Once he’s on the sidewalk I handle it pretty much like I wanted to inside. Knees in the middle of his back, pin him to the scummy pavement, arm around his windpipe and cut off the O₂ until he goes asleep. He does a fair amount of thrashing around, and I have to hold on good and tight to keep from getting bucked clear, but once I’m locked on to him I’m not going anywhere. When he’s nice and sleepy I toss him over my shoulder and point at one of the bartenders who’s come out to watch how the story ends.

– Get me a cab, will ya?

– Ambulance is on its way.

– Let ’em deal with Gears. This guy, I know him. I’m gonna take him back to his halfway house. See if I can keep him out of the shit.

– What about the cops? What about the window?

– Hey, come on. I got the guy out of the place. Give me a fucking break.

– Yeah, sure.

She flags a cab.

The cabbie’s none too happy about me piling in with blood-drippy guy, but he sees I’m in no mood for debate and just gives me a dirty rag to put over The Spaz’s face. Before we pull away, Evie runs up and passes my pack of smokes and my Zippo through the window.

– Want me to come?

– Nah, I got it covered.

– Meet you back at your place?

– Yeah. Maybe a half hour at the most. You gonna be OK?

– Don’t start.

– Right. Sorry ’bout this.

– ’S OK. Nobody can say you don’t know how to show a girl a good time, Joe.

The Spaz tries to come to in the cab. I pinch his esophagus and he goes back under before he can cause me any more trouble. I have the cabbie take me down to the Baruch housing project just below Houston. It’s a couple blocks outside what I’d usually call safe turf, but no one really has a claim on it, so it seems like a good place for an impromptu dump. I manhandle The Spaz up the steps to the pedestrian bridge that spans the FDR to the East River Park. It’s nearly two in the morning on a Tuesday. Cars whiz by below, but the lights on the park playing fields were shut off hours ago. My eyes penetrate that darkness just fine. Too cold for any homeless people to be camping out. I do see what looks like a couple junkies sitting on a bench at the far end of the park, but they’re facing the river. I pause at the top of the concrete stairs that lead down to the park.

The Spaz is still alive, alive and reeking of blood. I think about that blood; how I’d like to tap a couple pints of it and stick them in my fridge at home to replenish my rapidly shrinking supply. But his blood won’t do me any good, won’t do anything but make me hellishly sick and kill me. I know that because of what I smelled back at Doc Holiday’s; the smell of the Vyrus, the same smell I carry with me. Nonetheless, I’m just hard up enough to give him another good sniff. Hell, maybe I was wrong, maybe it was some other Vampyre’s scent I picked up in there, maybe this guy really is just whacked on PCP. I inhale. No, no such luck. He’s another sad fuck like me. But there is something about him, something about his scent that’s a little off. Must be whatever he was taking in the bathroom. No surprise I guess. Whatever he’s on would have to be some mean shit not to be neutralized by the Vyrus the moment it entered his bloodstream. Sure would like to know what it was. Be nice to try something like that sometime, something for a distraction. Christ, I drank over a fifth of bourbon tonight and it barely gave me a buzz. The Spaz stirs in my arms. Time to deal with the problem at hand.

I snap The Spaz’s neck and shove him hard down the steps and watch him tumble to the bottom. The broken neck won’t kill him outright, not like it would a normal person. A normal person, you break their neck, the medulla oblongata stops communicating with the body and all those autonomic functions like your lungs inflating and your heart pumping just stop. But the Vyrus reprograms your body, hyperoxygenates your blood and does a bunch of other stuff I can’t really follow. The Spaz won’t be getting up or anything, but there’s enough O₂ in his brain to keep him lucid for the next several minutes. Probably a good thing for him that he’s high.

I pop a smoke in my mouth, light it and head back across the bridge. I have to walk all the way to Avenue B before I can find a cab, but I still make it back to my place just a few minutes later than I wanted.

We don’t get to sleep in.

Evie’s a bartender. She’s used to crawling into bed around dawn. Even on a night off she has a hard time falling asleep before the sun hits the horizon. Me, I got my own reasons for being a night owl. But we’re up early the next day. Early for us, anyway, say just after noon. Evie’s got an appointment.

I reach for a smoke as she crawls out from under the covers.

– What’s the deal today?

– Viral load results.

– Right.

I sit on the edge of the bed, smoking and watching Evie through the open bathroom door. She rinses her mouth and spits toothpaste into the sink, then walks back into the bedroom.

– You been feeling any different?

– Nope. Nausea, vomiting. The usual.

– Yeah.

She squats next to her big black leather bag on the floor. Her back is to me. She’s wearing panties and one of my old wifebeaters. I look at her ass while she digs in the bag.

– How much did you drink last night?

She keeps looking through the bag.

– A lot less than you.

– It’s different.

– I know.

She finds a pill bottle in the bag and fishes out a capsule. Then she goes back in the bag until she finds another bottle and takes two capsules from that one. She tosses all three pills in her mouth and holds her hand out to me. I pick up the water glass from the bedside table, hand it to her, and she washes the pills down.

– Aren’t you supposed to take the Kaletra with food?

She’s squeezing herself back into last night’s leather pants.

– I’m not hungry.

– Not hungry how?

She peels off the wifebeater. I stare at her pale, freckled tits until she covers them with the Jack Daniel’s shirt.

– Just not hungry.

– Not hungry like you’re not hungry, or not hungry like a side effect?

She stands in front of the mirror on the back of the closet door and starts raking a brush through her hair.

– Not hungry like I don’t want to fucking eat anything, OK?

– Sure. OK.

I get up, go into the bathroom and close the door. I look at myself in the mirror. It’s a bad view. I splash some water on my face. I flush the toilet needlessly. I open the door, go back to the bed and get another smoke from the pack on the table. Evie has her hair pulled into a ponytail. She shrugs her way into her big, black biker jacket; all zippers and snaps. I light my smoke.

– You gonna be warm enough in that?

She holds up a hand.

– Enough.

– Just asking.

– And I’m just saying, enough. I know you’re concerned. I know you care. That’s great, I really appreciate it. I know it’s not the normal thing for you. But you have to get out of my ass.

She steps closer to me, bends over and gives me a kiss. Then she picks up her bag and starts up the stairs that lead to the ground floor rooms.

– It’s just I want you to take care of yourself, baby.

That does it. She stops on the steps, drops her head, exhales loudly and turns to face me.

– I am taking care of myself, Joe. I’m taking care of myself the way I want to. That means if I want to have a couple drinks and risk raising my blood sugar, I’m gonna do it. That means if I’m not hungry when I’m taking my meds, I’m not gonna force myself to eat. OK? That OK with you? Because if it’s not, you know what you can do. No strings attached, Joe. That’s your motto, right? You weren’t there when I got the disease, and I don’t expect you to be there when it kills me. In the middle, you want to be more involved in my life, you want to have a say? All you gotta do is involve me in yours, that’s all it takes. Until then, stop with the fucking nagging. I get enough of that shit from my mom. I don’t need it from my goddamn boyfriend.