Hungry for Your Love: An Anthology of Zombie Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

when this happened two years ago.”

    “You mean when you went revenant? That’s young to be one of us.”

    “What about you?” I asked.
    “Well, I was thirty, so I’m technically forty now.”
    “You look good,” I managed to say.
    He winked. He actually winked. I’d never seen a revenant wink before, at least not in a sincere way, but more of in a spastic way like they were trying to imitate a human. Ed actually looked human. “You, too.”
    The flames of the fire pit were heating up my face to the point where I had to back away. That was a surprise—I was never hot anymore. I must have been imagining it.
    Then I felt Ed’s hand touch my wrist and I imagined a flaming up there, too.
    “Would you like to grab a ‘tea’ some time?” He made quote marks around the word tea—we really didn’t drink it.

    I nodded without thinking and he took out his cell and programmed in my phone number.

    “I’ll call you, Casey,” he said and I wondered if he was really one of us at all. Just like there were revenant poseurs, there were some humans who posed as us because it was trendy and seemed cool to them. God knows why.

    * * * *
    He told me to meet at the L.A. County Museum. I was a little nervous to be out in such a public place with all the meat walking around but I said the Serenity Prayer over and over as I drove west along Wilshire. I was wearing a black sundress and wedgies and I’d put on extra lotion to keep the skin from peeling on my shoulders and arms. I got 31
    there first and watched Ed walk up the wide, low stairs under the portico toward me. He had flat mirrored shades on so I couldn’t see his eyes. His shoulders were broad and his arms were a little too long for the white button-down shirt he wore. His legs, in jeans, were long, too. I felt really short, even in my high shoes.

    “You look nice,” he said, kissing my cheek.

    “So do you,” I replied. Rachel had said that if I felt uncomfortable making conversation. I could just sort of repeat what the other person said with a twist. I wondered if that would get me in trouble somehow.

    “Do you want to see the exhibit?”

    “Do you want to see the exhibit?” I replied.
    “Yes
    I
    do.”
    “I do.”
    “Good.”
    “Good.”

    “Casey,” he asked gently. “Can I ask you something? Are you nervous?”

    “Are you nervous?”

    He cocked his head at me. “No. I’m fine. I thought you seemed interesting at the meeting. I’d like to hear about your writing and whatever. You don’t have to be nervous with me.”

    “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

    He took my hand and led me toward the ticket booth. It was startling to have him touch me. Most of us didn’t ever touch.

    32

    We went to the Pompeii exhibit. I wondered what it must have been like for the archeologists to find that stuff under the earth, under the ash. What it must have been like to dig up a marble god, a whole fresco of a garden with fountains and birds and flowers painted in pale shades of blue and green. You couldn’t feel dead when you saw that.
    We circled around a statue of a satyr playing lasciviously with a beautiful nude girl. She had her fingers in his face and was twisting her torso as if to get away from them but they were both laughing. When Ed and I got closer we saw that the girl was a hermaphrodite, with breasts and a small erect penis. I felt something move through my body and I hardly knew what it was because it had been so long.

    “Roman kink,” Ed said, and we laughed.

    I hadn’t heard my laugh in so long that I didn’t recognize it at first. It sounded kind of nice, though.
    There were some giant horse heads on pedestals. Ed looked into their eyes but I had to stare up into their noses.
    “You have a better view,” I said. “All I see are nostrils. But I’m used to that, being so short.” I realized I had actually made a joke—a shitty joke, but a joke—aloud.
    “Oh, now I’m embarrassed, “ he said, coyly, covering his nose and