"I am Jorge," he said. "Who are you?"

She kept gazing off. "María," she said.

"How much would you cost me, María?"

After a moment, she said, "One thousand pesos." Her Spanish was accented, Jorge thought she was German. He didn't know that the accent was fake.

He was amazed by that profile. "It's a deal."

It was a short walk to the hotel. Now, in the darkened room, as she crawled onto the foot of the bed and began moving over his body, kissing it as she slowly advanced, he was struck more than ever by how much she looked like Eva Perón. He knew, of course, that Eva was dead, and that the idea of Eva as a streetwalker, dead or alive, was preposterous. Still, Jorge couldn't help thinking that the fear-tinged excitement he felt must be something like necrophilia.

When her mouth reached the side of his neck, Jorge felt her tongue lick the skin. Then he thought he felt something else. "It feels like you're biting my neck," Jorge said with a nervous chuckle. She continued without answering. "You're not actually biting, though, are you? You're just nibbling, right?" She still didn't answer, and he was too thrilled, or too scared, to move, so that he was unable to see her mouth, or the two streams of blood that were running down the side of the bed sheet.

Then she finished and propped up on her hands. To his horror, there was blood on her lips. She licked them, and a drop hit his chest.

"What have you done?" he was scarcely able to ask. She quickly rose from the bed to start dressing. "What are you?" he asked, afraid to put a hand to his neck.

As Marķa hurriedly dressed, Jorge went from the bed to a mirror. He gasped at the sight of the two bloody punctures in the side of his neck. "My God," he said, rushing to pull a handkerchief out of his pants on the floor.

"I am sorry," Marķa said, even sounding like Eva Perón, as Jorge had heard her in newsreels. There was no German accent, but she spoke very quietly, rushed. "There should be no effect. One quickie, as they say, doesn't do it."

"No effect?" Jorge was pressing the handkerchief to his wounds. "What about these two holes in my neck?"

"I am sorry," she repeated. "They will heal."

Jorge looked at them again in the mirror. When he turned again, she was gone. On a table he saw his one thousand pesos. He walked over and picked up the money. It only added to his disbelief. "She wasn't even a whore," he said. He went back to the mirror and pressed the wounds in his neck. "How," he asked himself, "am I going to explain these holes in my story?" Jorge knew that when he got home his fifty-year-old, dour-looking wife Nita would be standing there in her houserobe, glaring at him, waiting for an explanation about where he had been. Well, for once, he decided, he would tell her the truth. More or less.

Still stunned by his experience, he walked into the house about midnight, the lapel of his overcoat turned up over the side of his neck. Nita had walked into the parlor to meet him. She stood there in her houserobe, glaring at him, waiting for an explanation about where he had been. "This had better be good," Nita said.

Jorge, with a glassy look in his eyes, plopped down in a chair, preparing himself to tell her the truth. "I was attacked by a vampire," he said, sounding like he didn't believe it himself. "She looked just like Eva Perón."

Nita stared at him. She was too amazed to be angry. He had more imagination than she had given him credit for. "Look," he said, and lowered the coat lapel, exposing his wounds to her.

Nita walked over to him. Leaning down, she took a good, close look at the two holes, ringed with dried blood, in his neck. Then she straightened up and looked at him disdainfully.

"Only you would do that," she said. "Only you would punch holes in your neck to back up such a story."

Nita turned to head back for bed. As she was leaving the room, she mockingly quoted him: "She looked just like Eva Perón."