Chapter 4: Snacks and a Thief
The sunlight through the stained-glass panels of their renovated Virginia farmhouse was different now. It didn’t feel like church light, hallowed and severe. It felt like honey, warm and lazy, pooling on the worn leather of the sofa where Jud and Paul were tangled together in a nest of blankets. The air smelled of cedar from the fire, baby formula, and the profound, simple peace of a battle long ended.
Jud, his hair faintly silver at the temples, had his head resting on Paul’s shoulder. Paul’s arm was around him, his own dark hair forever untouched by time, a secret he no longer had to hide. Their respective wedding bands—Jud’s a simple platinum band, Paul’s a darker tungsten—glinted in the light as their hands lay intertwined on a soft grey throw.
On the massive television, a reboot of a famously melodramatic vampire soap opera played. A brooding lead actor with impeccable hair glared at a swooning heroine.
“It’s high camp,” Paul insisted, gesturing with a cheese puff. “The lighting alone is a deliberate critique of Gothic romanticism.”
Jud snorted, snagging a puff for himself. “It’s terrible. The dialogue sounds like it was translated through three languages and then back again. It’s transcendent in its badness.”
“Precisely! That’s the art!”
“It’s schlock, you pretentious former blood-drinker.”
Paul grinned, a full, easy thing that still made Jud’s heart stutter with joy. “Says the man who once screamed his lungs raw in a cathedral. We’ve earned our schlock.”
A quiet thump-patter announced Jerry’s arrival. The opossum, plump and pampered, waddled across the oak floor with the assured entitlement of a founding family member. His whiskers twitched. His beady eyes fixed on the orange puff in Jud’s fingers.
“Don’t even think about it,” Jud said, pointing the snack at him.
Jerry thought about it. He thought very hard. He crept closer, a little grey ghost.
Jud, smirking, moved the puff toward his mouth. In a blur of surprising speed, Jerry was on the couch arm. He opened his pink mouth, needle teeth gleaming, and with a delicate pluck, stole the cheese puff directly from Jud’s fingertips. He then sat back, clutching it in his little paws, and stared Jud dead in the eyes as he began to munch.
“You little monster!” Jud cried, laughing. “That was mine!”
“He does it for the drama,” Paul said, reaching into the bowl. “Here, Jer. Peace offering.” He held out a puff.
Jerry sniffed it, turned his head away with a shockingly human dismissiveness.
“Fine. More for me.” Paul popped the puff into his own mouth.
It was the signal. Jerry launched himself into Paul’s lap, stood on his hind legs, and placed his front paws on Paul’s chest. With terrifying gentleness, he pressed his snout to Paul’s lips.
“Mmf! No! Gerry, gh’off—” Paul sputtered, trying to turn his head. Jerry paddled at his cheek, persistent, until Paul, laughing and gagging, opened his mouth. With surgical precision, Jerry retrieved the slightly damp cheese puff and retreated to the couch arm to enjoy his twice-stolen prize.
“You are a menace,” Paul gasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was beaming.
Jud was wheezing with laughter. “He only steals the ones with soul. It’s a compliment.”
“Try telling that to my salivary glands.”
The show’s vampire enacted a particularly anguished soliloquy about eternal loneliness. Jud and Paul exchanged a look—a look that held centuries of understanding, of their own remembered hungers and solitary screams in the dark. Now it just seemed hilarious. They burst into simultaneous, helpless giggles, the kind that aches the stomach and cleanses the soul.
Jerry, sensing a lapse in security, saw his ultimate chance. In a daring raid, he scurried to the bowl between them, plunged his face in, and emerged with a mound of puffs stuffed in his cheeks. In his haste, his tail hooked the rim.
The bowl tipped. A cascade of bright orange cheese puffs spilled across the floor, bouncing and rolling under the coffee table.
“Jerry!”
Both men jackknifed off the sofa. Jud pointed a stern finger. “Bad! Very bad opossum!”
Paul tried to muster a frown. “That was the last bag! You hear me? The last bag!”
Jerry, cheeks bulging like a guilty chipmunk, gave them one last, unrepentant stare. Then he turned and scampered off, a blur of grey fur headed for the sanctuary beneath the sideboard, the sound of happy, crunching glee soon echoing in his wake.
Jud and Paul stood amid the orange debris, their mock outrage melting away. The late afternoon light caught the dust motes dancing in the air, the framed photos on the mantle—two weddings, two christenings, four faces, two children, all grinning. The distant, muffled crunching continued.
Paul sighed, a sound of pure, utter contentment. He slid his arm back around Jud’s waist. “We’re getting more tomorrow,” he whispered.
“Obviously,” Jud said, resting his head back on Paul’s shoulder. On screen, the vampire wept blood tears. Outside, a car door slammed—Riley home from his psychology lecture. Soon, Benoit would call, his voice warm and tired from his case. The house, their cozy, full, miraculous house, was waiting.
They settled back into the couch, a single, unified shape in the honeyed light, listening to their thief enjoy his spoils.