In a damp county seat in the contemporary American Northwest, a polygraph examiner who never misses gets a flat line. The subject is a civilian intern—the one person he cannot read. On the surface they are contracted examiner and intern; underneath, a vampire and the man who slips past every defense. Desire stays in distance: looks, pauses, a forehead, a kiss under two seconds, a collarbone. The ceiling is the rescue that exposes him, the tooth that comes out on its own in the rain, and the open door he refuses to step through. The story does not close. The father has already
