The doctor smiled. “Oh, you really needn’t worry. This being New Orleans, many of my patients are within fifty pounds of your weight. My scale is what you call ‘industrial strength.’ So hop onboard.”

Jules reluctantly complied, gingerly stepping onto the scale one foot at a time to make sure its springs wouldn’t bust. Once his patient was standing firmly on the scale, Dr. Landrieu began pushing the steel weights steadily to the right. Three hundred, 400, 450 pounds, and still the scale’s nose remained glued in the stratosphere.

“There we are. Four hundred and sixty-three pounds,” the doctor said. “That’s quite a gain since the last time I weighed you.”

Damn lying scale,Jules thought.I must’velost weight during those hell-nights in Baton Rouge. ‘Course, I did eat four or five sacks of dog chow…

“One of the reasons I took regular blood samples from you,” Dr. Landrieu continued, “was to determine whether your unusual diet was having any long-term effect on your health. But I had other reasons, as well.” He handed Jules a small clear plastic cup. “Please expectorate in this.”

“Huh?”

“Expectorate.Spit. ”

“Oh. Okay.”

After Jules swished and spat in the most polite way he could, his host continued. “I never mentioned this to you, because I wasn’t sure how you’d react, but at first the primary goal of my researches was to find a cure for your vampirism.”

“You’re shittin‘ me, Doc-really?”

“Oh yes, really and truly. Unfortunately, I soon found that my reach exceeded my grasp, I’m afraid. The issues involved were well beyond my limited knowledge and resources. As you might well imagine, I was quite disappointed by my failure. However, I soon consoled myself by turning my researches in another direction. I was fascinated by your apparent resistance to many of the outward signs of aging, with the exception of your considerable weight gain. I wanted to determine whether your kind of person would be susceptible to the range of diseases medical science believes are brought on by advancing years or by various ‘unhealthy lifestyle’ factors. Diseases such as diabetes.”

“So what exactly are you tellin‘ me, Doc?” Jules handed over his cupful of saliva.

“Oh, thank you. Just one more extraction left. I’ll need a bit of your blood.” Jules followed Dr. Landrieu over to a table covered with an assortment of sterile syringes, alcohol swabs, and other medical implements. “Roll up your left sleeve, would you? So many fascinating questions. Even after we were no longer working together, I continued with my research. How does insulin work within the body of a vampire? Does it serve any function at all? Will diseases of the pancreas progress in the same fashion as they do with normal human beings?”

Jules bit his lower lip as Dr. Landrieu poked the syringe through the white skin of his biceps and slowly drew back the plunger, collecting about an ounce of blood. It seemed so disturbingly unnatural for someone else to be drawing blood fromhim. “So give me the short version, huh, Doc? You able to help me or not?”

Dr. Landrieu carefully transferred the blood sample from the syringe to a test tube. “The ‘short version,’ Jules, is that if my tests indicate that you are indeed suffering from some form of adult-onset diabetes, I have on hand an experimental compound that may serve for you the same function that insulin injections do for a normal diabetes sufferer.”

“You’re sayin‘ you’ve got a cure for me? You’re a miracle worker, Doc! I knew my shit luck was bound to turn around!”

“Now hold on a minute there. I didn’t say anything about a cure. What I may have for you is atreatment. A drug that, if it’s effective, you’ll need to take every day for the rest of your, er, life. Just as many normal diabetes sufferers need to take their insulin injections every day in order to keep their blood sugar levels stable.”

“Hey, that’s good enough for me! So when will we know the results of your tests?”

“Oh, that shouldn’t take very long. Go relax up in the living room. I’ll be up in a few minutes. And then we’ll have that pot of coffee.”

Jules waited patiently upstairs, perusing the doctor’s bookshelves, which, apart from the expected medical and anatomy tomes, also held a respectable collection of nineteenth-century Persian erotica. He felt a jagged twinge in his heart when he recalled his own lost collections. After a few moments, Dr. Landrieu appeared in the doorway.

“Everything is ‘cooking,’ as they say. We should have our results shortly. Why don’t you come with me into the kitchen?”

Jules forced the memory of his recent losses from his mind. “Sure thing.”

“I don’t believe I ever told you this,” Dr. Landrieu said while pouring bottled water into his coffeemaker, “but the most crushing disappointment of my professional life was losing those last two races I ran for city coroner. Not because I was out of a job-I stood to make far better money in private practice, particularly with my connections. No, I suffered the torments of the damned because I knew that, out of office, I no longer had the opportunity to lure you away from live victims. How many lives did I save during those nearly thirty years you were in my employ? A thousand? Fifteen hundred? I was a good and conscientious public servant-with the possible exception of a kickback or two, and that was rather small beer-but I always considered my greatest service to the people of this city to be keeping you off her streets at night. Here. Here’s your coffee. I have some nondairy creamer, if you’d like.”

“Uh, thanks. No creamer, though.” Jules’s first sip of coffee tasted especially bitter. “Gee, Doc, I never knew you felt that way. If I’d a known, I dunno, maybe we could’ve worked out some kinda arrangement or something, y’know, after you weren’t in office no more…”

“I have a proposal for you.” Dr. Landrieu sat across from Jules and lanced him with a penetrating stare. “What I suggest may sound somewhat unusual, or even outlandish, but you must believe that I am absolutely serious. I have been thinking about this for a long time. You can’t know how many nights I turned on the evening news to see the police pulling a dead body from a swamp or a vacant lot, and always I wondered,Is this the work of my old friend Jules? And illogical though it might be, each time I asked myself that question, an arrow of guilt pierced my heart.”

The doctor sighed, his gaze dropping to the steam rising from his mug of coffee. His moment of self-absorption did not last long, however. “But that is neither here nor there. This is my proposal-come to Argentina with me. Now that my Eudice is gone, there is no longer anything to hold me to New Orleans. Work as my assistant again, train with me, and you will never again need to hunt.”

“What’re you talkin‘ about, Doc? Argentina? What, you got a new job as a coroner lined up down there?”

The doctor allowed himself to smile. “No, not as a coroner. A much more lucrative job than that, both for me and for you. Down in Argentina, you see, there is a national craze for cosmetic surgery. All segments of society, both rich and poor, indulge in it. Among Argentine women, body sculpting is especially popular. A procedure you might know as liposuction. There is a tremendous shortage of cosmetic surgeons in Argentina. For anyone with a medical degree and a few years of experience in virtually any specialty, acquiring a license to practice cosmetic surgery in Argentina is child’s play.”

Jules took another sip of coffee while he tried to put the pieces together. “Uh-huh. I see as how that might be good news for you. But how do I fit into all this?”

“You obviously don’t know much about the liposuction procedure.”

“Nope.”

“To put it simply, liposuction involves the insertion of a cannula, a sort of combination scalpel and vacuum cleaner, into areas of a patient’s body that harbor intractable and unsightly fat reserves. The surgeon sweeps the cannula beneath the patient’s dermis, snipping away and then suctioning out masses of fatty tissues.”