The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires(108)

“I need to be morbid,” she said, and gave him her “brave soldier” smile. “Have a nice time.”

“I love you,” he said.

It took her by surprise and she faltered for a moment, thinking of everything James Harris had told her about Carter’s out-of-town trips and wondering how much of it was true.

“I love you, too,” she made herself say back.

He left and she waited until she heard his car back out of the driveway, and then she got ready to die.

Patricia’s stomach felt empty. Her whole body felt drained. She felt sick, light-headed, fluttery. Everything felt hollow, like it was all about to float away.

In her bathroom, she put on her new black velvet dress. It felt tight and awful and hugged her in all the wrong places and made her self-conscious of her new curves, and then she adjusted it and pulled it down and cinched and strapped and smoothed. It clung to her like a black cat’s skin. She felt more naked with it on than off.

The phone rang. She answered it.

“Finally,” he said.

“I want to see you,” she said. “I made my decision.”

There was a long pause.

“And,” he prompted.

“I decided that I want someone who values me,” she said. “I’ll be at your place by 6:30.”

Eyeliner, a bit of eyebrow pencil, mascara, some blush. She blotted her lipstick with Kleenex and dropped red balls of tissue into the trash. She brushed her hair, curled it just a touch to give it body, then sprayed it with Miss Brecks. She opened her eyes and they stung from the falling mist of hairspray droplets. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a woman she didn’t know. She didn’t wear earrings or jewelry. She took off her wedding ring. She fed Ragtag, left a note for Carter saying she’d had to run downtown to see Slick in the hospital and she might spend the night, and left home.

Outside, a cold wind thrashed the trees. Cars lined the block, all of them there to watch the Clemson-Carolina game at Grace’s. Bennett was a hardcore Clemson alum, and he hosted the big get-together for the game every year. Patricia wondered how he would deal with everyone drinking. She wondered if he’d start again.

The wind came black and bleak off the harbor, tossing the waves into whitecaps. She passed Alhambra Hall and looked at the far end of the parking lot, close to the water, and saw the minivan parked there. She could just see a few huddled shapes inside. They looked pathetically small.

Friends, Patricia thought. Be with me now.

James Harris’s house was dark. His porch lights were off and only a single lamp shone from his living room window. She realized he’d done it so no one would see her come to his front door. Cars filled every single driveway, and as she walked, a swelling of cheers erupted from all the houses. Kickoff. The game had begun.

She knocked on the front door, and James Harris opened it, lit from behind by the dim glow of the living room lamp, the only light in the house. The radio purred classical music, a piano riding gentle orchestral surges. Her heart danced inside her rib cage as he locked the door behind her.

Neither moved, they just stood in the hall, facing each other in the soft spill of light from the living room.

“You’ve hurt me,” she said. “You’ve scared me. You’ve hurt my daughter. You’ve made my son a liar. You’ve hurt the people I know. But the three years you’ve been here feel more real than the entire twenty-five years of my marriage.”

He raised his hand and traced the side of her jaw with his fingers. She didn’t flinch. She tried not to remember him screaming in her face, spattering it with her daughter’s blood, her daughter who would hurt forever because of his hunger.

“You said you made up your mind,” he said. “So. What do you want, Patricia?”

She walked past him into the living room. She left a trace of perfume in the air. It was a bottle of Opium she’d found while cleaning Korey’s room. She almost never wore perfume. She stopped in front of the mantel and turned to face him.

“I’m tired of my world being so small,” she said. “Laundry, cooking, cleaning, silly women talking about trashy books. It’s not enough for me anymore.”

He sat in the armchair across from her, legs spread, hands on its arms, watching her.

“I want you to make me the way you are,” she said. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want you to do to me what you did to my daughter.”

He looked at her, his eyes crawling across her body, seeing all of her, and she felt exposed, and frightened, and just a little bit aroused. And then James Harris stood up and walked over to her and laughed in her face.

The force of his laughter slapped her, and sent her stumbling a half step back. The room echoed with his laughter, and it bounced crazily off the walls, trapped, doubling and redoubling, battering at her ears. He laughed so hard he flopped back down in his chair, looked at her with a crazy grin on his face, and burst out laughing, again.

She didn’t know what to do. She felt small and humiliated. Finally, his laughter rolled to a stop, leaving him short of breath.

“You must think,” he said, gasping for air, “that I’m the stupidest person you’ve ever met. You come here, all dolled up like a hooker, and give me this breathless story about how you want me to make you one of the bad people? How did you get to be so arrogant? Patricia the genius, and the rest of us are just a bunch of fools?”