even counting when she hid me from Dexter Predo. She’s got a total straight crush on him.
Sela pats the girl’s hand.
– Sweetheart, the woman wouldn’t know what to do with a man.
Amanda takes her hand away.
– That’s just stupid. She would too. And you can act like she’d never go there, but people are weirder than that. I mean, look at us. And I don’t mean me. I’m a poor little rich girl orphan whose father was a pederast and whose mother was a tramp, of course I fall in love with a chick with a dick. But all you ever wanted was a boyfriend who’d treat you like a woman and instead you end up with a little girl who treats you like, well, Joe doesn’t want to hear what I treat you like.
She ruffles her hair.
– Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is she likes him. Whether she wants to or not. That’s how it works. I mean, come on, would you have fallen for me if you could have helped it? Please don’t tell me it didn’t fill you with just a little self-loathing when you first realized you had a thing for me. The little lost girl. The innocent you had vowed to protect.
Sela maneuvers the long car around a double-parked delivery van.
– I got over it.
Amanda scratches the back of Sela’s neck with her fingernail.
– Yes you did.
She takes a jar of olives from the bar compartment and twists the lid off.
– Me, I never had any question about what I felt. First time we were in the sauna together I knew I had to have you.
She plucks an olive from the jar and pops it in her mouth.
– My God, Joe, have you ever seen her naked? You are missing out.
Sela ducks her head.
– Stop it.
Amanda wiggles her finger into the hole of one of the olives.
– Am I embarrassing you, baby?
She leans forward and wraps her arm around Sela’s neck and puts the olive at her lips.
– Are you blushing?
Sela sucks the olive from her finger and Amanda giggles and falls back in the seat.
She holds the jar out.
– Olive?
I don’t say anything and she shrugs and closes the jar and puts it away.
She moves close and leans on me.
– You’ll get over it.
She perches her chin on my shoulder.
– Not just drinking my blood, I mean.
She puts her cheek to my arm.
– I mean family. I mean what it’s like to have family. That’s what we’re gonna make, Joe. Family. Sela and me, we talk about it all the time. Right, baby?
– That’s right, hon.
– Like, how the Clans, they’re just organizations. They treat everybody like they need the Clans more than the Clans need them. Which you don’t even need to think about to see that it’s so wrong. But we’re gonna be different. We’re gonna treat everybody like family.
Sela has the car pointed east, taking us back the way we fled, heading for the avenues that will run us to the Upper East Side.
She brakes for a stoplight.
– It’s true, we’re going to start a new Clan. No dogma. No enforcers. No racial barriers. No superstitions. Just support. Just a place for everyone who needs family to have it. Know why it’s gonna work? Because Amanda and me are going to be running it. Infected and uninfected. Together.
Amanda tilts her head back to look up at me.
– It’s going to be called Cure, Joe. That’s what we’re calling the Clan. So everyone will know what we’re doing. What we’re working for. Cuz there’re so many that need it. And not just for the obvious reasons. Think about it. Sela, if she ever went to go post-op and get her equipment changed. And I am voting against that. If she ever did, know what would happen? They’d cut her dick off and do all that work and the Vyrus would treat it like a wound and heal it. Not, like, grow her a new one, just close up the hole between her legs. Leave her with, like, a patch. Gross. So, yeah, infecteds want a cure. Lots of them. But they also want other things.
She wraps her fingers around my arm and squeezes.
– We’ll be a family. We’ll all take care of each other. And I’ll have more money than God pretty soon and can make sure everyone has the blood they need. And in a few years, I’ll have a cure. Because there has to be one. It’s just a virus. No matter how you spell it. It’s biological and science can explain it. And I can cure it. You just have to isolate it and study it. You have to know it. Be with it. Get inside it. I can do that. Daddy couldn’t. But I can.
She reaches up and runs a finger over the healing cuts that cover my face.
– Lydia told Sela what you did. That you tried to save your girlfriend. That’s got to suck. And now you’re alone again. But you don’t have to be. Nobody should be alone if they don’t have to be. So what if we’re not normal? Normal bites. We can have our own kind of family. All we have to be is strong enough. I think you’re strong enough, Joe. I really do. And you don’t have to be my daddy or anything. Just, whatever, my big brother or something.
She plants her face tight against my arm.
– I just, gah, I love you no matter what.
I look at her.
She’s young and healthy and rich and brilliant and beautiful. And her blood is tonic. She’ll spoon-feed it to me if I ask because she’s as crazed as her parents ever were and I helped her once and she thinks that’s love.
Shit. Maybe it is. Like I’m a fucking expert.
It would be easy. An easy life. Can you imagine such a thing?
But Evie would still be in the warehouse.
And I’ve had a family. One was enough.
I shrug off the girl and push the passenger seat forward and lean and yank the door handle and the door swings open and Sela is rounding onto Park Avenue South and I roll from the car onto the pavement and find my feet and limp into Union Square and hide in the tent city of the homeless until Sela pulls the crying girl back to the car and drives off with her.
On the border of Society and Coalition, the park is not safe.
