Read Blood Lite II: Overbite for Free Online

need to try to talk, which is difficult because of the combination of cleft palate, lip keloids, and dental issues.
    Bernice then pointed to “notebook,” which I dutifully handed over to her. (The pages get too greasy and discharge-y if it stays in her pockets. Good thing we laminated the talkbook!) She gripped a pencil in one flipper and began to write.
    I kept my game face on, but I had a bad feeling I knew what she was going to ask. The two of us have an . . . unusual relationship, one where we don’t often get out to restaurants or shows. She knows why, but I just can’t bring myself to be cruel enough to remind her. No woman needs to hear that, especially from the man she loves. So, we end up in situations like this, where I just know people are staring at us.
    There was a family eating across from us, mom, dad, and a five-year-old boy. B wAnT ThAT , she had written, with an arrow aimed at them. (Which confused me at first, because when I held the talkbook the arrow pointed at a picture of a man playing a little accordion!) “Of course, of course,” I said. “I want kids, too, with you. But you know our circumstances.”
    The little boy saw Bernice pointing and scooted off his seat to come over. His parents tried to stop him, but kids are intrepid! “Are you a nice monster?” he asked. She gets this a lot: kids love her. She turned, and the slat in her muumuu opened. It exposed a stripe of her zebra hide, which is the cute nickname we have for the brown and pink intertrigo fungus that lines her torso. Also, Brad’s little arm and leg popped out.
    “Hey, a baby!” the boy said. “You have a baby monster! Can I see?”
    “We’re trying to have a private dinner,” I began to say to the boy, but Bernice simply pushed her clothing aside to reveal Brad. Brad waved, which was just a trick she could do by rolling her stomach.
    “Brad’s what’s called a parasitic twin,” I explained. “He’s . . . he’s kind of like a decoration. For her belly.” Brad opened up his fetal mouth and a thin trickle of something tan and fecal came out. Doctors don’t know what that stuff is, but Brad’s been drooling it out for forty years now nonstop.
    “Hon,” I whispered, “cover yourself up.” Bernice gets huffy when she says I treat her like a child, and she made an elaborate show of pulling her dress back down over Brad. But that tugged down the other side of the dress, and her hump popped out.
    “Hey, is that a wombat?” the boy asked. He must watch Animal Planet ! It was just a kyphosis, of course, with a patch of teratoma that had two fingers, four teeth, and a thick loop of lower intestine. But Bernice’s body hair around there was thick enough to make it look like an animal perched on her shoulder. What do you want: her mother’s Greek.
    “It’s time to go back to your table,” I said, and the boy reluctantly left. I heard him tell his mom that the monster had an animal and a baby in her: he said the word “blob,” which I hoped Bernice didn’t hear. She didn’t: one good aspect of the eczema skin-sloughing filling up her ear canals.
    Each time the kitchen door opened, revealing a tray-bearing waitress, I said “Is this ours? Is this one for us?” Bernice tolerates my attempts at humor. Finally it was: Melani came out and propped open one of those unfoldable-leg devices they can rest a big serving tray on. What are those called? All nice restaurants have them, so someone must know what they’re called. Maybe I should ask Melani.
    Melani dashed back to the kitchen and returned with our drinks (Diet Coke, of course, for Bernice and iced tea for me), two bowls of alfredo, a sizzling shrimp scampi that looked delicious, and plate after plate of lasagna. Really: I asked them to bring the tray out. They needn’t have gone to all this trouble.
    “We had four servings of the lasagna verdi left,” Melani said, doing a good job of being composed. “Enjoy!”
    “I really wish you hadn’t plated them