"How long have you been an animator?" I asked.
He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch. "About eight hours."
I stared at him. "This is your first job, anywhere?"
He nodded. "Didn't Mr. Vaughn tell you about me?"
"Bert just said he'd hired another animator named Lawrence Kirkland."
"I'm in my senior year at Washington University, and this is my semester of job co-op."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty; why?"
"You're not even legal," I said.
"So I can't drink or go in porno theaters. No big loss, unless the job takes us to places like that." He looked at me and leaned in. "Does the job take us to porno theaters?" His face was neutrally pleasant, and I couldn't tell if he was teasing or not. I gambled that he was kidding.
"Twenty is fine." I shook my head.
"You don't look like twenty's fine," he said.
"It's not your age that bothers me," I said.
"But something bothers you."
I wasn't sure how to put it into words, but there was something pleasant and humorous in his face. It was a face that laughed more often than it cried. He looked bright and clean as a new penny, and I didn't want that to change. I didn't want to be the one who forced him to get down in the dirt and roll.
"Have you ever lost someone close to you? Family, I mean?"
The humor slipped away from his face. He looked like a solemn little boy. "You're serious."
"Deadly," I said.
He shook his head. "I don't understand."
"Just answer the question. Have you ever lost someone close to you?"
He shook his head. "I've even got all my grandparents."
"Have you ever seen violence up close and personal?"
"I got into fights in high school."
"Why?"
He grinned. "They thought short meant weak."
I had to smile. "And you showed them different."
"Hell, no; they beat the crap out of me for four years." He smiled.
"You ever win a fight?"
"Sometimes," he said.
"But the winning's not the important part," I said.
He looked very steadily at me, eyes serious. "No, it's not."
There was a moment of nearly perfect understanding between us. A shared history of being the smallest kid in class. Years of being the last picked for sports. Being the automatic victim for bullies. Being short can make you mean. I was sure that we understood each other but, being female, I had to verbalize it. Men do a lot of this mind-reading shit, but sometimes you're wrong. I needed to know.
"The important part is taking the beating and not giving up," I said.
He nodded. "Takes a beating and keeps on ticking."
Now that I'd spoiled our first moment of perfect understanding by making us both verbalize, I was happy. "Other than school fights, you've never seen violence?"
"I go to rock concerts."
I shook my head. "Not the same."
"You got a point to make?" he asked.
"You should never have tried to raise a third zombie."
"I did it, didn't I?" He sounded defensive, but I pressed on. When I have a point to make, I may not be graceful, but I'm relentless.
"You raised and lost control of it. If I hadn't come along, the zombie would have broken free and hurt someone."
"It's just a zombie. They don't attack people."
I stared at him, trying to see if he was kidding. He wasn't. Shit. "You really don't know, do you?"
"Know what?"
I covered my face with my hands and counted to ten, slowly. It wasn't Larry I was mad at, it was Bert, but Larry was so convenient for yelling. I'd have to wait until tomorrow to yell at Bert, but Larry was right here. How lucky.
"The zombie had broken free of your control, Larry. If I hadn't come along and fed it blood, it would have found blood on its own. Do you understand?"
"I don't think so."
I sighed. "The zombie would have attacked someone. Taken a bite out of someone."
"Zombies attacking humans is just superstition, ghost stories."
"Is that what they're teaching in college now?" I asked.
"Yes."
"I'll loan you some back copies of The Animator. Trust me, Larry, zombies do attack people. I've seen people killed by them."
"You're just trying to scare me," he said.
"Scared would be better than stupid."
"I raised it. What do you want from me?" He looked completely baffled.
"I want you to understand what nearly happened here tonight. I want you to understand that what we do isn't a game. It's not parlor tricks. It's real, and it can be dangerous."
"All right," he said. He'd given in too easily. He didn't really believe. He was humoring me. But there are some things you can't tell someone. He, or she, has to learn some things in person. I wished I could wrap Larry up in cellophane and keep him on a shelf, all safe and secure and untouched, but life didn't work that way. If he stayed in this business long enough, the new would wear off. But you can't tell someone who's reached twenty and never been touched by death. They don't believe in the boogeyman.
At twenty I'd believed in everything. I suddenly felt old.
Larry pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his coat pocket.
"Please tell me you don't smoke," I said.
He looked up at me, eyes sort of wide and startled. "You don't smoke?"
"No."
"You don't like people to smoke around you?" He made it a question.
"No," I said.
"Look, I feel pretty awful right now. I need the cigarette, okay?"
"Need it?"
"Yeah, need it." He had one slender white cigarette between two fingers of his right hand. The pack had disappeared back into his pocket. A disposable lighter had appeared. He looked at me very steadily. His hands were shaking just a bit.
Shit. He'd raised three zombies on his first night out, and I was going to be talking to Bert about the wisdom of sending Larry out on his own.
Besides, we were outside. "Go ahead."
"Thanks."
He lit the cigarette and drew a deep breath of nicotine and tar. Smoke curled out of his mouth and nose, like pale ghosts. "Feel better already," he said.
I shrugged. "Just so you don't smoke in the car with me."
"No problem," he said. The tip of his cigarette pulsed orange in the dark as he sucked on it. He looked past me, letting smoke curl from his lips as he said, "We're being paged."
I turned and, sure enough, the lawyers were waving at us. I felt like a janitor being called in to clean up the messy necessities. I stood up, and Larry followed me.
"You sure you feel well enough for this?" I asked.
"I couldn't raise a dead ant, but I think I'm up to watching you do it."