“You mean the Palladium?”
I chewed my lip. “I think that’s what the sputtering neon sign says.”
“The Palladium used to be the premier moving-picture palace in this end of the state. I saw my first film there, Casablanca.”
“You waited until the 1940s to see your first movie?”
He shrugged. “I had things to do.”
“Well, now the Palladium is the place where you can buy a bucket of beer with some very stale popcorn.”
“But … all those humans.”
“We’re vampires. If someone talks during the movie, we tear their throats out. Come on, I wore my cute date shoes and everything.”
He peered down at the strappy black pumps peeking out from my jeans. “You know I can’t resist you when your toes are exposed,” he grumped.
“Good, that means wearing open-toed shoes in winter is well worth it. And since we can’t exactly swing by for a pizza on our way into town, I brought you this.” I pulled a very nice bottle of donated Type B-positive, which I knew Gabriel favored, from the picnic basket.
“Very nice,” he commented, appraising the label. “Your palate is improving.”
“Thank you. Now let’s go.”
“What about drinking this?”
“I have a whole thing planned. Just relax that ramrod spine of yours and come with me.”
I took Gabriel to Memorial Park, a tiny patch of grass in the middle of downtown. It was home to a gazebo flanked by blackened cement statues of famous Civil War veterans from the Hollow, including Waco Marchand, who now served on the local commission for the Council for the Equal Treatment of the Undead. High-school kids posed for pictures in their prom-night finery at the gazebo each spring. But tonight it was abandoned, empty save for the fairy lights strung from the carefully preserved gingerbread eaves. I winked at Gabriel and began unpacking the picnic basket on one of the gazebo’s little wrought-iron benches.
“It’s December,” Gabriel said, staring at me and tucking his coat tighter around his body.
“We stay at room temperature,” I reminded him, patting the bench. “Besides, we have twinkly Christmas lights, only available at this time of year. We have a lovely bottle of oaky B-positive. We have grapes and cheese, which, I’ll admit, I bought on the way over to your house strictly because I’ve seen people pack them for fancy wine picnics in movies. We have romance and atmosphere out the ying-yang.”
He gave me a smile that assured me that he was working hard to humor my girlie romanticism.
“I’m wearing the date shoes,” I reminded him.
“Curse your sassy toes,” he huffed. “Let me open that. You don’t want to cork it.”
“Are you implying that a little old thing like me can’t operate something as complicated as a corkscrew?” He grinned at my indignant tone. “OK, you’re right. But that’s not because I’m a woman. It’s because most of the stuff I drank when I was alive involved screw tops.”
“I’ve always enjoyed your little quirks.” He grunted at the faint pop of the cork coming loose. He carefully poured into the plastic wine glasses that came with the picnic set. “What do we drink to?”
“World peace?” I suggested. He grimaced. “To doing things that normal couples do?”
He cleared his throat and raised his glass. “To Mrs. Mavis Stubblefield, without whom we would not be here together tonight.”
I laughed. “That’s kind of twisted.”
He nodded while he sipped. “But true.”
“To Mavis Stubblefield, without whom I wouldn’t have been fired, publicly drunk, mistaken for a deer, shot, and turned into a vampire by you,” I conceded, and took a deep drink. Despite my pacifist leanings, I enjoyed the sizzle of human red cells as they zipped through my system. “Maybe I should send her a thank-you note.”
“We both know that’s not going to happen.”
“Also true,” I admitted, snuggling my head into the crook of his neck.
“What are you doing?”