Zampano’s wife was an actress. She wasn’t a very good actress. When I first found Zampano, he was already bleary-eyed and watching the films she had made over and over and drinking himself to death. She was always topless in the films, eventually. Zampano hated that about her movies, but he couldn’t fight her about something she wanted so badly, especially when the money always helped. She fought zombies and teen mutants and a dozen sex-crazed serial killers. Then, she went out for drinks with her sister and never came home.
She was found in water. A thousand needle marks along her legs and arms made everyone say she had been a junky, but you couldn’t hide that kind of thing from your husband.
Zampano knew it was the vampires that had done that.
Her sister couldn’t remember a thing. The police grilled her for hours, and all she could remember was getting in a taxi at a cheap sushi bar in Burnaby, and going home. The sushi bar didn’t recall a thing. The credit card slips and receipts all came back with a different story.
Zampano never spoke to her again. He spoke to me.
We had something in common, then.
We met because I had posted an ad on Craigslist, in Missed Connections:

Vampires are real in Vancouver!

Did you lose a loved one, and you know she wasn’t a junky like they say they were?