Tara's at work, so busy thinking about her dumb bitch friend that she forgets she's having a flashback until it's too late. Remember when Franklin came to the bar and asked her for a TruBlood? Before you know it, she's dropped it and there's fake blood everywhere.

Arlene is interviewing and close to hiring a new waitress, Holly Cleary, and tells her not to mind Tara. "She's all bark and... Well, she bites too. But at least she ain't a vampire like our hostess." Holly looks like Grace Zabriskie's hotter, younger sister. Let's put it that way. She's got pigtails and could be a very experienced thirty or a very sprightly fifty. She's awesome to look at, but not all that comforting. (Of course, the actress playing her is -- call it the Arlene Effect, or the Bon Temps Effect -- very pretty indeed. I've always thought she was pretty; she's half-sisters with Julia Louis-Dreyfus and you've seen her around, just not looking like this.)

Anyway, Holly heard that the Chili's in Monroe has a vampire busboy: "He's real fast." Arlene likes her, and obliquely tells her that just because every other waitress at Merlotte's has died a grisly death there's no reason to think she will. Holly's like, A) The world's been around so long that no matter where you step somebody died there, and B) She's got two kids and there is a recession on. Arlene finds the first, Amy Burleyish point to be odd, but loves that they both have two kids. Holly looks at her all crazy and notes that she's pregnant with a secret third baby that nobody knows about. It's all witchy.

Arlene introduces her to Sam as he's running past -- "This is Holly, your new waitress. Don't sleep with her!" -- which is confusing and weird for him, but makes me wonder/hope that Arlene just now decided to hire her and is letting Sam know he has a new waitress. (Holly is, for her part, not having trouble with the concept of hooking up with him.) He runs into the back, scaring the piss out of a very shaken Tara, and finally does the smart thing nobody's done yet, which is put his arms around her without opening his mouth about it. She weeps.