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When you’re having relationship problems, channel your energy into productive projects. Join a charitable group, or volunteer with an animal shelter or a soup kitchen. (It’s best to avoid the temptation of blood drives.)
—Love Bites: A Female Vampire’s Guide to Less
Destructive Relationships
Once I decided not to let moping take over my life, it was a lot easier to get up and going in the evenings.
I cleaned the house from top to bottom, something I’d neglected during the busy months before the shop opened. I did a total inventory of the valuables to make sure Jenny and Grandma Ruthie hadn’t managed to sneak into the house while I was out of town. I reorganized my library, and found about fifteen paperback copies of Pride and Prejudice. I also found a few titles that Mr. Wainwright had sent home with me from the shop to help me “acclimate to my new culture”: Love Customs of the Were, a few volumes on exotic were species, and The Spectrum of Vampirism . Mr. Wainwright loaned it to me the year before to help me find my way through the subtle levels of vampirism. Honestly, it’s like Scientology. I boxed them up and set them in Big Bertha’s trunk, so I’d remember to return them to the stock.
And finally, I packed up everything associated with Gabriel: the ticket stubs from our first movie date, the little platinum unicorn necklace he’d given me for Christmas, the travel guides I’d pored over before we left on our trip. I put them in a cardboard box and took them down to the root cellar. Maybe one day, I’d be strong enough to take them out again or even throw them away, but for the moment, I just wanted them out of sight.
In the wake of our repetitive bonding experiences, Andrea, Dick, and I developed a new schedule at the shop. Andrea and I would open, brew coffee, go through mail, and prepare orders for shipping for about an hour before customers started showing up. Andrea generally needed a nap around midnight, so Dick would show up and give me a hand until closing. In the interest of keeping Andrea from being completely nocturnal, she got Wednesdays off, and Dick helped me open. The routine was relaxed but organized enough to suit my compulsive librarian’s soul.
So, imagine our surprise when we arrived on a Wednesday night to find a man in wrinkled khakis sleeping against the front door of the shop. Sadly, it wasn’t all that odd to find a drunk sleeping it off in our doorway, so Dick rousted him with a few shoves to the shoulder, while I gathered the delivery parcel Rip Van Winkle was using as a pillow.
“You’re going to have to find some other place to rest your head.” Dick sighed, pulling at the man’s shirt. “Come on, buddy.”
Rip snorted and yawned. “Jane Jameson?”
“I told you not to put it on the door!” Dick exclaimed, pointing at the little sign that read, “Jane Jameson, Proprietor. You have enough problems without giving the crazies your name.”
“I’m looking for Jane Jameson,” the man said, yawning and scratching at two days’ worth of beard growth. “I’m Emery Mueller, Gilbert Wainwright’s nephew.”
As advertised, Mr. Wainwright’s nephew, Emery, was both milquetoast and mealy-mouthed. Emery was the son of Mr. Wainwright’s only sister, Margaret, who had moved to California in the 1960s and married a radio evangelist. Mr. Wainwright had only seen Emery on rare visits to the Hollow before Emery moved to Guatemala to teach English at a mountain seminary. He’d described Emery as an odd little boy who’d grown into an odd little man. And considering the level of oddity in Mr. Wainwright, that was saying something.
The cherry on this sundae of genetic improbability was that Emery and Mr. Wainwright also happened to be Dick’s descendants. Dick had watched over the Wainwright family, the illegitimate product of a prevampirism dalliance with a servant girl, for generations. He considered Mr. Wainwright to be the “pick of the litter,” stepping in to pay for his college tuition and proudly watching as Mr. Wainwright became one of the first Hollow boys to volunteer for duty in World War II. Dick was afraid that his less-than-upstanding connections might put the family at risk, so he’d only confessed to the relation the previous year, after Mr. Wainwright died. Watching those two bond, a vampire who appeared to be in his thirties giving fatherly advice to a ghost in his seventies, was as mind-boggling as it was touching.>“Story of my life.” He sighed. He pulled out his wallet and handed me a business card for Dr. Charles McCraffrey and his ear, nose, and throat practice in nearby Willardsville. He was a doctor. A vampire doctor but a doctor all the same. It was a good thing my mother wasn’t there to witness this. “If you change your mind, please give me a call. It was very nice to meet you, Jane.”
“You, too, Charlie.”
“What happened with Mr. Hands?” Dick asked, glaring in Charlie’s direction when I slumped back to the bar stool.
“You’re the one who wanted me to share my ‘gift’ with the world,” I reminded him. “Pour me another drink.”
Dick obliged, asking Norm for a bottle of water. Apparently, I was being cut off. “That was a really nice guy,” I told Dick. “And a doctor. Do you know what the chances are of meeting a nice, noncrazy vampire doctor at a bar in Half-Moon Hollow? I have a better chance of being struck by lightning and winning the lottery at the same time.”
“Well, maybe we should go out and buy some tickets,” Dick said.
“Don’t humor the cranky vampire. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just meet a nice guy and go home with him? Why do I have all these weird hang-ups about feelings and meaning and making sure I have this intuitive bell going off in my head before I can let someone into my pants? You know, even when Gabriel and I had sex for the first time—”
“I don’t know if I want to hear this,” Dick said, shaking his head.
“I had to be all angry and ‘out of control.’ I couldn’t just get lost in the moment. I needed an excuse, which is ridiculous, because there’s no reason not to want to have sex with Gabriel. I mean, he has an amazing body—”
“What part of ‘drinking and not talking’ did I not make clear?” Dick demanded.
The band kicked into “Benny and the Jets.” A skinny, pimpled vampire and two of his buddies appeared behind Dick and tapped him on the shoulder. “Dick, I want to talk to you.”
Dick looked thrilled for the interruption. “Todd, thank God. What can I do for you?”
“I want my money back for those Springsteen tickets,” Todd demanded, his Adam’s apple bobbing indignantly.
Using a patient, paternal voice, Dick said, “Now, Todd, I gave you a good deal on those tickets. I didn’t even charge a handling fee. You couldn’t get a price that good from Ticketmaster.”
“Those tickets were to a concert two years ago!” Todd shouted, a cue for his companions to put on their mean faces and look intimidating. I rolled my eyes and took a swig of water, which did nothing for my thirst, blood- or liquor-wise.
“They were collector’s items!” Dick shouted back. “It’s not my fault you didn’t look on the tickets to check the date. I never told you they were for a concert this year.”
“Well, you sure the hell didn’t tell me they weren’t!” Todd whined. “I took a girl all the way to Memphis for that concert. There was nothing there! Marcy was convinced I was trying to trick her into something. I felt like an asshole!”
