Diana waited half an hour after Daniel drove away before she opened the garage’s utility door to watch Bill the Odd-Jobs Man nail up the last sheet of plywood on the garage exterior. She’d been good this time and painted her room glossy black and the living room a deep cobalt blue. He’d started on the garage at 8:00 am. She’d asked him not to use his nail gun, so he hand-nailed for the rest of the day and into the evening, finally, using a headlamp. Working alone, he hadn’t been able to finish the exterior by dark. She’d heard a lot of creative cursing as he manipulated each sheet of plywood alone. A stack of sheetrock awaited Daniel’s work on the interior. The old blue pickup with “Bill the Odd-Jobs Man” on the doors stood next to one of Daniel’s grotesque sculptures, almost human-looking, primitive, not quite covered under a tarp—their dead Proxy, an insurance adjustor in life. Diana’s indiscretion. Other tarps covered Daniel’s crates of tools, supplies and lab equipment stacked against the wall of the house. Nothing appeared disturbed.
Daniel should’ve shipped that piece already, Diana thought. He’s getting very careless.
The calligraphy on the battered old truck intrigued her for its grace and beauty next to its owner, scruffy-haired in paint-spattered jeans but cleanly shaven. Daniel had noted immediately that the odd-jobs man had red hair and blue eyes: “The rarest genotype,” he’d said. She liked red hair and deepened the color of hers often because it emphasized the effect of her green eyes. Bill worked without a shirt, his well-muscled arms and back shiny with sweat and a smattering of sawdust. The truck radio played blues from a Canadian station across the Strait. He drove the last nail with a “Hoo-rah!” then hit the switch to the garage door and did a little dance to Taj Majal playing “Squeeze Box.” Bill stopped dancing and blushed when he saw Diana silhouetted in the light from the utility room. He reached inside the truck and shut off the radio.
“Sorry, Ms. Cazador, but it’s been a long day.”
She wore her painting overalls with their strategic straps that moved when she moved so he could see she was naked underneath.
She laughed to set him at ease.
“No worries,” she said. “You’ve done the work of two men today, that’s worth some celebration. Would you like a beer to go with your dance? And please call me Diana.”
“Yes, Ms. … Diana, I’d love a beer.”
She flashed her best come-fuck-me smile. “Excellent!” she said. “Oh, could you bring that extra tarp in with you? The large one? I want to paint a fancy trim of leaves across the top of the living room wall.”
“Got it,” he said. He peeled off his headlamp, pulled on his Hawaiian shirt emblazoned with toucans that don’t live in Hawaii, then yanked the tarp from the truck, hefted it onto his shoulder and followed her into the house.
He stepped into the doorway of the now blue-dark living room with its blackout shades and felt the wall for the light switch. Diana gripped his wrist to stop him.
“Oh, I prefer the dark, don’t you?” She shifted her grip to holding his hand. “I like to watch the lights of Canada come on. Bring it over here.”
She led him to the north end of the room, rolled up a blackout shade and slid apart a set of heavy blue drapes. The huge picture window overlooked the Strait and revealed a faint string of lights glimmering through an early wisp of fog. A window box with her satiny black flytrap stuck out from a panel beside the frame. Her plush blue couch faced the view instead of the living room.
“Here,” she said, and patted the couch. “Tarp from the window, over the couch and over this stretch of carpet. I’ll get your beer.”
She returned with two beers, handed him one and set a second on the windowsill.
“Thanks,” he said, and tilted his head. “‘Bloody Beer’?” He held up the bottle to study the label: A bloody axe next to a bloody chopping block with pools and spatters of blood over the scene.
“A lager brewed with fermented tomato juice,” she said. “Peppercorns and horseradish, too. My brother’s favorite.”
“Looks like the red beer old-timers used to drink around here. You’d drop a little can of tomato juice into your beer, like dropping in a jigger of whiskey for a boilermaker.”
“Sounds dreadful,” she said.
“Probably the only vegetable those old guys got.” Bill toasted her with the bottle and slugged half of it down in one breath. “Holy cow!” he said and smacked his lips. “That’s one hot drink.” His eyes watered but he downed another slug. Bill remained at the window, studying Diana more than the view. She plopped onto the tarp-covered couch and patted the spot next to her. Her straps fell away perfectly. “Nice view, no?” she said. “Now, let’s sit for a minute. Or do you have to get home to your family?”
Bill finished the rest of his beer in a long swallow, triggered a coughing fit, then set the empty on the windowsill. He sat at the other end of the couch.
“Naw, Diana, I live alone. Unless you count the mold on the cheese in my icebox.”
Diana laughed. “You say ‘icebox,’” she said. “You don’t hear ‘icebox’ much these days. Always ‘the fridge.’”
“That’s because it’s really an icebox,” he said. “Old-fashioned, nickel-plated corners and handles. Have to feed it a block of ice a week is all. I’m off the grid.”
She scooted closer. “Does that explain the moldy cheese?”
“Yeah.” Bill swallowed hard. “Cheese does that.” He cleared his throat. “Molds.”
Diana stood to fetch his second beer and walked around to the back of the couch. She reached over his shoulder and placed the cold bottle right in his crotch. He snatched it up like it could bite. Diana combed his hair back over his ears with her fingers, whispered, “Why don’t you stay here for a bite?”
“Well, I …”
Diana grasped his hair and in one blur of movement yanked his head back and bit hard and fast into his neck with a wet, deep growl. His legs and arms flailed backwards in the near dark as she pulled him over the back of the couch. Bill screamed and his nails dug deep into her arms before she crunched his trachea with both hands. He fought hard for a minute, two, but she’d trained for this her whole life. Stronger and faster than he could’ve guessed, and ferocious. She chewed deeper and her tongue found his carotid. Hot blood spurted over her and the tarp.
What a waste!
Her techie brother still hadn’t invented a single-handed way to save it. Now, again, she wished for fangs like their mother described their father’s, like the movies. Diana’d never met him, but their mother had described him many times; always in the telling she looked rapturous as a teenager at a rock concert, which she had been.
A hairline groove down the backs of his special teeth injected an intoxicating anesthetic into his bite. Tiny serrations glistened at the edges like Clovis blades and fairly melted through flesh. Neither Diana nor her brother had met their father, nor any remaining of his kind.
Diana’s crude, messy method sometimes dislocated her jaw or a shoulder in the struggle. This time, Bill’s legs quivered then lay still as she gurgled and sucked herself breathless. She lay down beside him on the tarp for the satisfying, stupefying buzz. The testosterone undertones were hardly detectable at all.