The Mammoth Book Of Vampire Stories Written By Women

She went on anyway. "Vonda's going to be my daughter's godmother. She's in my will as the person to raise her if anything happened to me."

"I didn't realize you were that close."

"I thought we were. And, you know, she's young." She glanced wryly in Denise's direction.

"I'll tell her to get in touch with you."

"No!" She was adamant. "Don't do that."

"I'll tell her you said hi."

"No," she insisted, no less emphatically but lowering her voice. "Don't do that, either. If she doesn't want to see me for some reason that's up to her. I still think she'd be a good mother for Phoebe if something happened to me. My lawyer would contact her. Not that anything's going to happen to me." She gave a nervous little laugh, the way people do.

"Well," I said, "we never know." My attention had swung back to Denise and to Kit, making this comment sound more dismissive than I'd meant it to be. Amy didn't say anything more about Vonda; she didn't, in fact, say anything more to me for the rest of the lunch.

Kit died less than a week later. Her husband called me at work and said if I wanted to say goodbye I better come now. I went; how could I not? She raised up out of the bed towards me, her face already stretched into a rictus grin, and moaned as if in warning or terrible acknowledgment. She seemed to be reaching for me, but it was easy to avoid her grasp. Kit was my friend and I longed to be of comfort, but I couldn't risk touching her now; who knew what might flow into or out of me?

There were things I might have said to her if Jerry hadn't been in the room, silently distraught and furiously protective. "Goodbye, Kit," I whispered. "Thanks for being my friend." If she heard me at all, she would know what I meant.

The memorial service was several months later. Denise came back for it, and she and Amy and I went together. Amy brought her new daughter Phoebe, who'd been malnourished in the orphanage and sickly since she came home; solemn, dwarfed by her mother's bulk, the baby fussed almost inaudibly during the service. Despite the panic that was making my skin crawl and my breath come short as the eulogies went on and on, I didn't ask to hold her; it was too soon, I wasn't quite that desperate, and her life-force, though pure and sweet because it was so new, wasn't strong enough yet to be worth much to me.

Denise was pale and noticeably thinner than she'd been at Charon's. Climbing the chapel steps, she had more trouble catching her breath than her tears would account for. She said she hadn't been feeling right and had a doctor's appointment the next week. Probably nothing, she said, but she had a six-day, 500-mile bike tour in less than a month, and she needed to be in shape for that.

I was one of the people who got up and spoke about Kit. I meant everything I said. I would miss her terribly. She'd had a profound effect on my life.

After the service there was high-intensity sort of mingling. I avoided the photo display of Kit on a lace-draped, daisy-laden table — Kit as a beaming baby, Kit in a high school cheerleader outfit leaping in a high split, Kit in a glamour shot and made what I hoped was creditable small talk with people I knew. Phoebe got a lot of attention; it was good, someone observed, to have a baby at a funeral, to remind us all that life goes on. That the life-force is eternal and infinite, and infinitely available.

Meaning to introduce Amy to a man I'd known casually for years, I could not remember his name. The older I got the more frequently names were eluding me, but this was the most public example so far, and I was mortified. He laughed with a sort of pained graciousness, supplied the name, shook Amy's free hand, made some wry joke about losing brain cells as we get older.

No . I thought but did not say. It is not going to happen to me .

"But you're not as old as I am, are you, Madyson?" he amended, peering at me in admiration and, I thought, some bafflement, because we both knew I was.

"I don't know," I lied. "Anyway, you're only as old as you feel, right?"

People said nice things to me all afternoon, a weird but gratifying phenomenon for a memorial service. "You look great, Madyson." "You look younger every time I see you!" I thanked them lightly and tried to settle on just the right way to think about Kit.

At one point Denise said something about her grandchildren, and the woman she was chatting with affected shock and protested that she didn't look old enough to be a grandmother which was patently false, and Denise just smiled and said, "Well, I am. Twice." There was an awkward silence while both the other woman and I waited for her to express thanks. When that didn't happen, the conversation trailed off and the woman found somebody else to talk to.

"I don't know why," Denise muttered, "people assume it's a compliment to say you look younger than you are."

I was taken aback. "Well, nobody wants to look old."

"Why not? Why is young better?"