Earlier Work

Biography

REDEMPTION

By Victoria Logue

WOLF

The fog is so thick he can barely see three feet ahead, but he can hear her footsteps, smell her fear. He senses her accelerated heart rate, the blood coursing through her veins.

         In the distance, Coit Tower snakes up through the fog, swaying like an entranced cobra in the swirling mist.

         He shakes his head. The fog, which cloaks the city, seems to have insinuated its way into his brain as well.

         “Jesus,” he mutters under his breath. That’s probably sacrilegious. Or is it blasphemous? In my case, probably both, he finds his mind wandering yet again.  He chuckles, and shakes his head once more. He looks like a dog trying to shake the water from his fur. In this case, it is the fog. He can feel it there—the mist—creeping through his mind, chilling him with its touch.

         He shivers and his flesh crawls into goosebumps. And though it is not the October chill that causes it, he pulls his trench coat more closely to him.

         Straighten up or you’ll lose her, he tells himself, severely.

         And he cannot afford to lose her. It is already late and he would have to start all over again. Now is perfect. Two warm October days have brought the fog rolling across the bay. He enjoys hunting in the fog. It saves him the energy of having to create the right atmosphere, to maneuver the fog himself. He is already so tired, so weak, and unfortunately, he has no one to blame but himself for that.

         They are climbing Telegraph Hill. Its narrow alleys and alpine-like inclines are perfect for his purpose. Both the fog and ascending alley will slow her down. But not him.

         He can hear her slightly labored breathing and knows it is time.

         She can no longer hear his footsteps. She had realized she was being followed when she left the bar in North Beach. And, although she had glanced over her shoulder a number of times, the fog had always hidden her pursuer. Perhaps she had been mistaken. Maybe she was being paranoid, and those echoing footsteps behind her were a hallucination. Only half a block more and she would be home.

         If only I hadn’t stopped to watch the sun set, she thinks, remembering how particularly striking it had been this evening—neon tones of yellow, orange and red and even purple. It had been completely dark by the time she reached the bar.

         If she hadn’t stopped to watch the sun set, she would already be comfortably ensconced in her apartment. As it is, her reflexes have been dulled by the two glasses of chardonnay she had dawdled over at the bar. Now that she thought about it, they had probably made her less cautious, as well. If I get home alive, she promises herself, I will never drink alone again; well, at least not in public, she amends. And if this damn walk home weren’t all up hill, she thinks, heart pounding with the effort of the climb, I would also already be there. She can see her building near the top of the incline—almost there.

         A strong hand is clamped over her mouth.

         Not that I have enough breath left to scream, she thinks with a strange calm. She feels his hot breath against her neck, and as his soft lips press against her fog-cooled skin, she is amazed at the wave of desire that sweeps through her. Even her knees weaken at his touch.

         Please don’t kill me, she thinks when she feels a slight prick on her throat just below her ear, at the corner of her jawbone, and then nonsensically, I’m going to have one hell of a hickey. The fog dances around her, coloring everything gray, then black.

         Fog isn’t black, she thinks as she slips into unconsciousness.

 He doesn’t kill her. He never kills. She will wake up cold and damp some hours later, weak and ill but alive.

         How many necks, he wonders as he returns to his apartment. How many delicately curved throats had he placed his burning lips against—hundreds? Thousands? He laughs out loud but it is a laugh of effect not of feeling. He is full of energy now, and the ruddiness of his cheeks and lips contrast sharply with the extraordinary pallor of his skin.

~ ~ ~

         In the North Beach bar, sitting unobtrusively in a corner, he had surveyed the crowd for his next victim. He’d spotted her not long after he sat down. She wasn’t very pretty—a little more plump than he liked, a heavy, doughy face. Only her eyes, dark Italian eyes fringed by extravagant lashes, saved her from ugliness. But she, too, had been trying to appear inconspicuous, and that had attracted his attention.

         Wanting only a quiet nightcap and no trouble, she’d sat, undisturbed, in a booth sipping her wine and perusing a magazine. It was a good bar for that, filled mostly with dotcom programming geeks more interested in talking code than hitting up any single females. When she’d finished her second glass of wine, she had closed the magazine and made her way toward the door.

         Unless she went to another bar, he knew she was just what he was looking for. He had to be careful these days, especially in this city. He wasn’t sure whether AIDS would affect him, but he wasn’t about to take a chance. This one didn’t appear to be promiscuous; neither did she look strung out on drugs. And, although she had surely heard him following her, she had not panicked. That had happened in the past and it was hell.

~ ~ ~

         He brushes his fog-moistened hair off his high and pale forehead with a leather-gloved hand. A passerby, blinded by the fog, bumps into him, but never quite finishes her pardons when she catches a glimpse of his face. He laughs, cruelly, as she backs away from him.

         Until she reaches the end of the block and turns the corner, she shivers uncontrollably. She could have sworn his eyes were red.

         They are not red, but bluish-green. They’re the color of the Mediterranean, Hannele, ever romantic, had told him once. He had laughed and pulled her into his arms. “How would you know?” He had teased her. “You have never seen the Mediterranean, much less been out of Furstensteinbrueck.” She had silenced him with her kisses, and he had been more than willing to be silenced. But the liquidness of his eyes and their ever-changing color—from the grey of a stormy sea to the placid green of a dead calm—only enhances their inherent power. A smile lingers on his lips at the woman’s reaction. It is a practiced smile and although it does not hide the brilliant white of his teeth, it does veil their peculiar sharpness.                 

         An unfamiliar emotion stops him in mid stride. It passes quickly, and he is unable to identify it as ennui.

         The thought of his empty apartment, despite the fact he has accomplished the night’s goal, leaves him feeling hollow. With a continued sense of abstractedness, he roams the streets for another half hour, and then enters a video rental store. He heads automatically to the romance section before remembering that his favorite movie is actually on the action shelf.         

 Once there, he checks for the movie. It’s available although he is not sure whether it will help tonight, not sure why he is even checking it out yet again, not sure what has prevented him from actually purchasing the damn thing, and no longer even sure why it is his favorite.

         His Siberian husky, Mephistopheles, greets him as he enters his apartment. He lovingly pets the pale-eyed dog while bolting the apartment’s massive door.

         He throws his trench coat, dampened by the fog, over the back of an ancient over-stuffed armchair. The living room has a minimum of furniture—only an old but comfortable leather sofa, a coffee table stacked with numerous books ranging from the latest bestsellers to academic texts. There is even a Bible. Almost seeming out-of-place, a solid oak entertainment center holds a 43-inch plasma TV and a high-definition dvd player and myriad dvds as well as a multi-disc cd player and hundreds of cds. Another wall is covered by a massive floor-to-ceiling bookshelf bulging with books—contemporary fiction in most every genre, classics, philosophy, theology, and books in a variety of foreign languages. Everything but cookbooks. A nondescript shag carpet covers the floor. It may have been tan once. The ugly avocado kitchen has no furniture, not even an avocado refrigerator left over from the 60s, the last time the place was decorated.

         His pulls his gloves off next, tossing them on the coat. He always wears the gloves when in public, even in the summer. But, as he ventures out only at night, he doesn’t get too many strange looks.

         He studies the long, fine hair that sparsely covers his palms and grimaces in disgust. It is easier to keep his nails filed down. He’d shave his palms, but he knows that the hair will just grow right back and more quickly than for the average human.

         In the bathroom, he turns on the shower. There is probably no blood. He is always careful but he has to make sure. He pulls off his mostly black tie and lets it slide to the tiled floor. He tosses his wing tips backwards into the bedroom as he stares sightlessly into the mirror. He removes his suit jacket and begins unbuttoning his now-rumpled shirt. He undresses mechanically, contemplating the most-recent vampire movie he has seen: “The Lost Boys.” He has watched it repeatedly, owns the dvd along with a couple dozen other vampire movies. The only ones that even come anywhere close to describing his pathetic life are “Dracula” and “Nosferatu.”

         He prefers the “Dracula” with Gary Oldman despite the Count’s outlandish hairdo. When he’d had the unfortunate experience of meeting that particular legend, the monster had seemed incredibly vain about the long black hair that curled about his shoulders. No, Wolf had shaken his head grimly the first time he’d see that movie, he just couldn’t see the Count wasting his time with something as foolish as styling his hair.

         Wolf had mused on more than one occasion that although each of the vampire movies he had seen had managed to dredge up only a modicum of the truth, all were consistent in the vampire’s lust for blood.

         At the moment he is pondering the flaming eyes, retracting fangs, transformations, consumption of food and smoking in “Lost Boys”.

         “Hardly,” he says aloud. “Not that some of those aren’t bad ideas.” He smiles at the thought of retracting fangs, a natural smile. Had he been able to see himself in the mirror, he might have been startled to see the ghoulish grin reflecting back at him. He also would have been dismayed at the solemnity and apathy in his eyes.

         “But it’s never going to happen,” he tells the wall behind him as he removes the wool pants that complete his suit. He always dresses up to do his stalking. He has learned from experience that he is more likely to be regarded as a non-threat if he appears “professional.”

         “A professional,” his lip curls in loathing and he laughs at himself. The unfamiliar noise reverberates off the tiled walls as he wonders if a vampire can actually be considered a professional. As the echoes recede, his look turns to puzzlement. He very rarely laughs. As a matter of fact, almost never. When was the last time he had laughed? And tonight, he cannot stop. Not that it’s been pleasant laughter. Rather it has been damned disparaging.

         I don’t like myself anymore, he thinks, and the thought shocks him. He contemplates how happy those punks had been in the movie.

         “Oh, yes,” he says, sardonically, as he steps into the shower. “You never grow old and you never die. You only have to feed.”

         Vampire movies too often reveal the tongue-in-cheek attitude the world takes toward his kind, he reflects as the hot water pummels his pallid skin. He almost longs for the days when creatures of the night were actually hunted. These days, he thinks, I’d be considered a psycho and committed to some institution, what a nice euphemism, where I would die almost immediately.

         Or, and this might be worse, he realizes with horror, they would assume I was one of those vampire culture freaks. How much the world has changed, he sighs, when self-proclaimed vampires are just part of a wider underground subculture for abnormal behavior.

         He understands that some humans claim to have a real need to consume blood but lucky them, he laughs again, it doesn’t have to be “living” blood pumped straight from a human’s heart into his throat. The water is cooling. How long has he been in the shower? He angrily twists the handle on the shower to off and steps, dripping onto the bath mat.

         Toweling off, he crosses the hall to the bedroom where he will sleep until the sun sets the next evening. The door has been reinforced to keep out any unexpected visitors; Mephistopheles employed as both an early warning system and intruder deterrent. No coffin, just a single bed and a dresser occupy the tiny room, but it is what covers the bed that makes him scowl and once again chuckle self-deprecatingly. A thin layer of soil coats the bed—all that remains of his ties to Furstensteinbrueck. It seems so arbitrary that he must sleep (no, he corrects himself, it is more of a nightly hibernation) on the soil of the land where he was created, so to speak. It has something to do with the grave, but he has never really died. He guesses he will never fully understand. He pulls a robe around his lean and naked body and returns to the living room to watch his movie, “The Terminator.” It’s still a few hours until sunrise. 

VLAD

         Vlad stared at his father in shock. “You’ve done what?” he stuttered in anger. His heart began beating, wildly, and his face was flushed with the fury he felt at the most recent of his father’s betrayals. In spite of the pervasive November chill, he could feel the sweat start under his arms, sticky and uncomfortable. It was soon sliding down his sides, itching almost unbearably beneath his wool tunic. He wanted desperately to scratch but wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction of knowing he had that much power over him. And that, of course, enraged him even more.

         “I refuse to go! I will not spend even an hour with those heathen swine . . .”

         His father interrupted his tirade with a slap to the face that sent him reeling backwards. He slammed into the wall behind him so hard that his head ricocheted off the stone and he slumped slowly to the floor.

         He opened his eyes to find his younger brother, Radu, shaking him, fear and worry making his big brown eyes look even larger. He put a hand to the swelling on the back of his head and groaned. His father glared down at him, angrily.

         “You and your brother are going to Adrianople. You have no choice in this matter.”

         “What about Mircea?” he asked, slowly getting to his feet.

         “You have no right to question my authority,” his father yelled into Vlad’s face, now pale with pain. “I will tell you what is to happen. Do you understand?”

         Vlad’s cheeks crimsoned again, the brightness of the red contrasting sharply with his pale skin. “Yes, my Lord.” He replied, glowering balefully at his father. He made it sound like a curse.

         “Be gone,” his father ordered, pushing him roughly from his chamber. Vlad stalked back to his room as Radu scampered behind, trying to catch up. Vlad’s 13-year-old legs were much longer albeit gangly. His long black curls bounced rhythmically about his shoulders as he made his way down the cold passageway.

         “I need to be alone,” he said to Radu as he made a sharp left turn into his own bedchamber and slammed the door in his younger brother’s face. The 7-year-old Radu had long since grown used to Vlad’s foul temper and skipped, happily, down to the kitchen. Maybe there would be a treat awaiting him there, or at the very least one of the servants might be able to amuse him. He couldn’t understand why Vlad was so upset about being sent to Adrianople. Why, they might even have a chance to see Constantinople! He had heard so many stories . . .

         In his chamber, Vlad paced the cold stone floor. What a hypocrite his father was, he fumed, doing whatever was necessary to save his own worthless hide; not to mention further himself politically. From killing his own relation, Alexandru, to gain the Wallachian throne to paying tribute to the Sultan, his treacheries were numerous. And all this despite the fact he was a member of the Order of the Dragon, sworn to killing those infidel Turks!

         Most recently, Vlad kicked at his bed, his father had sent his own son, Mircea, to fight the Turks in his place at the Battle of Varna, all because he wanted to appear neutral to the Turks. And their forces had been massacred! Vlad was still in shock. There had been more than 120,000 Turkish Janissaries (a number of whom they had provided, he sneered, damn the Turks) to their paltry 30,000 troops. It was no wonder Hunyadi was so furious at his father. And now, the ultimate betrayal—he and his brother were to be sent to those very Turks as hostages.

         “He cares more about himself than his own sons,” he seethed, watching a large beetle amble its way, laboriously, across the chamber. He lifted his foot in order to smash it into oblivion, but paused. He wanted to make it hurt; he wanted to release on it all the pent up anger he held against his father. How could he do that best? He rifled through the bits of “treasure” he kept in a richly ornamented wooden box that he had removed from the iron-bound trunk at the end of his bed. He might be the son of the Prince of Wallachia, but he had very little in the way of possessions—a few pieces of clothing, even fewer jewels and the barest minimum of weapons that were needed for training as a knight.

         As a matter of fact, it had been his tutor, Petru cel Mare, an elderly boyar, who had instilled in him his deep hatred of the Turks. During his apprenticeship, Petru had regaled him with tales of the Battle of Nicolopolis; had taught him not only the ways of war but ways of killing and torturing captives, as well.

         He pulled a long, gold hat pin from the box; the small ruby at the end caught the red of the sunset and glinted evilly in the fading light. Vlad returned his attention to the beetle. It was about to disappear into a crevice in the wall.  The boy raced over to the wall and scooped up the bug, which, overturned in Vlad’s palm, began waving its legs wildly. Fiercely intent on his project, his brow furrowed in concentration, Vlad slowly inserted the sharp tip of the pin into the bug’s abdomen. But not all the way. Pushing the ruby end of the pin into a shallow crack between two paving stones in the floor, he silently observed the bug as its weight and its frenetically pinioning legs slowly pulled it more fully onto the pin. At one point, as the room got darker and darker, he dashed to light a candle so that he could watch the drama play itself out to the bitter end. But, as the pin finally protruded through the opposite side of the beetle’s carapace, Vlad finally began to get bored. This would be much more entertaining, he thought, if it were a small mammal or bird, instead of an insect. Damn, he frowned, he couldn’t even tell if it was suffering. Not much point in this process, he sighed in frustration.

         He threw himself on his bed, imagining the tortured shrieks of a mouse. He smiled. Yes, much more entertaining. He would have to try it sometime.

WOLF

 He had had a feeling that it wouldn’t work tonight.  Usually, he finds that watching “The Terminator” makes him feel . . . he finds it hard to articulate. It isn’t so much that it makes him experience emotions such as love, passion or even vengeance, but rather it impresses upon him a certain hopefulness. His usual detachment from the world, his constant preoccupation with survival, is lifted and for a couple of hours he feels if not hopeful for his future, at least not hope-less.

         Tonight, though, as he had watched Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton, for the first time he no longer wants to trade places with Kyle Reese. He is no longer hopeful that he will be given the chance that Kyle has received to ensure a future for himself, and for that matter, for all mankind. Before this night, he would pray fervently that like the character, Kyle, he would be given the chance to return to the past; to arrive in that clearing before Vlad, and to carry Hannele safely away to a happier future for them both. And, at the end of the movie, when Sarah Conner wept over the loss of her love but resolutely prepared for the future, he would feel his heart swell with the emotion and he would pray, “Please Lord, this is not what I wanted my life to be. Please give me the chance to redeem myself.”

         But, as often as not, he would wake up the next evening toward sunset and be fully immersed in survival mode—emotionless and cunning—until the next time he watched the movie.

         But tonight, he sits, moodily, watching the empty television screen. And tonight, for the first time in a very long time, upon its blank face play his daydreams. There was a time when he used to fantasize about Hannele constantly, but thoughts of her grew more and more painful and for centuries, he has blocked all but the fact she that she existed and was stolen from him from his memory. He hasn’t daydreamed in years. But, tonight, upon the screen he sees himself with a woman. She’s pretty but she doesn’t have to be. He comes home from work, and she is there to greet him. Or maybe, he smiles, she comes home from work and I am there to kiss her, give her a glass of wine. I tell her what I did that day, she tells me what she did. I ask her if she’s ready for dinner. Only if you’re the main course, she says. Wolf grimaces. The opposite is too close to the truth. And why is he even wasting time thinking this way? He realizes, finally and irrevocably, he is the way he is. He will be a vampire until the end of time unless something happens in the meantime. He will never be human, never be given that chance he so desperately longs for.

         He slams his fist into the couch, and jumps up, paces the room. It’s not fair, his mind cries. He glances toward the window. The off-white curtains are turning rosy. He yawns. It is that time again. His heart contracts, tightly and painfully. Don’t let me feel this way, he screams, silently. God, I haven’t felt like this in years, why now?

          “Why did it take me more than four centuries to realize the truth of it all?” he queries his dog. “Why on earth am I suddenly feeling this way now? I am not sure I want to spend eternity in hopelessness.”

         Mephistopheles regards him, solemnly.

         “When I wake up, it will all go away, right? This is only a dream. It has to be.”

         Mephisto barks a reply.

         “You’re right,” Wolf sighs. And the dog is right. Wolf hasn’t dreamt in years.        

         “Watch out for me, Mephisto,” he tells the dog. He looks back over his shoulder to the dvd that he has placed on the floor in front of the front door so that he won’t forget to return it. He glances at the shelves filled with dvds he has purchased. Is there a reason he hasn’t bought it, he wonders as he bolts his bedroom door?  He speculates on what Jung or Freud might have to say about his not wanting to actually own his so-called favorite movie. What were the psychological ramifications of it all, he grimaces, slipping out of the robe and sliding onto the dirt-covered bed. No use dirtying more clothes than necessary. As if it even matters, he thinks, idly, as he falls into his nightly “coma.”

         The next evening, he will drop his clothes off at an all-night laundry and return the dvd before heading back to Corazon, where he spends most of his days. He feeds only two or three times a week.        

GINNY

         The mist lies as thick in Corazon as it does up the coast. Ginny’s gingerbread cottage looks like a fairy tale gone sour.

         A late meeting had kept her at the paper until 11 p.m. And, just as she was heading home for the evening, Abe had walked in. She had groaned, inwardly, and ignored the way his face had lit up when he had seen her still there.

         “How about a nightcap?” he had asked.

         A nightcap, her brain had ridiculed. Did people still say that? But, she could think of no reasonable excuse to say no to her boss and she couldn’t exactly call his pleasure at seeing her ‘sexual harassment.’ The truth was, they had become friends during the past few years, but it was clear Abe’s intentions had moved past the professional and had slowly crept toward personal.

         Later, immersed in the ultra-masculine ambiance of The Boar’s Head Tavern, and after a bit of small talk over Irish coffees, Abe had visibly taken a deep breath.

         Oh Jesus, she had thought, here it comes now. She had known what was coming, had been dreading this moment for such a very long time. And, she had long since admitted to herself, part of the reason she had come to dread this moment was the very fact that it had taken so damn long to come to fruition. Well, it just made her wonder. Between this apparent cowardice (if that was the right word) and the most glaring grounds of all—the fact that she wasn’t in the least bit physically attracted to him and had never pretended to be—she had come to dread each of his baby steps toward making his infatuation a reality.

         Tonight, as he had physically steeled himself, she had tried to stare into the depths of her drink, searching for a plausible “no” to the question that was about to come. But the Irish Coffee was too murky, or perhaps it was just not the oracle she had hoped it would be. She had studied the eponymous boar’s head over the pub’s huge fireplace, but its tremendously huge tusks gleamed evilly in the firelight. Although that had probably been her imagination, as well—the beady black eyes pronouncing doom and gloom. For a second, she had been sure it was laughing at her.

         Go ahead and laugh, she had sighed, inwardly, the story of my freaking life.

         “Virginia,” he’d said, using her proper name. She’d reluctantly looked into the faded blue of his eyes.

         “Yes?” she’d choked.

         “Uh, do you, uh, have any, uh, plans, for um, tomorrow night?” She had tried, desperately, to think of something—another meeting, a breaking story, a previous engagement. Damn! He was only giving her a day’s notice for God’s sake. “Mary, Mother of God, have mercy on me,” she prayed, desperately. But Mary remained silent, she couldn’t lie and, more importantly, she knew that Abe was more familiar with his reporter’s work schedules and the paper than she was. Besides, she knew that the “I don’t date my co-workers” line wouldn’t pass with him, particularly as she had gone out with the former sports editor and she suspected, not with a little guilt, just why he was now ‘former.’ She was nearly 100 percent sure that the offer for a better position from the San Francisco Examiner had been via Abe calling in a favor. How could have Scott refused?

         “No,” she’d replied, nearly sighing and staring at the table instead of his eyes. She could no longer look at him; her reluctance would be too obviously revealed in her big brown eyes. The mirrors of the soul,’ she’d reflected, I can’t hide anything with my eyes.

         So, Abe had talked her into an evening in San Francisco despite the fact she had probably looked like a deer caught in the headlights of a semi. Smash! Road kill. She had felt that a little part of her had died.

         Now, past midnight and unlocking the door to her cottage, Ginny is seriously regretting her inability to just say “no.” One of her many weaknesses and one that got her in a lot more trouble than solitary walks on the beach or champagne and chocolate. Why does she live in such terror of hurting the feelings of others while letting herself be mowed down continually?  She wanted to slap herself across the face; kick her own ass.

         You’re not interested in him, she chides herself. You had no right to go and build up his hopes by agreeing to go out with him just because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings. When will you ever learn?

         “When will you ever learn?” she sings aloud, paraphrasing Pete Seeger via Peter, Paul and Mary. “When will you ever learn?”

         Abe is a nice guy, he really is, she argues with herself. But, that perhaps, is his death sentence. They have been on friendly terms ever since she had come to work for the newspaper close to three years ago now. And while she has tried to maintain her level of interest as no more than subordinate co-worker and friend (he did own the paper, after all), she is just NOT attracted to him. That is it. Pure and simple. She enjoys talking to him, even thinks they could be best friends. But. But, Abe is interested in her as more than a friend. She could read that look in his eyes the moment she was introduced to him.          She had seen it so very many times before, had only fallen for it once when she was a sophomore in college. That was the year she had had the bad judgment to get involved with Ken. Regardless of the fact that she had not been physically attracted to him, she had given in to that “I worship and adore you” look. And it wasn’t long before she had realized that despite the fact that Ken loved her, they were meant to be friends, only, and that it had been weakness on her part to be so flattered by his neediness. Well, she amended, perhaps not even friends. She could have remained friends but Ken had wanted so much more and remained perpetually hopeful and so she had had to end it. Painfully, yes, but with so much relief on her own part. So, she was not going to fall for that look again, at least not with Abe.

         An incurable romantic who agreeably admits to sappiness, Ginny is still waiting for someone to sweep her off her feet. At night, especially on cold and rainy evenings, alone in her bed, she sometimes realizes that there is no such thing as a knight in shining armor. It is, in fact, the stuff of fairy tales. And she cries. No, it is more than crying, it is heart-rending (or, heart-rendering, as her mother used to joke) wailing. When this happens, she feels as if her heart has been shredded.

         “Why can’t there be such a thing as romantic love?” she weeps to her cats. “Surely, somewhere in this world there is a man who will want me as much as I want him; someone who will die for me and kill for me as I would die and kill for him; someone who cannot keep his hands off me, even when we’re in public. Someone who loses a part of himself each moment he’s away from me . . .”

         Most of the time she ignores that need in her, and buries herself in her work, her cats and the horse her stepfather had given her when she had earned her Master’s degree in journalism.

         “Damn,” she tells her two Abyssinians, as she closes her front door on the fog that seems to want to slither into the house with her. They meow, but it is more of a ‘well, it’s about darn time you got home and fed us’ than a welcome.

         “All right, all right,” she agrees, leading them to the kitchen. She dishes them up their daily ration of Hill’s Science Diet, and warms herself some milk. She has a feeling she will be unable to sleep. Sometimes the fog does that to her. It makes her think more than she wants to, which makes her restless and leaves her feeling frustrated and hopeless. And the events of this night have done nothing to alleviate that feeling.

         Half an hour later in her down-comforted bed, she stares at the ceiling, imagining all the terrible conclusions to the next evening.

         She could be a real bitch but he might fire her, she thinks. No, worse, he wouldn’t fire her and she would have to live with that every time she saw his face. Nope. No way.

         She could be nice all evening, and then a bitch as soon as they turned into her driveway and as he was walking her to her front door. How many times had she played that game? “Thanks for the wonderful evening,” smiling ever so kindly as her brain yelled, don’t you even try to get in my face!” And she would close the door to the barest of cracks, ready to slam it in the face of the offender, rip off his foot if he were even so bold as to stick it in the door. “Good night and thanks again,” and shut the door in his face and if that wasn’t the biggest clue . . . But, could she risk that with Abe? Is she sure she wants him to think of her that way—the frigid bitch? It is a lose-lose situation. What the hell is she going to do?

         Why don’t you just enjoy yourself, but never pretend you’re more than just friends, play it by ear, be as nice as possible, she finally decides. But then again, how needy is he? Will he take “nice” as encouragement? Oh it’s going to be a long night. She wonders if maybe she should get up early and go to Mass. She can use all the help she can get. She tosses and turns, and when she finally sleeps, it is fitfully.