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  “Oh, hi. I was in with Dad. Are you on your way over here? You aren’t coming right now, are you? They’re about to bring his lunch.”

  Corky made a face. “No, I just got to the motel, so I need to get some lunch, too. How about in around an hour?”

  There was a brief silence on the other end. “OK, um. I guess that’s alright. He has to take his pain meds after he eats. He’s not well, Corky. The doctors…” Pam trailed off.

  “Well, when would be the best time?” Corky was irritated. She didn’t want to be in the way, but Pam had asked her to come, after all. This was the sort of thing Pam did that always had put Corky off. Hurry up and wait. “Do you want to call me back? You have my cell number, right?”

  “Oh, no… just go ahead and come after lunch. He’s just not well, you know. I don’t want you to expect him to be like he used to.”

  After getting directions, Corky hung up the phone and sat at the desk looking out the window, thinking about what Pam had said. Don’t expect him to be like he used to. She wondered what that meant exactly. When Pam first called her, she had said that Moony was dying, talked a little about the organ failure, and hinted that he wasn’t really himself – but she hadn’t mentioned any specific personality changes. Just that he wasn’t expected to live long, and that he wanted Corky up there for the books. The vampire books.

  Moony had always been a vampire fanatic, with a huge collection of vampire books. Fan fiction, comics, old first editions, new paperbacks; books that claimed to be filled with “facts” and books that claimed to tear holes in those facts. If it was about vampires, Moony had it. Several copies of some things, in fact. Moony was known to have at least fourteen editions of Dracula. His library was quite vast in many areas, but the vampire books were his personal joy, and nobody in his family was very surprised that he had made special arrangements for this collection when his time of death was near.

  Everyone was a little surprised, however, that it was Corky to whom he decided to leave them. Maybe it was because she worked in a bookstore.

  Not that anyone, including Corky, cared much about the books. She had only come for them because it was what Moony wanted. She could find room for a few books if it made his last days easier on everyone. She might even find one she wanted to read.

  She ran a comb through her hair and headed out the door to grab a bite to eat on the way to the hospice.

  Chapter 4

  “Cork!” Bruce held out his hands to her and shook them. He looked beaten and tired and like he had been rubbed with lard; his hair was lank and greasy, and he had bags under his eyes. “I haven’t seen you in years; you look just the same.” He wasn’t any heavier than he had been when she saw him last. No heavier, but certainly no slenderer, either. Still just a dull pudding of a man.

  Corky smiled back at him and her eyes went to Pam, hovering in the background, squinting at her. “Hello, Bruce. Pam.”

  Pam smiled a cold smile. “Hello, Corky. It really has been years. You look more and more like your mother.” She looked Corky up and down. “You cut your hair, didn’t you?”

  Corky nodded noncommittally. “Well, maybe a little bit.” And you gained a few pounds, Pam, didn’t you? She held back a smile and looked past Pam toward the branching hallways where the patients’ rooms were, lined up in rows, tucked away. The dying rooms. “How’s Uncle Moony doing?”

  Bruce shook his head and Pam glared at him. “He’s awake, at least,” she said. “He ate his lunch, which is rare these days.”

  “We told him you were coming,” Bruce interjected. “He seemed glad to hear that.” This earned him another glare from his sister, but he ignored it. “Shall we go in?”

  The room smelled of Lysol and perfume and old socks, and Corky wrinkled her nose for a moment. Then she spied Moony, sitting up in a chair by the window.

  He was full of tubes – though not as many as Corky had expected to see – and draped in a robe. One of his socks had fallen down around his ankle. His fingers worked furiously, tying intricate knots of nothingness in the air an inch above his lap. When he saw Corky, he looked – just for a moment – afraid. He leaned his head forward and tried to stand up.

  “Now, Dad, no, don’t do that. Here.” Bruce went to him and helped him into a wheelchair, then pulled up his sock for him. “Do you want to sit out in the lobby?” The lobby area was decorated like a living room, with couches and lounge chairs and several cabinets filled with china figurines. Throw rugs. Soft lighting. Afghans. The idea was to have a place to sit with your family and pretend for a minute that you weren’t in a hospital, waiting to die. No, this was a living room, comfortable and homey. But patients and visitors belied this; they never looked comfortable or at home.

  Moony looked blearily from Bruce to Pam, and then to Corky.

  “Is that you, Corky?” he whispered, then said louder, “Is that you?”

  Corky nodded and stepped forward, not wanting to come further into the room but knowing she had to. “Yeah, Uncle Moony, it’s me. How are you feeling?” Lame, such a lame thing to say. But what are you supposed to say? How’s the death going, Uncle? Feeling any deader yet? Corky squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “Would you like to go out into the lobby for a while?”

  “Or you can sit on the patio, Dad. It’s nice out.”

  Pam snorted. “It’s not that nice out there, Bruce, you know how he gets cold.”

  Bruce looked at Moony, who was trying to roll his chair forward past them. “He’ll be alright. I’ll take a sweater for him. You want to go sit in the sun, Dad?” Bruce reached into the tiny closet for a sweater. “Here, let’s put this on you.”

  The old man held his arms out and allowed himself to be sweatered. He kept looking sideways at Corky, which she found disturbing. When her eyes met his directly, he looked down rapidly at his lap and fiddled with his fingers. Yet when she looked away, he looked up at her again in that sidelong way, as though he was trying to catch her at something.

  “Well, I’m not going out there. You two keep an eye on him. If he gets cold, you bring him right back inside! He doesn’t like the cold at all. Make sure he doesn’t have the sun in his eyes.” Pam sniffed. “I’m going down to the desk and make sure they got all the insurance paperwork I gave that girl yesterday.” She turned to go, then turned back again. “Corky, we’ll get those books packed tonight if you want to pick them up tomorrow.”

  At the mention of the books, Moony became agitated. “Books, yes! You have to have the—” He stopped, and stared intently at Corky, shaking his head. “Oh, well, you know,” he said. He waved his hands and then folded them in his lap, looking down at them and scowling, his mouth moving soundlessly in a mimicry of muttering. Bruce began pushing the chair forward. When they got near the patio door, Moony grabbed the hand brake. “Brucie!” he said. “I forgot my glasses. Go run and get them.”

  “But you don’t need your glasses, Dad.”

  “I want them, so humor an old man, run for my glasses like a good boy. I may want to read some of the placards they have out there in the rose garden.”

  Sighing, Bruce turned to Corky. “Be right back. Just go ahead and take him out, turn left when you get to the pathway, there’s a little rose garden with a sitting area.”

  Corky nodded and took hold of the wheelchair handles, but as soon as Bruce was out of sight, Moony grabbed the hand brake again.

  “Cork, you have to listen to me. The books…it’s very important. I have to talk to you.” He wiped his face with shaky hands and groaned. “They won’t leave me alone for long, I have to tell you about the book. Hurry, listen.”

  Corky knelt in front of him. “What book, Moony? I’m supposed to take the vampire books, right? They’re—”

  “No… the vampire book, the one book, the only one that really matters now. It’s with the others in the library, I hid it there before I left. Make sure you get it. Make sure... you have to come back after you find it. You’ll see… it’s not over… there’s more.” He loo
ked over his shoulder, then back at Corky. “Don’t tell them I was talking to you! And don’t let them read the book! You’ll know why.” He winked at her and drew circles in the air with his finger. “When you see, you’ll know. See, know. See?”

  Corky patted her uncle on the arm gently. His raving went on for a few minutes more until Bruce returned with the glasses. Moony put them in his pocket but didn’t say another word. Corky and Bruce sat in the shade with him. Here and there, people shuffled or were wheeled past, everyone holding under-breath discussions, nobody meeting anyone else’s eyes. They were dead already.

  After twenty or thirty minutes of the rose garden, Moony began to drift off, so they wheeled him back to his room. Corky and Bruce went out into the hallway to talk, and chatted for a few minutes until Pam returned from her mission.

  “Did Dad enjoy the patio?” she inquired. She expressed no real interest nor any real surprise that he had fallen asleep almost immediately. “He gets tired so easily these days,” she added. “And he hasn’t been making a damn bit of sense, either. Did he talk to you guys about anything?”

  Pam and Bruce both stared at Corky expectantly.

  “Well, no, you know. The books, is all. The vampire books. He was sort of going on about that.” Corky hesitated, thinking about the conversation, feeling like a spy. “He wasn’t making a lot of sense,” she admitted.

  “Oh, he hasn’t made sense for weeks. All he talks about is the damn vampire books and vampires, vampires, vampires. I tell you, I’ll be glad when you take the damn things away. I hope that will give him some peace, so he can discuss some things that really are vastly more important.” She gave Bruce a meaningful look, and he shrugged. “It drives me crazy, when I’m trying to help take care of his final wishes, all I can get out of him is this nonsense. But what can I do? It was the same when Mom died, nobody would listen to the important things, would they?” She rolled her eyes and tented her fingers on her temples in a long-suffering pose, and turned to Bruce. “We’ll be over at the house tonight, packing. Are you going to come help?”

  Bruce nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but Pam went on. “Right. So. Corky, thank you for coming down to see Dad. If you want to pick the books up tomorrow afternoon, at the house, we’ll have them all ready for you. You remember how to get there, don’t you?”

  Corky nodded. She remembered. She certainly did.

  Chapter 5

  How can he walk the streets, as he is? The sun fails herself in this: That he bears her, that he is not touched. It cannot be... and yet it is so, it is.

  Pam stood in the doorway of her father’s library, and Bruce stood next to her, watching the activity as Pam’s kids packed away books. Todd, the elder of the two at fourteen, clearly felt he was in charge of the project. His brother, nine-year-old Scott, seemed to resent this only marginally.

  “You’re letting the boys pack the books? Aren’t you worried?”

  “About what? My God, Bruce, the boys have to help out some, I can’t possibly pack this entire house myself, can I? On top of all the cleaning? You aren’t doing any of it, obviously. The den looks like it hasn’t been vacuumed in months, he’s left dirty clothes everywhere, I don’t know what he was thinking. Have you seen that kitchen? Have you even seen it?”

  “Well, no… but all the vampire stuff. Don’t you worry they’ll have nightmares?”

  Pam blew air out loudly. “For Pete’s sake. Of course not. They aren’t reading the damn things, they’re just boxing them.” She set her hands on her hips and shook her head at Bruce, then appeared to think it over. “Boys!” she called. “Todd! Don’t you two read any of those books! Just pack them up!”

  The boys nodded at her: empty, bored nods. Pam and Bruce turned and moved off to the other room.

  Scott climbed into the desk chair and began handling the items he found there. “Look, Todd, a dagger!”

  Todd looked. “That’s not a dagger, you moron. It’s a letter opener. Get down here and help me pack these books.”

  “If a vampire came, I could use this dagger to send him to a watery grave.”

  “A watery grave is for the sea, retard. Besides, you have to use a wooden stake.”

  Scott stabbed at the air. “It could work.”

  “Whatever.” Todd thumped another stack of books into the box. “Geez, Grandpa has a ton of these vampire books.”

  Scott moved over to peer into the box. This was the third box of books they had packed. “Is that all of them?”

  “Hell, no. There’s still a bunch on the bottom shelf. Look… vampire… vampire… vampire. All of these. Here, grab some and put them in.”

  But Scott was back at the desk, going through the drawers. “He’s got stamps in here that are, like, used.” He flicked them aside. “A bunch of them! All cut out of envelopes.” Flick, flick. “Old envelopes, too. It smells funny.”

  “Damn it, Scott, just get over here and help me.”

  “I’m telling Mom you said a swear.” Flick, flick, flick. “Ohhh, cool, he’s got a… a… what’s this called, Todd?”

  Todd looked up briefly. “It’s a staple remover. Stop screwing around.”

  “Like fangs, see?” Scott held the staple remover in his hand and made biting motions. “Like the fangs of a vampire!” He chewed the air next to Todd’s head. “I vant... to suck… your blooooood!”

  “Fucking quit it!” Todd grabbed the staple remover and threw it back on the desk. “If you don’t help, I’m gonna tell Mom.”

  Scott returned to the desk, opening and closing drawers until he grew bored. Then he wandered over to the bookshelves and started running his fingers along their bindings. Crouching a few feet from his brother, he found a thick, leather-bound book on the bottom shelf. He picked it up to smell it. “Hey, another book. It says… Todd, I can’t read all of this. It’s smeary. It says ‘vampire’ though, and some other stuff. Is this one supposed to go in the box?”

  “If it says ‘vampire’ it goes in the box.” Todd looked up, then back at his task. “Bring it here.”

  Scott slid the book over to Todd. “See? But look, it’s like all hand-written.”

  Todd shrugged. “If it’s a vampire book, it goes in this box.”

  “But I’m telling you, it’s not like a real book, it’s like… I dunno… but inside is all written by hand, about vampires and stuff.”

  “Just shut up and put the damn book in the box. All the vampire books go in the boxes for cousin Corky. Remember what Mom said? Don’t read the books, dumbass, just put ’em in the box already. We gotta hurry; she’s coming any minute.”

  The younger boy sighed and dumped the book into the box, where it was soon covered with a layer of other books. The boys grabbed one side each, hauled the box out to the living room, and set it near the door. Todd went off down the hall in search of his mother, hollering at his brother to follow him.

  Scott put the staple remover in his pocket, and the rest of the day he pretended he had a vampire in there. One with metal teeth.

  Chapter 6

  When Corky rang the doorbell, Todd answered it and looked at her timidly. His face held no recognition, just boredom and resignation. They hadn’t seen each other since he was five.

  “Hi… Todd?” When he nodded, she went on, “Wow, you have really grown! You were just… wow.”

  More nodding, then a quiet “Yeah.” Todd pulled the door further and stepped back. “I’ll get Mom.”

  Corky stepped into her uncle’s house and looked around. Familiar, so familiar, but also not. On the wall, old pictures of family, people Corky hardly knew or didn’t know at all – and a few she did. Here on a table was a picture of her father and her uncle, as young men; flinty, rough-looking men with hair as black as witches’ hats. Neither was smiling.

  She picked up the picture and looked at it closely. Corky didn’t remember her father very well. Edgar had been gone since she was little, a fact her mother had kept as quiet about as possible. “Taken off” was how it had be
en phrased, the once or twice Corky had been in earshot of a discussion about it. Edgar had “taken off” when she was just five, so she really didn’t know much about him.

  She turned away and looked back at the room. There were boxes here and there, some in the process of being packed, and others that were being gone through. The appearance was a cross between someone moving in and someone moving out. A box of Christmas ornaments on the couch, some strewn along the fabric. A stack of plates, being wrapped in newspaper? No, a glance at the papers showed they were over ten years old – these were plates being unwrapped. For inspection, possibly. And here, another box with even older news, papers from twenty years ago, wrapped around items someone had loved, once. Probably some of Aunt Viola’s things, packed up after she had died. That would have been about the right time frame. Next to this box, a box of old photos. Corky picked one from the top; there were the two flinty-eyed brothers with their black hair again, glaring at the camera. On the back was written Moony and Edgar ’71. Corky counted on her fingers; she would have been no more than two.

  And here, a huge box of books. Corky peered into it. Vampire books. These were for her. And others next to it. She sighed, and knelt beside one of the boxes, ran her hand along the tops. She had expected paperback trash, and it looked like she had been at least partially wrong. There were a number of hard covers in here. What am I going to do with all this? But she would find a place for them, at least for a while. Seth’s daughter might enjoy them.

  “Hi, Corky, I see you found the books.” Pam moved a box off of a chair and sat down. “I am so exhausted. Have you been by the hospice today yet?”

  “No… I figured I’d go over after I picked up the books. How’s he doing?”

  Pam just shook her head. “Todd! Scott!” she yelled. “Get out here and help your cousin with these boxes!” She turned her eye on Corky. “Bruce is over there now. I’m going later. The boys need a break from that for a while, so I’ve got them helping with this crap.”