"No, we live forever," Mimi said airily.
"Like, forever?" Bliss didn't think she could handle that. How could she live forever exactly. Like, wouldn't she get all wrinkly and stuff?
"Like, forever," Mimi echoed.
"What about the silver stake through the heart?"
"Only if it's from Tiffany's!" Mimi cackled. She took a sip of her Pellegrino. "No, seriously, you've watched too much Bulb. There's nothing that can hurt us. But you know Hollywood. They had to think of ways to kill us off somehow. I don't know how we got such a bad rap." She smiled sweetly, a beautiful monster. "It's all created by The Conspiracy, you know. They like to mislead the Red Bloods."
Bliss's head swam. She still felt confused. "But we die after a hundred years?"
"Only the physical shell. If you choose. Your memories last forever, so you're never really dead," Mimi said, clutching the tiny green bottle of sparkling water and taking another gulp.
"What about sucking blood and all that?"
"It's fun," Mimi said, her eyes glazing over dreamily, thinking about her Italian hunk. "Better than sex."
Bliss blushed.
"Don't be such a prude. I've had tons of humans."
"You're like a vampire slut," Bliss joked.
Mimi's face darkened, but then she saw the humor in it. "Yeah, a real vamp, that's me."
Their food arrived - rare pink slices of tuna carpaccio for Mimi and a mound of steak tartare soaked in a raw egg for Bliss.
Bliss thanked whoever made eating uncooked beef not only acceptable but fashionable and dug into her entr��e. She wondered how Dylan would feel if she wanted to make him her human familiar. Did she just, you know, start necking and then chomp on him?
The tables on the sidewalk were quickly filling up with diners from the surrounding neighborhood, mostly women in chic leather and suede coats and pristine denim trousers, holding bulging shopping bags from Madison Avenue stores, stopping by for a quick reprieve from an exhausting day of trying on clothes. Bliss looked around. Almost every table was picking at similarly uncooked foods. She wondered how many of them were Blue Bloods. Maybe all of them?
"What about the sun? Doesn't it like, kill us?" she asked, between bites. The steak melted on her tongue, cold and tart.
"Are you shriveling up and dying right now?" Mimi snickered. "All of us go to Palm Beach every Christmas. Hello!"
Bliss had to admit she wasn't. Dying, that is, from sun exposure. But she did get itchy, and told Mimi about that.
"You just have to see Dr. Pat. There's a pill you take if you're allergic. Some of us are; it's genetic. But you're lucky, the pill you get, it clears acne too. Isn't that great?"
Mimi put down her fork, wiped her lips with a napkin, then took out a Tweezerman file and began sharpening her back teeth with it.
"It's good for the fangs," she matter-of-factly informed Bliss.
Bliss was disconcerted. For a moment, she had looked past the Mimi sitting there and into the face of a person whom she felt she used to know.
"It happened, huh?"
"What?"
"You saw me. Or, you know, some version of me, in some past life of yours."
"Is that what it was?"
"Who was I?" Mimi asked, curious.
"Don't you know?"
Mimi sighed. "Not really. You can go into meditation and learn about your whole history, but it's kind of a pain. You don't really need to."