– Killhimkillhimkillhimkillhim!

– Joseph, you look like you could use something to drink.

Amanda scoots across the huge rear bench seat.

– Of course, you also look like you could use a bath.

She opens the compartment built into the middle of the seat back and takes out a glass and pours bourbon into it from a full bottle of Wild Turkey and puts it into my hand and wraps my fingers around it.

I try to bring it to my lips and the glass slips from my fingers and spills over my lap.

Amanda picks it up.

– Lightweight.

She refills the glass and holds it to my mouth and I drink and the alcohol burns the cuts in my lips and tastes good.

Sela opens the driver’s door and climbs back into the car.

– No one coming after us.

– Good job, baby.

Amanda takes the empty glass from my lips.

– More?

But she’s already put the glass aside.

– Not what you really need, is it?

She eases closer, her thigh against mine.

– No, not what you need at all.

She reaches a hand into the front seat and Sela places a butterfly knife in her palm.

I shove myself into the corner of the seat.

Amanda puts a hand on my wounded knee.

– No, it’s OK, Joe. It’s really OK.

She flips the knife and twirls it and the blade and the handles flutter and she snaps the handles tight under her fingers and shows me the blade.

– Sela taught me that. Cool, huh?

She looks at Sela.

– Is there time?

– There’s time.

Amanda lifts a black denim-wrapped leg and swings it over my lap and settles there.

– That OK? Hurt anywhere?

I pull my face back, away from her and her smell.

She twirls the knife and stabs it into the white leather upholstery I’ve already smeared filth over. She grabs the bottom of her sweater and pulls it off and tosses it aside and draws the knife free of the seat back.

She adjusts the strap of her black tank top and looks down at the knife.

– It’s not that weird, Joe. It isn’t. You did something for me once. I just want to do something for you. I just want. Well. Just let me do this for you. Please.

She puts the blade to the palm of her hand and slices across it and the blood comes and she puts it in front of my face.

– Please, Joe. I’ll beg if you want. Please.

But she doesn’t have to beg, I’m already drinking.

And when I start to bite and try to widen the wound and she gets scared and pulls free and tumbles off my lap, it’s only because Sela is in the car that I don’t break her in half and drink the rest.

Amanda plays with the ivory cameo hanging from the black velvet choker around her neck, the bandage Sela applied wrapped tight over her hand.

– She must have a thing for you. Lydia must have a thing for you.

I look forward and catch Sela’s eyes in the rearview and she looks back out the windshield, starts the T-bird and pulls out of Shinbone onto Great Jones.

Amanda reaches out and squeezes Sela’s shoulder.

– Laugh if you want to, baby, but dyke or no dyke, she just must have a thing for Joe. I mean, come on, this is what, like the second time she’s bailed him out? And that’s not even counting when she hid me from Dexter Predo. She’s got a total straight crush on him.

Sela pats the girl’s hand.

– Sweetheart, the woman wouldn’t know what to do with a man.

Amanda takes her hand away.

– That’s just stupid. She would too. And you can act like she’d never go there, but people are weirder than that. I mean, look at us. And I don’t mean me. I’m a poor little rich girl orphan whose father was a pederast and whose mother was a tramp, of course I fall in love with a chick with a dick. But all you ever wanted was a boyfriend who’d treat you like a woman and instead you end up with a little girl who treats you like, well, Joe doesn’t want to hear what I treat you like.

She ruffles her hair.

– Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is she likes him. Whether she wants to or not. That’s how it works. I mean, come on, would you have fallen for me if you could have helped it? Please don’t tell me it didn’t fill you with just a little self-loathing when you first realized you had a thing for me. The little lost girl. The innocent you had vowed to protect.

Sela maneuvers the long car around a double-parked delivery van.

– I got over it.

Amanda scratches the back of Sela’s neck with her fingernail.

– Yes you did.

She takes a jar of olives from the bar compartment and twists the lid off.

– Me, I never had any question about what I felt. First time we were in the sauna together I knew I had to have you.

She plucks an olive from the jar and pops it in her mouth.

– My God, Joe, have you ever seen her naked? You are missing out.

Sela ducks her head.

– Stop it.

Amanda wiggles her finger into the hole of one of the olives.

– Am I embarrassing you, baby?

She leans forward and wraps her arm around Sela’s neck and puts the olive at her lips.

– Are you blushing?

Sela sucks the olive from her finger and Amanda giggles and falls back in the seat.

She holds the jar out.

– Olive?

I don’t say anything and she shrugs and closes the jar and puts it away.

She moves close and leans on me.

– You’ll get over it.

She perches her chin on my shoulder.

– Not just drinking my blood, I mean.

She puts her cheek to my arm.

– I mean family. I mean what it’s like to have family. That’s what we’re gonna make, Joe. Family. Sela and me, we talk about it all the time. Right, baby?

– That’s right, hon.

– Like, how the Clans, they’re just organizations. They treat everybody like they need the Clans more than the Clans need them. Which you don’t even need to think about to see that it’s so wrong. But we’re gonna be different. We’re gonna treat everybody like family.

Sela has the car pointed east, taking us back the way we fled, heading for the avenues that will run us to the Upper East Side.

She brakes for a stoplight.

– It’s true, we’re going to start a new Clan. No dogma. No enforcers. No racial barriers. No superstitions. Just support. Just a place for everyone who needs family to have it. Know why it’s gonna work? Because Amanda and me are going to be running it. Infected and uninfected. Together.

Amanda tilts her head back to look up at me.

– It’s going to be called Cure, Joe. That’s what we’re calling the Clan. So everyone will know what we’re doing. What we’re working for. Cuz there’re so many that need it. And not just for the obvious reasons. Think about it. Sela, if she ever went to go post-op and get her equipment changed. And I am voting against that. If she ever did, know what would happen? They’d cut her dick off and do all that work and the Vyrus would treat it like a wound and heal it. Not, like, grow her a new one, just close up the hole between her legs. Leave her with, like, a patch. Gross. So, yeah, infecteds want a cure. Lots of them. But they also want other things.

She wraps her fingers around my arm and squeezes.

– We’ll be a family. We’ll all take care of each other. And I’ll have more money than God pretty soon and can make sure everyone has the blood they need. And in a few years, I’ll have a cure. Because there has to be one. It’s just a virus. No matter how you spell it. It’s biological and science can explain it. And I can cure it. You just have to isolate it and study it. You have to know it. Be with it. Get inside it. I can do that. Daddy couldn’t. But I can.