Undead 3, Undead and Unappreciated - MaryJanice Davidson Page 0,1

closet.

"It's just… always there. I wake up, and it's all I think about. I go to bed, I'm still thinking about it."

Everyone was nodding. Even Charley was nodding, making the camera wobble.

"It just… takes over. Totally takes over your life. You start to plan events around how you can drink. Like, if I have breakfast here with my friend, I can hit an alley afterward there, while she's going uptown. Or, if I blow another friend off for supper, I can reschedule on him and get my fix instead."

Everyone was nodding harder. A few of the men appeared to have tears in their eyes! Charley, thankfully, had stopped nodding, but was getting in on the woman as tightly as he could.

"Get the suit in the shot," the reporter whispered.

"I'm not used to this," the woman continued. "I mean, I'm used to wanting things, but not like this. I mean, gross."

A ripple of laughter.

"I've tried to stop, but I just made myself sick. And I've talked to some of my friends about it, but they think I should just suck it up. Ha-ha. And my new friends don't see it as a problem at all. I guess they're, what do you call them, enablers." More nods all around. "So here I am. Someone with a problem. A big problem. And… I thought maybe coming here and talking about it would help. That's all." Silence, so she added, "That's really all."

Spontaneous, almost savage, applause. The reporter had Charley pan back, getting the crowd's reaction. She wasn't sure the rep would let all their faces be shown on the ten o'clock news, but she wanted the film in the can, just in case.

She wanted Charley to get the woman walking to the back of the room, but when he panned back, she was gone.

The reporter and her cameraman looked for the gorgeous stranger for ten minutes, with zero luck. Neither of them could figure out how a woman could just disappear out of a small conference room.

Gone.

Shit.

Chapter 1

I took another slurp of my tea (orange pekoe, six sugars) and stuck out my left foot. Yep, last season's Brunos still looked great. Hell, they could be from the last decade and still look great. Quality costs… and it lasts, too.

Marc Spangler, one of my roommates, slouched into the kitchen, yawning. I withdrew my leg before he tripped and brained himself on the microwave. He looked like pan-fried hell, which was to say, he looked like he just came off shift. Since moving in with an emergency ward physician, I've discovered that your average doc comes off shift grimier than your average garbageman.

I greeted him warmly. "Another hard afternoon saving lives and seducing the janitor?"

"Another hard night suckering poor slobs out of their precious lifeblood?"

"Yep," we both said.

He poured himself a glass of milk and sat down across from me. "You look like you need some toast," I prompted.

"Forget it. I'm not eating food so you can get off on it secondhand. 'Ooh, ooh, Marc, make sure you smear the butter allllll over the bread… now let me smell it… don't you want some sweet, sweet jelly with that?' I've gained seven pounds since I moved in, you cow."

"You should have more respect for the dead," I said solemnly, and we both cracked up.

"God, what a day," he said. His hair was growing in nicely (he'd gone through a head-shaving phase this past summer), so now he looked like a clean Brillo pad with friendly green eyes. I wished my eyes were like that, but mine were murky, like fridge mold. His were clear, like lagoon water.

"Death? Bloodletting? Gang war?" Unlikely in Minnesota, but he looked pretty whipped.

"No, the fucking administration changed all the forms again." He rubbed his eyebrows. "Every time they do it, there's a six-month learning curve. Then when we've figured out who has to sign what and in what order, they change them again. You know, in the name of efficiency."

"That blows," I said sympathetically.

"What about you, what'd you do? Chomp on any would-be rapists? Or was tonight one of the nights you didn't bother to get anything to eat?"

"The second one. Oh, and I crashed an AA meeting."

He was halfway to the fridge for a milk refill and froze like I'd yelled "I see a Republican!"

"You did what?"

"Crashed an AA meeting. Did you know they film those now?"

"They what?"

"I was kind of nervous because I didn't know if I'd have to, y'know, prove I was a drunk or if they'd