“I am asking you for time to be with the only woman I have ever loved.”

“You just met her tonight.”

“Have women ceased to believe in love at first sight?”

“I believe in lust at first sight, Mr. Warrington, but not love.”

“You are very cynical for a woman. I suppose it is being a law officer that has done it.”

“I was cynical before I put on a badge, but yeah, most police officers end up pretty cynical.”

“It is a sad state of affairs if a beautiful woman doesn’t believe in love at first sight.”

“You’re a romantic, Mr. Warrington.”

“Most gentlemen are, Ms. Blake; we just hide it better than the gentler sex.”

I wasn’t sure women had ever truly been the gentler sex—it depended on how you defined gentle—but I didn’t argue with him. I just wanted time to discuss the moral implications of Warrington and Justine with Manny before I said yes or no. It wasn’t the romantic in me; it was the fucking guilt. I’d raised him from the grave and Justine was in love with him. There was no Hippocratic oath for animators, but it seemed like I’d broken some rule somewhere. I just wasn’t sure what rule, or when it broke. It was just all so fucked up in ways that I’d never imagined. I called Manny over to me; Nicky and Domino trailed him and I didn’t tell them to stay back. Warrington went to hold hands with Justine while I tried to decide what was the lesser evil. Or hell, if it was evil at all.

29

“YOU CAN’T REALLY be thinking this is a good idea,” Domino said.

“I didn’t say it was a good idea.”

“Anita, you can’t let the nice white-bread girl have sex with a zombie,” Manny said.

“What does her ethnicity or lack thereof have to do with anything?” I asked.

“It’s not her ethnicity, Anita, it’s that she’s never had a bad thing happen to her.”

“You don’t know that, she could have a tragic past.”

“Look at her, Anita, she’s nearly thirty and still shiny.” All four of us turned and looked at Justine, like one of those movie takes where everyone looks and tries so hard not to look like they’re looking that it’s painful. She was gazing up at the zombie as if he were the most wonderful thing in the world, but that wasn’t it. Her brown hair was straight and untouched by chemicals, skirt not too short or too long. Her blouse was long-sleeved with a little frilly collar; her shoes were sensible pumps. But it wasn’t the clothes either. I’d known people who dressed like that who actually had had horribly tragic childhoods, or old romances that had needed police to save the day. I couldn’t put my finger on it, or list the reasons, but Manny was right.

Justine looked at us and said, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, and we all looked away at once, which wasn’t suspicious at all.

“See, white bread,” Manny said.

“I get it, she still has that new-car smell,” I said.

“Yes.”

“How do people get that old and be that . . .” Nicky groped for a word.

“Untouched,” I offered.

“Fresh,” Manny said.

“Innocent,” Domino said.

“Yeah, that.”

“I don’t know,” Domino and I said together.

“Dominga Salvador’s sister was like that,” Manny said.

“Was, as in past tense?”

He nodded.

“What happened to her?” Domino asked.

“She fell in love with a man she thought was the moon and stars. We all liked him, too.”

“Your voice has that bad sound to it.”

He nodded again, face very solemn. “He ended up beating her; by the time Dominga got her away from him they had two boys. The oldest is just like him. There’s something wrong with him.”

“Has he hit any of his dates yet?” I asked.

“I lost touch once I left Dominga’s circle, but her sister remarried a nice guy from all accounts.”

“How do you know that there’s something wrong with the boy then, if you lost contact?” I asked.

“I watched him from a baby, Anita; he’s not right. He’s never been right. That’s not going to change. Men like that are attracted to girls like that.”

“The crazy bitches are attracted to the male equivalent,” Nicky said.

Manny and I nodded.

“Bad boys and girls either like the good boys and girls, or people as bad as they are,” Domino said.

“Agreed; now what are we going to do about Justine and the love of her life?” I asked.

“Anita, he goes back in the grave tonight; you can’t let this girl carry the memory of the one perfect night with her forever.”

“She knows he goes back in the grave tonight, so it won’t be perfect. It’ll be sad and full of her knowing this is the only time they’ll ever have together.”

“It’s like Romeo and Juliet stuff,” Domino said.

“Girls like her eat that tragic shit up,” Nicky said.

“Anita,” Manny said, “someone like her could take the tragic romance of tonight and live on it forever.”

“Is that bad?”

“No man will ever be able to live up to the romance of this, Anita. Either she’ll never date again, or she’ll compare every man to this, and every other man will lose.”

“Why will they lose?”

“Because she’ll build it up in her mind until it was the perfect sex, the perfect man, and if they had been born in the same century then they could have been perfectly happy.”

“You sound like experience talking again,” I said.

“I had a good friend in high school, Maria. She lost her first love in a car accident. She married and had children, but her husband is still fighting the ghost of that perfect love thirty years after they married, and thirty-two years after the boyfriend died. I knew Ricky, he was a good guy, but he wasn’t all that Maria remembers. I’ve always felt sorry for Carlos, because he’s still fighting the perfect boyfriend who will forever be young, handsome, and perfect.”

“You have two stories that are perfect for this moment?” Domino said, and let the suspicion be thick in his voice.

“Hey, I’m in my fifties looking at sixty; you learn a thing or two just by surviving this long.”

Domino smiled. “Okay, I get that.”

“Some people are stupid and mean if they live to be seventy,” Nicky said.

“Or a hundred and seventy,” I said.

We all just nodded and agreed.

“But I’m not one of them, or I try not to be,” Manny said, “and what happens tonight could mark this woman forever.”

“You think I’m being stupid to not just say no.”

“I think you’re letting your guilt and fear override your common sense,” Manny said.

“What he said,” Domino said.

“And I think you need to let the woman decide for herself,” Nicky said.

“You’re a sociopath,” Domino said. “You don’t give a damn for her feelings, or how her life will turn out.”