Jules smiled his warmest, most homespun smile at her. “Hiya, gorgeous,” he said, racking his brain for an appropriate opening line. “What’s a fine-lookin‘ lady like you doin’ in a low-rent situation like this?”

She placed her sandwich carefully on her lap and made eye contact with Jules for the first time. “You’re from the guv’ner’s office, aren’t you?”

A little nonplussed, Jules responded, “Uh, no. Actually, I’m from New Orleans. Just got into town this morning.”

“The guv’ner’s got offices in New Orleans, doesn’t he?” the woman shot back. “The guv’ner drives around in a big black limousine. It’s got a TV in it. He watches the TV to see what’s inside my mind.”

“Uh… yeah. I see.” Jules fidgeted with his fingernails, trying to figure a way to turn the woman’s unfortunate mental state to his advantage. “Well, actually, I reallyam from the governor’s office. The governor, uh, he sent me to find you, so I could give you a nice tour of that big nice house over there.” Jules pointed toward the old State Capitol Building, which glowed in the evening mist like a white castle from a Cecil B. DeMille knights-and-damsels epic.

“Really?” she said, edging closer to Jules.

“Really,” Jules said warmly, taking advantage of the moment to slide closer to her. “We can go take that tour right now, if you’d like.”

“Iknew it! I was the guv’ner’s mistress. He used to let me live there in that castle until I said I wouldn’t vote for him no more.”

“Yeah, well, he’s changed his mind. You can go live there again, and you can vote for anybody you like.”

He held out his hand to her. She stiffened, staring at Jules’s hand like it was leprous. “You’re trying to bribe me to vote for him, aren’t you?”

“Huh?”

“Your hand-it’s full of filthy bribe money.”

Jules stared at his empty hand. He wished itwere full of filthy money. “No, baby, it’s nothin‘ like that. We’re just gonna go on a little tour, is all.”

Her eyes grew wide. “No!” She scooted away from Jules and wrapped her sandwich in the hem of her dress. “He’s full of tricks! He’ll do anything to get me to vote for him!”

“Now, baby, you just calm yourself down-”

“Don’t come near me!” She abruptly stood and backed away from the bench. “He’s trying to bribe me!” she shouted to the nearest group of park dwellers. “He’s trying to seduce me with his video poker money! Then the feds will come get me and put me on trial! Briber!Briber! ”

All eyes in the park focused on the two of them. Jules got up from the bench and stepped away from her, his hands spread in a futile gesture of conciliation. “All right, all right already! I’m leavin‘, see? I’m leavin’. We’ll forget the tour, okay? Just settle down.”

Every other park dweller now eyed him like he was a walking time bomb. His repast for the evening was spoiled. Unable to think of anything else, he climbed to the top of the levee and watched the colored smoke belch from the tops of the tall refinery stacks. He passed a few hours counting the eighteen-wheelers that occasionally crossed the Mississippi River bridge. As the echoes of their passing bounced off the levee’s grassy slope, Jules felt the first cold fingers of real despair touch his soul.

Three nights later Jules was running out of curses to mumble to himself. He’d revised his earlier opinion of his new home: Baton Rougewas hell. He’d tried shifting his hunting grounds to LSU, hoping to corner an unwary undergraduate behind a dormitory, but security guards had chased him off campus. Back downtown, he’d hoped to cut his growing hunger with a cup of free coffee, but the Baptist missionaries had refused him even a drop when he wouldn’t sing hymns with them. And his fellow street people still shunned him like he was a dose of HIV.

Even among the outcasts, he was an outcast. The unbearable bitterness of that realization rubbed on his frayed soul as he aimlessly wandered the bleak, empty streets of downtown, blowing down the cracked sidewalks like a wadded-up page of yesterday’s newspaper. He had no idea how long he’d been walking, or where he’d gotten himself to, when he heard thetap-tap-tap-tap of someone, or something, following behind him.

He wasn’t afraid. He recognized his lack of fear with a dull, slow surprise. In fact, he half hoped it was Malice X following behind him, twisted stake in hand.

Jules turned around.

It wasn’t a vampire, or the bogeyman. It was a dog. Just a mournful-eyed, matted-furred, droopy-eared mutt.

The dog stopped walking as soon as Jules turned to face her. She looked at him shyly and fearfully and eagerly, her tail wagging with a quick, nervous stutter.

Jules’s heart began to defrost at the sight of the timid, hopeful animal. He’d never been a dog lover. But here was a fellow outcast, just as dirty and hungry and lonely as he was. A fellow outcast who was reaching out to him.

Jules knelt down, ignoring the painful protest of his knees, and held out his hand. “C’mere, girl,” he whispered, terribly afraid she might spook and run away from him. “C’mere. I won’t hurt you, darlin‘. I swear. I just wanna be your friend.”

Slowly, with short, hesitant steps, the dog approached him. He held his breath, not daring to move even a millimeter. Time seemed to stop as he waited for the cold touch of her nose against his fingertips.

Finally, she sniffed his hand. With the first whiff of his scent, she began wagging her tail more confidently. Jules waited for her to get more accustomed to him before he dared pat her on the head. Her nose moved swiftly from his fingers to his arm to his knee, then to his crotch, her tail wagging more enthusiastically with each passing second.

“Yeah, sweetheart. You like the way I smell, don’t you?” He hesitantly patted the top of her head. When she responded by licking his hand, he threw caution to the winds and scratched behind her ears and vigorously rubbed her scabby back. “Yeah. Aren’t you sweet? You aren’t mean an‘ nasty like them others. You’re just a sweetheart, ain’tchu?”

While he was picking burrs out of her matted fur, he noticed how her ribs pressed through her paper-thin sides. He stood up. “We’ve gotta find you somethin‘ to eat, sweetheart. You’re lookin’ even hungrier than I am. And that’s pretty fuckin‘ hungry.”

The two of them wandered the streets until they came upon a closed but still-in-business convenience mart. Jules stared through the window. There, on aisle three, sat half a dozen bags of dog food.

He looked down at his new friend. She stared up at him and wagged her tail hopefully. He looked back through the window. “Aww, what the fuck,” he muttered to himself. “The worst they can do is toss me in the slammer, and that’d be a helluva lot more comfy than sleepin‘ in that damn trunk of mine, anyway.”

He walked around to the back of the store. The rear window was barred, but the door, with its rotting wood and flimsy, loose knob, looked promising. Jules gathered what remained of his strength and threw his shoulder against the door. The old wood gave some, creaking in protest. He backed up five paces and got a running start. Faced with the impact of 450 pounds of newly invigorated vampire, the sagging door split into five pieces.

An off-key symphony of Klaxons, bleats, and hoots sounded as Jules picked himself up off the dirty floor, rubbed his sore shoulder, and headed for the dog food aisle. He grabbed as many of the ten-pound bags as he could squeeze into his arms, then ran out the way he’d come in. The shrill whistles of the store’s alarm system chased him into the street like pursuing harpies. His canine companion barked excitedly at the noise and the tumult, despite Jules’s out-of-breath pleas for her to be quiet. He lurched into a dark alleyway and dropped his five sacks of purloined dog food onto a torn, stained mattress.

Then he fell back against the wall, slid to the ground, and waited for the sirens and flashing red lights of approaching patrol cars.