“What the fuck did you show me that for?” Bob 1 says. “You know I can’t abide vermin.”

They’re sitting in an ice-cream parlor across the street from the Sandman Motel. They’ve been here almost an hour, since right after sunset, came over as soon as it was safe. Their table has a view of McMullin’s room, and of the rat, which is rooting in the bucket again.

“A rat’s got to be smart to get that big,” Bob 2 says. “Got to be able to sniff out poison, fight off dogs, think on its feet.”

“Fuck ’em,” Bob 1 says. “They should all die. You never heard of the Black Death?”

“I tried to feed on a rat once.”

“Stop right there.”

“I got so desperate, I went to a dump and chased one down. It tasted like shit and didn’t help at all.”

“It’s a good thing you hooked up with me, isn’t it?” Bob 1 says.

“I was doing okay on my own,” Bob 2 says.

“Feeding on rats is not ‘doing okay.’”

The men have been partners for twenty-five years. Bob 1 was born in 1904 in Key West. He grew up working on fishing boats, got married, had a kid. At 22 he fell for a Cuban girl he met on Mallory Square, a Cuban girl who’d come out only at night. They decided to run away to Havana, and Bob had her turn him, thinking they’d be lovers until the end of time. The night before they were supposed to sail, the girl disappeared, and Bob never saw her again.

Bob 2 is from Brooklyn, born in 1923. He fought in France during the Second World War, killed a lot of men and saw a lot of men die. This triggered his first and only existential crisis: What was the point of grubbing through life when the only possible ending was death? When a hooker he was jungled up with after returning to the States confided that she was a rover and would likely live forever, he saw a way to ease his mind. He forced the girl to turn him, then dusted her so nobody in the world knew his new secret. His plan worked perfectly: He hasn’t worried about dying since.

The Bobs met in Kansas City and started traveling together. When your survival depends on hunting down and killing another human being every thirty days, it’s smart to have someone watching your back. They make quite a pair. Bob 1 is tall and thin and fair, and Bob 2 is short and round and dark. Bob 1 is kind of quiet, but Bob 2 talks enough for both of them. They get on each other’s nerves but also make each other laugh more than anyone else can.