"I'm sorry, Sookie, okay?"
I nodded as regally as I could. Rene let go of the man's hand abruptly and jerked his thumb to tell the guy to take a hike. The blond lost no time throwing himself out the door. His companion followed.
"Rene, you should have let me handle that myself," I said to him very quietly when it seemed the patrons had resumed their conversations. We'd given the gossip mill enough grist for at least a couple of days. "But I appreciate you standing up for me."
"I don't want no one messing with Arlene's friend," Rene said matter-of-factly. "Merlotte's is a nice place, we all want to keep it nice.'Sides, sometimes you remind me of Cindy, you know?"
Cindy was Rene's sister. She'd moved to Baton Rouge a year or two ago. Cindy was blond and blue-eyed: beyond that I couldn't think of a similarity. But it didn't seem polite to say so. "You see Cindy much?" I asked. Hoyt and the other man at the table were exchanging Shreveport Captains scores and statistics.
"Every so now and then," Rene said, shaking his head as if to say he'd like it to be more often. "She works in a hospital cafeteria."
I patted him on the shoulder. "I gotta go work."
When I reached the bar to get my next order, Sam raised his eyebrows at me. I widened my eyes to show how amazed I was at Rene's intervention, and Sam shrugged slightly, as if to say there was no accounting for human behavior.
But when I went behind the bar to get some more napkins, I noticed he'd pulled out the baseball bat he kept below the till for emergencies.
G RAN KEPT ME busy all the next day. She dusted and vacuumed and mopped, and I scrubbed the bathrooms - did vampires even need to use the bathroom? I wondered, as I chugged the toilet brush around the bowl. Gran had me vacuum the cat hair off the sofa. I emptied all the trash cans. I polished all the tables. I wiped down the washer and the dryer, for goodness's sake.
When Gran urged me to get in the shower and change my clothes, I realized that she regarded Bill the vampire as my date. That made me feel a little odd. One, Gran was so desperate for me to have a social life that even a vampire was eligible for my attention; two, that I had some feelings that backed up that idea; three, that Bill might accurately read all this; four, could vampires even do it like humans?
I showered and put on my makeup and wore a dress, since I knew Gran would have a fit if I didn't. It was a little blue cotton-knit dress with tiny daisies all over it, and it was tighter than Gran liked and shorter than Jason deemed proper in his sister. I'd heard that the first time I'd worn it. I put my little yellow ball earrings in and wore my hair pulled up and back with a yellow banana clip holding it loosely.
Gran gave me one odd look, which I was at a loss to interpret. I could have found out easily enough by listening in, but that was a terrible thing to do to the person you lived with, so I was careful not to. She herself was wearing a skirt and blouse that she often wore to the Descendants of the Glorious Dead meetings, not quite good enough for church, but not plain enough for everyday wear.
I was sweeping the front porch, which we'd forgotten, when he came. He made a vampire entrance; one minute he wasn't there, and the next he was, standing at the bottom of the steps and looking up at me.
I grinned. "Didn't scare me," I said.
He looked a little embarrassed. "It's just a habit," he said, "appearing like that. I don't make much noise."
I opened the door. "Come on in," I invited, and he came up the steps, looking around.
"I remember this," he said. "It wasn't so big, though."
"You remember this house? Gran's gonna love it." I preceded him into the living room, calling Gran as I went.
She came into the living room very much on her dignity, and I realized for the first time she'd taken great pains with her thick white hair, which was smooth and orderly for a change, wrapped around her head in a complicated coil. She had on lipstick, too.
Bill proved as adept at social tactics as my grandmother. They greeted, thanked each other, complimented, and finally Bill ended up sitting on the couch and, after carrying out a tray with three glasses of peach tea, my Gran sat in the easy chair, making it clear I was to perch by Bill. There was no way to get out of this without being even more obvious, so I sat by him, but scooted forward to the edge, as if I might hop up at any moment to get him a refill on his, the ritual glass of iced tea.
He politely touched his lips to the edge of the glass and then set it down. Gran and I took big nervous swallows of ours.
Gran picked an unfortunate opening topic. She said, "I guess you heard about the strange tornado."
"Tell me," Bill said, his cool voice as smooth as silk. I didn't dare look at him, but sat with my hands folded and my eyes fixed to them.
So Gran told him about the freak tornado and the deaths of the Rats. She told him the whole thing seemed pretty awful, but cut-and-dried, and at that I thought Bill relaxed just a millimeter.
"I went by yesterday on my way to work," I said, without raising my gaze. "By the trailer."
"Did you find it looked as you expected?" Bill asked, only curiosity in his voice.
"No," I said. "It wasn't anything I could have expected. I was really ... amazed."
"Sookie, you've seen tornado damage before," Gran said, surprised.
I changed the subject. "Bill, where'd you get your shirt? It looks nice." He was wearing khaki Dockers and a green-and-brown striped golfing shirt, polished loafers, and thin, brown socks.
"Dillard's," he said, and I tried to imagine him at the mall in Monroe, perhaps, other people turning to look at this exotic creature with his glowing skin and beautiful eyes. Where would he get the money to pay with? How did he wash his clothes? Did he go into his coffin naked? Did he have a car or did he just float wherever he wanted to go?
Gran was pleased with the normality of Bill's shopping habits. It gave me another pang of pain, observing how glad she was to see my supposed suitor in her living room, even if (according to popular literature) he was a victim of a virus that made him seem dead.
Gran plunged into questioning Bill. He answered her with courtesy and apparent goodwill. Okay, he was a polite dead man.
"And your people were from this area?" Gran inquired.
"My father's people were Comptons, my mother's people Loudermilks," Bill said readily. He seemed quite relaxed.
"There are lots of Loudermilks left," Gran said happily. "But I'm afraid old Mr. Jessie Compton died last year."
"I know," Bill said easily. "That's why I came back. The land reverted to me, and since things have changed in our culture toward people of my particular persuasion, I decided to claim it."