Page 101 of So Thirsty

“You’re alone because of the company you keep, Alice,” Henry says. “The company you choose. What you do to them.”

She clucks. “I like what I like. Why should I apologize for it? Why should I deprive myself? Anyone who sees me, they think nothin’ of me. Treat me like I’m fragile, or stupid. Or they’re repulsed by me, by this body. This body I’ll have forever and ever.”

She gets close to me. “So I take gooooooooood care of it. Of myself. My body.”

She wipes her mouth on her sleeve, then walks past us. “Go on. Cast your stones. But you, birdie—you should know, to live as a woman in this world, you can give and give and get used up, suffer the emptiness, or you can start taking. And I ain’t suffering. I already done mine, my fair share. So I fill myself up. Num num num num num.”

I wince, and she cackles.

“You’re lookin’ at me like I’m some kind of monster, but we’re the same, you and me. You just ain’t ready to admit it to yourself. The sooner you accept what ya are, the better. Because maybe you’re fooling yourself, but you ain’t fooling me. You want this. You’re scared of how bad you want it. Afraid of what would happen if you tried a bite of flesh. Of how much you’d like it.”

She steps out of the window onto the fire escape. “Come on, now. Don’t try my patience.”

30

T he journey down the fire escape is even more trying than the journey up. I’m light-headed, and I keep wanting to turn around, to go help those people—or the man who’s still alive, at least. But I know I can’t save him. And even if I were to go back up those stairs, I’d probably just end up doing something I’d regret. Draining him.

Maybe he’d be relieved to die, would welcome the release.

Maybe that’s just what I’d tell myself.

When we get to the bottom of the fire escape, Henry offers me a smoke. The two of us hang back while Ms. Alice heads over to the camper, her hands on her hips.

“You shouldn’t wander off, Sloane,” he says.

“I…She knew all of your names,” I whisper, my voice rough. “She knew you.”

“We’ve met before,” he says.

“Did you…Do you…know her? Know what goes on here?”

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” he says, lighting my cigarette for me.

“I don’t know what to say.” I take a long drag.

“Some like us don’t stop at blood. Once they develop a taste…” He pauses, shaking his head. “You’ve met someone like Alice before. A feeder. The night we met. The man in the cellar. We’d encountered him in passing. When you live as long as us, paths cross. We were in New York and needed a place to stay. When we arrived at the house, we found he’d been…he’d broken a rule. That’s why he was down there. That’s why we deprived him of blood. Retribution.”

“What rule?”

“He’d taken a girl. Several girls. Young girls.”

“Christ,” I say, collapsing onto the bottom step of the fire escape. “This just keeps getting worse.”

“But we’re not like that,” Henry says, sitting next to me. “That’s not how we live.”

“Okay, but not being cannibals or child murderers is a pretty low bar.”

“When you put it that way…”

“It’s not the phrasing. It’s the truth,” I say, anxiously pawing at my face. “What I just saw up there—what am I supposed to do with that? With knowing she’s out here eating people. I just have to go on with this knowledge? Forever?”

“There are many horrors in this world we have to live with.”

“I know. But before, I could be the victim,” I say, surprising myself. I hadn’t realized it until it came flying out of my mouth. Hadn’t realized that part of me liked being cheated on, because it gave me an excuse to feel sorry for myself, and ever since my fall, I’ve looked for any excuse for self-pity, any opportunity to feel like one mistake cost me everything, like the world was a ruthless and unfair place and there was nothing I could do about it, because admitting defeat felt like it protected me from losing more than I already had. But now I’ve made more than one mistake, and my whole narrative is fucked. “I’m just overwhelmed. And—and what she said about me. About…”

I can’t repeat it, the insinuation that I might turn into what she is. That I could ever let my thirst bring me to the point of such depraved overindulgence.

“You can’t listen to her,” he says.