“Yeah. She’s been babysitting for a friend at the restaurant. Mom’s into it. She’s been reading the kid all these fairy tales. She can’t stand the Disney stuff, which is all the kid wants. Now they’re reading The Wizard of Oz. I’m supposed to get your autograph, by the way. For the kid.”

“Sure thing! You got a pen?”

“Oh, shit. It doesn’t matter. Maybe next time.”

It got dark slow and then real fast at the end, the way it always did, even in the summer, like daylight realized it had to be somewhere right away. Somewhere else. On weekends she came up here and read mystery novels in her car. Moths beating at the windows. Got out every once in a while to take a walk and look for kids getting into trouble. She knew all the places they liked to go. Sometimes the mutants were down where the stage used to be, practicing. They’d started a band. They were always asking if she was sure she couldn’t sing. She really, really couldn’t sing. That’s okay, the mutants always said. You can just howl. Scream. We’re into that. They traded her ’shine for cigarettes. Told her long, meandering mutant jokes with lots of hand gestures and incomprehensible punch lines. Dark was her favorite time. In the dark she could imagine that this really was the Land of Oz, that when the sun couldn’t stay away any longer, when the sun finally came back up, she’d still be there. In Oz. Not here. Click those heels, Bunnatine. There’s no home like a summer place.

She said, “Still having nightmares?”

“Yeah.”

“The ones about the end of the world?”

“Yeah, you nosy bitch. Those ones.”

“Still ends in the big fire?”

“No. A flood.”

“Remember that television show?”

“Which one?”

“You know. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even Mom liked it.”

“I saw it a few times.”

“I keep thinking about how that vampire, Angel, whenever he got evil, you knew he was evil because he started wearing black leather pants.”

“Why are you obsessed with what people wear? Shit, Bunnatine. It was just a TV show.”

“Yeah, I know. But those black leather pants he wore, they must have been his evil pants. Like fat pants.”

“What?”

“Fat pants. The kind of pants that people who get thin keep in their closet. Just in case they get fat again.”

He just looked at her. His big ugly face was all red and blotchy from drinking.

She said, “So my question is this. Does Angel the vampire keep a pair of black leather pants in his closet? Just in case? Like fat pants? Do vampires have closets? Or does he donate his evil pants to Goodwill when he’s good again? Because if so then every time he turns evil, he has to go buy new evil pants.”

He said, “It’s just television, Bunnatine.”