He shook his head. "I've even got all my grandparents."
"Have you ever seen violence up close and personal?"
"I got into fights in high school."
"Why?"
He grinned. "They thought short meant weak."
I had to smile. "And you showed them different."
"Hell, no; they beat the crap out of me for four years." He smiled.
"You ever win a fight?"
"Sometimes," he said.
"But the winning's not the important part," I said.
He looked very steadily at me, eyes serious. "No, it's not."
There was a moment of nearly perfect understanding between us. A shared history of being the smallest kid in class. Years of being the last picked for sports. Being the automatic victim for bullies. Being short can make you mean. I was sure that we understood each other but, being female, I had to verbalize it. Men do a lot of this mind-reading shit, but sometimes you're wrong. I needed to know.
"The important part is taking the beating and not giving up," I said.
He nodded. "Takes a beating and keeps on ticking."
Now that I'd spoiled our first moment of perfect understanding by making us both verbalize, I was happy. "Other than school fights, you've never seen violence?"
"I go to rock concerts."
I shook my head. "Not the same."
"You got a point to make?" he asked.
"You should never have tried to raise a third zombie."
"I did it, didn't I?" He sounded defensive, but I pressed on. When I have a point to make, I may not be graceful, but I'm relentless.
"You raised and lost control of it. If I hadn't come along, the zombie would have broken free and hurt someone."
"It's just a zombie. They don't attack people."
I stared at him, trying to see if he was kidding. He wasn't. Shit. "You really don't know, do you?"
"Know what?"
I covered my face with my hands and counted to ten, slowly. It wasn't Larry I was mad at, it was Bert, but Larry was so convenient for yelling. I'd have to wait until tomorrow to yell at Bert, but Larry was right here. How lucky.
"The zombie had broken free of your control, Larry. If I hadn't come along and fed it blood, it would have found blood on its own. Do you understand?"
"I don't think so."
I sighed. "The zombie would have attacked someone. Taken a bite out of someone."
"Zombies attacking humans is just superstition, ghost stories."
"Is that what they're teaching in college now?" I asked.