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

we laughed again.
    Toward the end of the exhibit I wandered away from him over to an alcove where a giant statue of Aphrodite carved in white marble stood with her arms outstretched. I stood under her and closed my eyes.
    When I opened them, Ed was beside me. “Whatcha doin’?”

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    “She’s beautiful, huh?” I said softly.
    “But do you think love looks like that?” he asked, staring up at her perfect white curves. “Or do you think it’s much more dangerous looking?”
    “Probably. But I like to imagine it’s like this,” I said.
    We weren’t talking like revenants; it was weird.
    We left the museum and walked out into the sunshine. After the air conditioning the day felt warm. But then I realized I was probably imagining the feeling of warmth.
    The sun could trick you like that if things were going well.
    We sat at the café and ordered a salad to share, which we didn’t eat, of course—it was just for show. We could have gotten chicken but sometimes you dig into it in a way that’s not appropriate—it reminds you of the meat—and there were a lot of people around. Ed told me about his job recording music, how he had gone to music school, used to be in bands. He said he still thought about writing songs but then he gave up because he was too old to be a rock star.
    “You’re not!” I said. I was surprised and a little embarrassed at my own vehemence. “You look great. You look like a star.”
    I could have sworn I saw Ed blush, but then his face was pale again.
    “You have to be a kid to make this work,” he said. “Seriously.”
    “But you could still write. You could still play. For yourself and your friends.” I wanted to say, I’d like to hear you , but I stopped myself.
    “Nah,” said Ed and I realized that he really was a revenant; he wasn’t a poseur as I had suspected. That’s what we revenants did. We gave up before we had even tried.
    “What about your writing?” he asked.

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    “I won this big contest out of UCLA and then it was all downhill after that,” I said.
    “I hear you. Basically you’re dead at twenty-five in this town.”
    “Literally,” we said together and laughed, again.
    We walked down a slope and along a shaded path beside a fountain. White roses floated on the shallow water. There was something vaguely bridal about them. I wondered who had strewn them there. I felt a slight shiver up my spine and it surprised me.
    “Do you think we have souls?” I asked Ed. “Because that’s what I used to write about mostly—souls. But now I don’t think I have one.”
    He squinted at me and chewed thoughtfully on the handle of his sunglasses. “I don’t know, to be honest. I don’t think we’re supposed to, technically.”
    I looked at the white petals trembling on the surface of the dark water. “But those roses. When I look at them, in the water like that, I feel something. But I can’t find words for it.”
    “That’s why those Romans made art, right? Why we write music, isn’t it? Or write stories or whatever, poetry?”
    “But we don’t,” I said. “Anymore.”
    He took my hand again—mine felt tiny inside his—and headed through a red lacquer Japanese archway. I had the same startled sensation I’d had before when he’d touched me. “That’s going to change,” he said.
    On the way to our cars we walked around the tar pits with the statue of the father and the baby Mastodon standing on the edge of the bubbling black water while the 35
    mother Mastodon drowned in the tar. She had been drowning like that for years—I’d seen this statue when I was a little girl and it was already old by then. The baby had been screaming for all that time. It made me think of how I felt when my mother died, how she sank into the pit of cancer and I couldn’t save her; all I could do was stand there and scream silently and turn to stone.
    Ed walked me to my beat-up Honda and hugged me goodbye. I raised my mouth to kiss his cheek but he turned so our lips