. Neville felt only a small satisfaction that she was going to let him check her blood. He was afraid he might discover that she was infected. In the meantime he had to pass an evening and a night with her, perhaps get to know her and be attracted to her. When in the morning he might have to--
Later, in the living room, they sat looking at the mural, sipping port, and listening to Schubert's Fourth Symphony.
"I wouldn't have believed it," she said, seeming to cheer up. "I never thought I'd be listening to music again. Drinking wine."
She looked around the room.
"You've certainly done a wonderful job," she said.
"What about your house?' he asked.
"It was nothing like this," she said. "We didn't have a--"
"How did you protect your house?" he interrupted.
"Oh.--" She thought a moment. "We had it boarded up, of course. And we used crosses."
"They don't always work," he said quietly, after a moment of looking at her.
She looked blank. "They don't?"
"Why should a Jew fear the cross?" he said. "Why should a vampire who had been a Jew fear it? Most people were afraid of becoming vampires. Most of them suffer from hysterical blindness before mirrors. But as far as the cross goes--well, neither a Jew nor a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor an atheist, for that matter, would fear the cross."
She sat holding her wineglass and looking at him with expressionless eyes.
"That's why the cross doesn't always work," he said.
"You didn't let me finish," she said. "We used garlic too."
"I thought it made you sick."
"I was already sick. I used to weigh a hundred and twenty. I weigh ninety-eight pounds now."
He nodded. But as he went into the kitchen to get another bottle of wine, he thought, she would have adjusted to it by now. After three years.
Then again, she might not have. What was the point in doubting her now? She was going to let him check her blood. What else could she do? It's me, he thought. I've been by myself too long. I won't believe anything unless I