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“You’re not allowed to hang out with Dick anymore,” he told me as he turned the ignition. “So, why couldn’t we do this after dark?”
“I called the front desk pretending to be a potential resident’s daughter. The nurse said dinner was served at three-thirty. And I’m guessing the people we’d want to talk to will be asleep by four.”
“You’re a scary woman, Jane Jameson.”
I shrugged, pulling my hood over my face and leaning my seat back to a snoozing position. “I do what I can.”
I jolted awake when Zeb cut Big Bertha’s engine outside the Sunnyside Village Retirement Community. With one eye squinched shut, I wiped the drool off my cheek and looked around. The building seemed innocuous enough. Overtly cheerful yellow siding on a cracker-box building, glowing in the orange light of the fading sun. Newly painted white shutters framing windows with the shades drawn tight.
I pulled out my sunblock for safety touch-up. I’d decided against gloves, as it was a typically mild early spring day, and full-length opera gloves would probably attract attention. The thick, white SPF 500 lotion took a while to absorb into my neck, chin, and hands. I pulled the hat over my eyes.
“How do I look?” I asked, turning to him.
“Well, if we were going to a performance of Kabuki Mugger Theater, this look would be perfect,” he snorted, gesturing to my smudged jawline. “You might want to blend some more.”
“Dang it,” I grumbled, swiping at my cheeks.
After a few more minutes of sunblocking, I carefully opened the door and stepped out. I gasped, enveloped in the sun for the first time since my turning. Even though it was weak late-afternoon light, I was overwhelmed by the warmth that swirled over my skin like a caress. The colors made me want to weep. I hadn’t realized how monotonous the night sky could be. I’d missed the burnt golds, the blushing pinks giving way to deep purple as the sun faded over the horizon. I smiled, stretching out my hands and basking in heat like a cat. And then ow. Ow. Owowowowowow.
I’d forgotten to sunscreen the delicate webs between my fingers. Ow! It felt as if I’d dipped my hands in acid. I stared in horror, transfixed as the skin sizzled and smoked.
“Put your hands in your pockets, Jane!” Zeb cried.
“Oh, right!” I stuck my shaking hands into my jacket and turned my back to the light, doubling over, waiting for the pain to subside. After a few moments, I felt the tissue in my fingers knit itself together again, a new and unpleasant stinging sensation unto itself. I took a deep breath and straightened, flexing my fingers gingerly. Zeb was staring at me over Big Bertha’s hood.
“I don’t think you want to go in there with smoking hands that smell of blackened Jiffy Pop,” he said.
“I think I’ll just stay in the car,” I said meekly.
“Probably for the best,” Zeb said, nodding and pressing his lips together in a resigned line.
I stayed huddled behind the heavily screened windows, napping, while Zeb ventured inside. I was tired, drained, all of my being focused on my raw, healing skin. When your mortality is taken out of the equation of life, you tend to take certain things, such as paralyzing agony, for granted. Is that what it would feel like to go out during the day? I imagined it was only a fraction of the pain an unprotected vampire would suffer in full sun. And even that small portion was torture. Of the few ways vampires could die, death by suntan was definitely at the bottom of the list.
A short time later, my partner in crime startled me awake with a sharp knock on the window.
“I just barely convinced them that I was the great-grandson of the oldest guy there, whose name I did not know. I had to keep calling him Pappy.”
“What did he say?” I asked, rubbing my tired eyes. “Had he heard of Wilbur Goosen?”
“No, he was far more interested in a rerun of Matlock than talking to me. And then some other guy heard me say Wilbur’s name, and he made the weirdest, wrinkliest face I’d ever seen. Then he cursed at me in Lithuanian and whacked me with his cane,” Zeb said, rubbing his arm gingerly. “He then switched to English and suggested I perform various sexual acts on myself.”
“If you could do that by yourself, we would never see you,” I said, despite the glare Zeb sent my way. “How did you know it was Lithuanian?”
He seemed offended. “Like you’re the only smart one around here.”
“Sorry I put you through all of that for nothing.”
“No, on the way out—while I was dodging the cane—a much nicer lady stopped me. She apparently had her hearing aids turned all the way up and heard our conversation. She was an old flame of Wilbur’s.”
“Say what now?”
“When Wilbur Goosen lived at Sunnyside, he was quite the Don Juan. Ila Faye Pogue, the lady in question, was one heart torn asunder in the swath he cut across the Shuffleboard Circuit. At one point, there was a catfight in the rec room among three of his interests. Wigs and walkers and glass eyes flying everywhere …”
“I don’t need to think about that.”
“Mrs. Pogue had photos in her album. The administration was on the verge of asking Wilbur to leave when he just passed away in his sleep. It was very sudden.”
“He died? Are we sure she had the right Wilbur Goosen?”
