For a moment which stretched into an hour, the empty eyes watched her.

Then the thing under the bed spoke, hollow, sad, weak as a child. “Most of ‘em? Not evil. Not most of ‘em. Just so … hahh … so fuck’n hungry.” Nothing moved except her lips. “And outside. Know what that does? Always outside. And so … so hungry.”

Tears streamed down Sally’s face as hope blossomed into a fabulous orange red rose. Fully aware of the risk, she reached out a trembling hand. The eyes kept watching her.

Lavinia’s hand was cold. She had always had such warm hands; Sally had loved those powerful, warm hands on her naked skin. Sally’s hands and feet got cold easily and Lavinia would warm them. It hurt her newly beating heart to feel Lavinia’s rough hand as cold as her father’s on the morning when Sally had been the one to find him dead.

The hand quivered, but didn’t try to snatch hers. “You’re a vampire,” she said to it. She looked up at the eyes. “But somehow you’re still you? And you’re weak as a kitten. Why? From … hunger?” She shuddered.

“Dunno,” the thin voice whispered. “I’m hungry. Yeah. But my money … ‘s on daytime.”

It took Sally a moment to parse Lavinia’s labored speech. “You mean the daylight makes you weak?”

The hand finally moved, fingertips stroking Sally’s palm. “I remember it. What we had.” She wailed in weak anger, “I know I loved you so fuckin’ much!” That burst used up all her energy. In a hopeless voice she concluded, “All I feel now is hungry.”

Their rhythm as a couple had been that whenever one of them got emotional the other got logical. “Are you sure?” Sally asked. “How could you talk about it if you’re cut off from it?”

“If you say.” The eyes watched her carefully. “So whatcha gonna do?” Sally realized that Lavinia had not hidden beneath the bed from the day.

She’d hidden from Sally.

She felt the grain of the wood against her palm. Wouldn’t it be the kindest thing to kill Lavinia quickly? But she was talking to Lavinia again, beyond all hope. “I can’t kill you,” she said, looking down again.

When there was no reply, she went on miserably, “I don’t know if you want … I don’t know what you want. Maybe if you, if you want me to kill you, you should attack me. I can do it if you … I don’t know.” She shook her head and tears dripped.

With no clear end in mind, she asked, “Do you have to stay under there?”

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“No f’kin’ clue. But I c’n barely move. Ever since the day came. This’s like…” A bitter memory stirred in her face.

Sally held out her arms. “Let me get you out of there. At least come sit on the bed with me.”

A cold weak laugh. “Sure, prop me up, wedge me in the corner, I’ll be fine.”

Sally put her arms around the cold body, hand still clutching the stake. If she attacks, I think I can kill her. But Lavinia was as limp as a rag. With hard work she dragged Lavinia out and got her stretched on the bed. She cried again at the deep purple eyes like gems in the haunted face. But she knew now what she was going to do. The walls had stopped closing in.

She took the limp hand. “Baby,” she said carefully. “As long as there’s some you in there, I’m with you. If you got sick, I’d have taken care of you. If you were in a wheelchair, I’d push you around. Alright? You’re sick now, deathly sick. And I’ll take care of you.” Wasn’t that what love was supposed to be about, after the passion wore off? In a way she’d wanted to offer this devotion to everyone she’d ever been with.

Lavinia’s eyes closed and Sally hoped she saw something other than numb despair. Behind her, the morning sun crept into the cab of the camper, felt towards the curtains Sally had torn, then faded behind a bank of clouds.

Lavinia spoke with her eyes closed. “I had a cousin once, long time ago. Good guy, salt of the earth blah blah. Got ALS.” Sally had heard the acronym somewhere but didn’t want to stop Lavinia to ask what it meant. “One year, fine. Next time I visit him, can barely walk. Next time, barely move. Eyes can blink, fingertips twitch, that’s it. Had some computer jimmy, could twitch out letters, that was the only way he could communicate.”

In Lavinia’s mask of misery, Sally recognized her own face from long years of seeing it in the mirror: bleakly unable to cry, though tears would be sweet release. “I dunno what I’m saying. Course I feel like that now but I felt like that before the sun came up too and I could move, Jesus fuck, just fine in the dark. After Ryan died, I didn’t believe so much in God. Not that I fuckin’ ever…”

Suddenly her eyes opened and the blank misery had been replaced with intellectual curiosity, which made Sally’s heart glad. “Hey baby. Make the sign of the cross. I always wondered.” Her voice wasn’t so heavy either.

Happy for anything that let Lavinia be her old self, Sally crossed her index fingers and held them where Lavinia could see. She stared intently. “Huh. Nothin’. That’s good. Glad I’m not a walking advertisement for the old bastard.”

Sally laughed. Lavinia rolled her eyes. “She’s laughin’. I’m a funny vampire.” The enormity of what she’d just said deadened Lavinia’s face again. Desperate to keep Lavinia interested, Sally said, “What about a Star of David?”

It worked. Lavinia laughed weakly. “You can make a Magen David with your fingers?”

“That’s a Star of David?”

“Yeah, you helpless goy. Oy, what my mother would say, me dating a shiksa.” She laughed again. They were laughing together. Sally thought her heart was going to burst. She wanted to kiss Lavinia but she pictured Lavinia suddenly snarling and the moment slipped away just as the sun emerged from clouds and shone through the broken curtains directly onto Lavinia’s maggot-white forehead.

Lavinia screamed, a thin ragged sound. Sally screamed with her. She lunged to grab the broken curtain rod.

She was struggling with the slanting mess when she decided she must have gone mad.

Lavinia’s screams didn’t sound like agony. She was making Sally’s favorite sound in the world: her orgasm sound.

Stunned, she dropped the curtains and turned to look.