It was a long time ago, back when Seattle still had the Kingdome. We went to see Peter Frampton there, and Jimmy Carter was our president.

Things were going bad, and I was going to make them worse. I sat in our room near Green Lake, and put my pills on the coffee table.

I sat on the sofa and took many. Then another. Then still another.

I could hear my heartbeat slowing down.

I was going to die.

A lot of things had happened, but none of that would matter anymore. An angel would take me to meet my maker.

I lay down on the couch, closed my eyes and waited.

I heard the door open, and then footsteps.

When I opened my eyes I saw a burly red-headed man in a green windbreaker looking down at me.

He looked about thirty, wore big glasses and had a bookish boyishness graduate students sometimes have.

So you're dying, he said.

Yes.

I'm here to stop that.

What?

Hold still.

The windbreaker man pinned my shoulders on the couch and bit my neck.

Ow!

Sorry.

You're not an angel, are you?

No, I'm a vampire.

What?

You'll never need the services of an angel.

The windbreaker man left the room. From the hallway, I heard a fuzzy, electronic voice. Did he have a walkie-talkie?

I stared at the ceiling and wondered if I was hallucinating.

I heard the door open, and footsteps.

This time a young woman wearing a blue flannel shirt and jeans came in. She was very pretty, and she reminded me of Jaclyn Smith.

Did a young man wearing a green windbreaker come here?

Yes, and he bit me in the neck.

Damn, he beat us again.

Beat you at what?

I'm an angel, and it's our job to escort the dying to their next destination. You were supposed to die by overdose. I was called in by radio. But the windbreaker man got to you first and made you an vampire -- and an immortal. Now the only thing that can kill you is a good vampire hunter, and there aren't any of those left.

Things were moving a little too fast for me. Vampires? Did they even exist? And me, an immortal?

The angel touched my neck and inspected the marks left by the windbreaker man and sighed.

I'm going to get yelled at by my boss.

Who's your boss?

God.

Oh.

The angels in King County communicate by radio using code -- and our radios are the best CB radios Radio Shack has to offer. Probably some idiot left his or her copy of the codebook on the bus or something.

I felt like saying a few things but decided not to.

The angel lit a Marlboro.

So, does god smoke Marlboros too?

No, god's more into Salems.

What's god like?

Hard to say. For one, god's immortal.

So am I, I thought.

I grinned, and bit the angel in the neck.

You fucker!

Before she pushed me away, I was able to bite her long enough to slurp her blood. She too was a vampire now.

Jaclyn climbed on top of me and began pounding my head with the lava lamp that was on the coffee table. I soon passed out.

When I came to I saw white feathers on the floor. Jaclyn wasn't there.

It took the doctors at the Swedish Hospital months to repair my skull fractures.

By the time my injuries were healed I'd gotten rid of my addiction to pills because immortality had removed the fun out of flirting with death.

Every once in a while Jaclyn would run me over, shoot me with various types of guns, and on one occasion, she stabbed me behind my left ear with an ice pick. But the number of her attacks decreased over the years and pretty much stopped by the time Barack Obama moved into the White House. Perhaps Jaclyn finally realized the futility of trying to kill somebody who can't die.

I still smoke Lucky Strikes when I think about being hated forever. It isn't the easiest thing to live with, and it's not the sort of thing teachers and parents teach you. And by now I’ve amassed a long list of Jaclyns who will hate me even after the rest of civilization is gone.