I felt tired before I even walked through the employees' door, not a good way to start my shift.
I didn't see Sam when I stowed my purse in the deep desk drawer we all used. When I came out of the hall that accessed the two public bathrooms, Sam's office, the storeroom, and the kitchen (though the kitchen door was kept locked from the inside, most of the time), I found Sam behind the bar. I gave him a wave as I tied on the white apron I'd pulled from the stack of dozens. I slid my order pad and a pencil into a pocket, looked around to find Arlene, whom I'd be replacing, and scanned the tables in our section.
My heart sank. No peaceful evening for me. Some asses in Fellowship of the Sun T-shirts were sitting at one of the tables. The Fellowship was a radical organization that believed (a) vampires were sinful by nature, almost demons, and (b) they should be executed. The Fellowship "preachers" wouldn't say so publicly, but the Fellowship advocated the total eradication of the undead. I'd heard there was even a little primer to advise members of how that could be carried out. After the Rhodes bombing they'd become bolder in their hatred.
The FotS group was growing as Americans struggled to come to terms with something they couldn't understand—and as hundreds of vampires streamed into the country that had given them the most favorable reception of all the nations on earth. Since a few heavily Catholic and Muslim countries had adopted a policy of killing vampires on sight, the U.S. had begun accepting vampires as refugees from religious or political persecution, and the backlash against this policy was violent. I'd recently seen a bumper sticker that read, "I'll say vamps are alive when you pry my cold dead fingers from my ripped-out throat."
I regarded the FotS as intolerant and ignorant, and I despised those who belonged to its ranks. But I was used to keeping my mouth shut on the topic at the bar, the same way I was used to avoiding discussions on abortion or gun control or gays in the military.
Of course, the FotS guys were probably Arlene's buddies. My weak-minded ex-friend had fallen hook, line, and sinker for the pseudo religion that the FotS propagated.
Arlene curtly briefed me on the tables as she headed out the back door, her face set hard against me. As I watched her go, I wondered how her kids were. I used to babysit them a lot. They probably hated me now, if they listened to their mother.
I shook off my melancholy, because Sam didn't pay me to be moody. I made the rounds of the customers, refreshed drinks, made sure everyone had enough food, brought a clean fork for a woman who'd dropped hers, supplied extra napkins to the table where Catfish Hennessy was eating chicken strips, and exchanged cheerful words with the guys seated at the bar. I treated the FotS table just like I treated everyone else, and they didn't seem to be paying me any special attention, which was just fine with me. I had every expectation that they'd leave with no trouble ...until Pam walked in.
Pam is white as a sheet of paper and looks just like Alice in Wonderland would look if she'd grown up to become a vampire. In fact, this evening Pam even had a blue band restraining her straight fair hair, and she was wearing a dress instead of her usual pants set. She was lovely—even if she looked like a vampire cast in an episode ofLeave It to Beaver. Her dress had little puff sleeves with white trim, and her collar had white trim, too. The tiny buttons down the front of her bodice were white, to match the polka dots on the skirt. No hose, I noticed, but any hose she bought would look bizarre since the rest of her skin was so pale.
"Hey, Pam," I said as she made a beeline for me.
"Sookie," she said warmly, and gave me a kiss as light as a snowflake. Her lips felt cool on my cheek.
"What's up?" I asked. Pam usually worked at Fangtasia in the evening.
"I have a date," she said. "Do you think I look good?" She spun around.
"Oh, sure," I said. "You always look good, Pam." That was only the truth. Though Pam's clothing choices were often ultra-conservative and strangely dated, that didn't mean they didn't become her. She had a kind of sweet-but-lethal charm. "Who's the lucky guy?"
She looked as arch as a vampire over two hundred years old can look. "Who says it's a guy?" she said.
"Oh, right." I glanced around. "Who's the lucky person?"
Just then my roomie walked in. Amelia was wearing a beautiful pair of black linen pants and heels with an off-white sweater and a pair of amber and tortoiseshell earrings. She looked conservative, too, but in a more modern way. Amelia strode over to us, smiled at Pam, and said, "Had a drink yet?"
Pam smiled in a way I'd never seen her smile before. It was . . . coy. "No, waiting for you."
They sat at the bar and Sam served them. Soon they were chatting away, and when their drinks were gone, they got up to leave.
When they passed me on their way out, Amelia said, "I'll see you when I see you"—her way of telling me she might not be home tonight.
"Okay, you two have fun," I said. Their departure was followed by more than one pair of male eyes. If corneas steamed up like glasses do, all the guys in the bar would be seeing blurry.
I made the round of my tables again, fetching new beers for one, leaving the bill at another, until I reached the table with the two guys wearing the FotS shirts. They were still watching the door as though they expected Pam to jump back inside and scream, "BOO!"
"Did I just see what I thought I saw?" one of the men asked me. He was in his thirties, clean-shaven, brown-haired, just another guy. The other man was someone I would have eyed with caution if we'd been in an elevator alone. He was thin, had a beard fringe along his jaw, was decorated with a few tattoos that looked like home jobs to me—jail tats—and he was carrying a knife strapped to his ankle, a thing that hadn't been too hard for me to spot once I'd heard in his mind that he was armed.
"What do you think you just saw?" I asked sweetly. Brown Hair thought I was a bit simple. But that was a good camouflage, and it meant that Arlene hadn't sunk to telling all and sundry about my little peculiarities. No one in Bon Temps (if you asked them outside of church on Sunday) would have said telepathy was possible. If you'd asked them outside of Merlotte's on a Saturday night, they might have said there was something to it.
"I think I saw a vamp come in here, just like she had a right. And I think I saw a woman acting happy to walk out with her. I swear to God, I cannot believe it." He looked at me as if I was sure to share his outrage. Jail Tat nodded vigorously.
"I'm sorry—you see two women walking out of a bar together, and that bothers you? I don't understand your problem with that." Of course I did, but you have to play it out sometimes.
"Sookie!" Sam was calling me.
"Can I get you gentlemen anything else?" I asked, since Sam was undoubtedly trying to call me back to my senses.
They were both looking at me oddly now, having correctly deduced that I was not exactly down with their program.
"I guess we're ready to leave," said Jail Tat, clearly hoping I'd be made to suffer for driving paying customers away. "You got our check ready?" I'dhad their check ready, and I laid it down on the table in between them. They each glanced at it, slapped a ten on top, and shoved their chairs back.
"I'll be back with your change in just a second," I said, and turned.
"No change," said Brown Hair, though his tone was surly and he didn't seem genuinely thrilled with my service.
"Jerks," I muttered as I went to the cash register at the bar.
Sam said, "Sookie, you have to suck it up."
I was so surprised that I stared at Sam. We were both behind the bar, and Sam was mixing a vodka collins. Sam continued quietly, keeping his eyes on his hands, "You have to serve them like they were anybody else."