She slept throughout the day with the Collingham’s bag beside her pillow. That evening, Nadia considered spraying it with her perfume, an inoffensive lavender that let only the owners of the most sensitive noses know she had arrived.
She hummed lowly to herself. Wallflower might’ve been a more appropriate scent than lavender. She spritzed the bag anyway and took it to work again, carefully, as though the Holy Grail were inside.
An utterly boring young man dropped a package of utterly boring white socks on the counter, his cell phone lodged in his ear. The lack of conversation between Nadia and her customer gave her time to think, something most Collingham’s employees didn’t bother doing. Thinking too much was counterproductive at a place like Collingham’s.
She frowned as she scanned the socks. Had she taken her meds that night or not?
She hadn’t, she figured, by the time she wished the young man in his own little bubble happy holidays. She watched him leave and sighed. Why on Earth, after four years of taking those pills the second she woke up every night, did she forget tonight?
“Well, hi there! I was hoping I’d see you again.”
Nadia’s heart might’ve fluttered if it hadn’t stopped beating eight years before. Her hands flew to her hair of their own accord, and she straightened her bangs. “Hello!” she greeted. “How are you tonight?”
“Oh, I can’t complain,” Dennis Crane said and placed a black leather belt on the counter. Black leather, Nadia thought. Very nice, very sophisticated. “Fantastic weather we’re having. I haven’t seen a December this warm in years.”
Nadia nodded and cleared her throat. The weather. He wanted to talk about the weather. There were so many other things they could talk about!
“Still bummed about the sweaters, though,” he admitted. He reached for his wallet. She noticed he had deep lines at the corners of his mouth, and Nadia wondered if they were from frowning or smiling. She could never remember the difference between smile lines and frown lines. Was there even a difference?
She hoped they were from smiling, of course, but a little torment hidden from the rest of the world was never a bad thing. It added depth to a person.
What could he have to frown about? Could he actually hate his job, did he hate his wife? Did he even have a wife? Could Dennis Crane be a tortured writer stuck as a professor at a community college? The possibilities were endless, she thought.
But they could be smile lines. For the most part, she hoped they were. Nadia wanted to unwrap Dennis Crane, peel off his sweater vest and figure out who he was. He could be someone spectacular. He was someone to pay attention to in the sea of angry, rude and occasionally over-perfumed Collingham’s shoppers.
Nadia grinned as she reached beneath the counter for the plastic bag. “I saved this for you. The last one in the warehouse.”
Dennis arched a brow and opened up the bag Nadia had placed beside her pillow the night before. The lines on his face deepened. Yes, they were definitely smile lines, she thought. It was a relief of sorts. “You still had one!” He pulled out a blue sweater vest. “Holy guacamole, thank you.”
“I hope you like the color.”
“It’s my favorite, actually. Thanks, Nadia,” he said. “What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. It’s on the house,” she said and realized she had never said something was ‘on the house’ before.
Dennis looked around the counter. “Do you have some kind of customer service form I could fill out? I want your bosses to know. This is really above and beyond the call of duty. I’m Dennis, by the way. I don’t think I ever introduced myself.”
“Nice to meet you officially, Dennis,” Nadia chuckled and adjusted her bangs again. They kept curling—she could feel them curling—and she didn’t want to look like a disheveled Bettie Page. “And don’t worry about it. My bosses don’t read the customer service surveys, anyway. They use them as coasters in the office.”
“No one’s ever done anything like this for me before.” Dennis held out his hand, and Nadia noticed his fingers were very long, like a pianist’s. Could Dennis Crane be a musician? She took his hand. “I’m a customer for life now. Thank you, Nadia.”
He left too soon, she thought, but she couldn’t keep him forever.
She thought back on their first meeting and smiled. Nadia should’ve been twenty-eight years old, though she was physically twenty forever now. But in her twenty-eight years, Nadia Agresta had never realized it.
She believed in love at first sight.
III.
In the parking lot three nights later, Nadia tugged at the ends of her hair and tried to recall again if she had taken her medication that night, not to mention the night before that. She decided she hadn’t and reached for a pen in her purse to scrawl a reminder note on her arm rather than her hand. That way her sweater would conceal it.
Cashiers with ink all over their hands were not a part of the Collingham’s image.
She let the song on the car radio finish before she went inside. It wasn’t going to be a good shift. There was a half bus from Sparkling Springs Retirement Village in the lot. Sparkling Springs residents were notoriously picky and always left the restrooms messy.
She had just settled at her register when she was asked, “Do you carry costumes here?”
Nadia blinked at the scraggly man. “Not right now. At Halloween, we do.”
“Why the hell not now?”
“… What kind of costume are you looking for, sir? Christmas party costumes? Like Santa or—”
“A gorilla suit. I need a gorilla suit.”
“Um… do you mind me asking wh—”
“None of your business.”
Nadia nodded deeply. “We do not have a gorilla suit. Sorry.”
As he left, Nadia wondered if she could feel the heat of the lights above her. It made her feel nearly human. Somewhere over the din of the customers, she could hear someone singing Let It Snow, and it seemed terribly inappropriate. It mixed horrendously with the beeping of the registers, beeping that she admittedly heard in her nightmares. She tugged at the collar of her sweater and cleared her throat.
Customers bled together like cheap watercolors.
A middle-aged woman. Three sweaters and a belt. She never smiled.
An old man. Definitely Sparkling Springs. He wanted a gift card. No smile.
A young guy with two kids who were screaming about who got to sit in the front seat on the way home. He bought three pairs of pants and tried to smile. He didn’t succeed, but the effort was appreciated.
Nadia looked to the clock. Twenty minutes until her break.
A woman with a pile of clothes taller than Nadia and a vase. A vase. Nadia gulped and reached for the packing paper below the register. She took, regrettably, five and a half minutes to wrap it properly and all in the shadow of the customer’s supreme glower.
A man with a coffee maker and two toasters and…
A kid who tried to use his mother’s credit card to buy a…
A Sparkling Springs woman hiding perfume in the sleeve of a…
None of them smiled.
At twenty past nine, the brisk but unseasonable air outside was a nice change, but perhaps not nice enough. Nadia wondered fleetingly if she should take up smoking the way her hands were shaking that night. She needed something to occupy herself. Even the stars seemed to twitch before her eyes. Everything was shaking, every single inch of her body, every car around her, every blade of grass.
Even her fingernails shook! They quivered and twitched and did the cha-cha at the ends of her fingers.
Nadia leaned up against the wall outside Collingham’s, away from the door, where other employees—lucky ones, she was beginning to wonder—would smoke.
“Nadia, are you all right?”
She wasn’t quite sure anyone actually asked her. It was a nice thought! No one ever asked if she was okay, and if anyone came close, it was someone like Iggy Spalko who didn’t really care, but just wanted to compar
e her progress to their own.
“You look sick. Is everything okay?”
Nadia fidgeted. She still heard the beeping of the other registers in her head and let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. It wasn’t going to snow. She knew this. It was too warm. It was far too warm for December.
“Nadia, can you even hear me?”
She looked up into Dennis Crane’s lovely eyes. So, there he was. He could be her savior. If she had his smile for her own, she wouldn’t need the smiles of everyone else. She could be dropped into a tank of unpleasant people each and every night, and still she would have Dennis Crane to come home to.
And she could make him her own. It was so easy to make him hers.
“Dennis?”
“Yeah,” he said, but unfortunately didn’t smile. He just looked worried. “Are you okay?”
“I’m… I’m okay. Sure. Just…” She drew a deep breath. “Are you married, Dennis?”
“What? Uh, no. Just me and the dog at home,” he said nervously.
“No one else?”
“No one.”
Nadia gulped. She flexed her fingers to get the shaking to stop. “Would you like to live forever, Dennis?” She couldn’t believe he had stumbled upon her.
“What?”
She also couldn’t believe what she was saying to him; she sounded like a bad romance novel. “Would you like to live forever?” she pressed and realized how weak and tremulous the question sounded. Her teeth ached. “Just answer yes or no.”
“I don’t understand. Are you asking me out? Because I’d love to get some coffee sometime if you—”
She covered his mouth, although the Christmas tunes inside were probably enough to drown out any screaming on his part. It was only after Nadia dragged Dennis around the side of the building and sunk her teeth into his throat that she realized she probably should’ve been keeping a closer eye on her medication.
IV.
Nadia never thought she’d end up staring at the room service menu for a Val-U Inn that night.
The beds were stiff, but Nadia wasn’t surprised. After all, there was a homeless man sitting in the lobby playing blackjack with himself and talking about the last time he went fishing with Christ.
She couldn’t believe that anyone would pay $6.99 for mozzarella sticks. The menu went back on the television stand, and she sat on the bed beside Dennis.
At least he wasn’t dead. She had to stay positive. Things could be worse.
Dennis slept soundly now with a pink bandage on his throat. It was the only one Nadia had in her purse.
She hoped Collingham’s wouldn’t miss her and reached for her cell phone. Why she had him on speed dial, she didn’t remember and was fairly sure she didn’t want to remember.
“Hello?” he answered.
“Iggy?”
“Nadia? Hey, little sister, give me one second.” He took the phone from his mouth. “Hey, I’ll be right back, ladies.”
Someone farther from the phone on the other end said, “But Iggy, my wrists are starting to hurt.”
“One second, babe, and anyway, that’s the point. The handcuffs aren’t just for show. It’s about the experience. What are you paying me for? One second.” The cries of several women grew softer, and Nadia heard a door shut. Iggy returned. “Nadia, what’s up?”
“Jesus, Iggy,” Nadia hissed.
“What?”
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Look, if I can’t have blood anymore, I’m gonna get my kicks however I please. I’m their master, y’know. This is what I do on my nights off,” Iggy explained.
“That’s sick.”
“That’s the game, Nadia. Now, how can I help you this evening?”
Nadia looked to Dennis and sunk her teeth into her lower lip. His shirt collar was stained a brownish-red. “I’m in a somewhat difficult situation, Iggy. I don’t know what to do.”
“Lay it on me. Did you kill someone?” Iggy asked calmly.
“He’s not dead.”
“But you turned him?”
“He’s in the process.”
“How far?”
“It’s been about an hour and a half.”
“He’s got a while, but he’s going to be hungry when he wakes up.”
“I know.”
“He’s asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Good. He should be. Is he bandaged up? Losing color? How about his teeth? His teeth are going to be out when he wakes up.”
Nadia peeled back Dennis’s lips, and she wiped her fingers on her sweater. “Yes, bandaged. He’s beginning to lose color. Teeth aren’t out yet.”
“I figured.” Iggy then sat in silence, and Nadia couldn’t tell if he was thinking or if she’d lost the call. Then he clucked his tongue. “I know a guy.”
Nadia leaned back on the starchy, foul-smelling motel pillow and waited for Iggy to finish, but he didn’t. She waited just long enough to make the silence suitably awkward. “You do?”
“Yes, and you know you’ll be in deep shit if the authorities find out you sired a new vampire?”
“I know. We don’t get the leeway werewolves do.”
“Which is bull, by the way, but I know a guy who deals with stuff like this. He’s been helping new and old vamps since all the laws went into effect. He’ll keep you and your newbie safe, make sure he gets the care he needs, get you new IDs and papers and anything else you need to avoid John Q. Law. I’ll give him a call and let him know you’re coming. Duncan Wallace. He’s up in Lansing.”
“Lansing?” Nadia cried and grabbed at her hair.
“Doesn’t take that long to get there. Leave now and you’ll get there before morning. It’s not a big deal. Just drive.” Iggy gave her the address, and Nadia scrambled to write it down on a coupon book left on the bedside table. “You stopped taking your meds?”
“I didn’t realize I had, but—”
“Look, Nadia, I’ll do all I can, but I’ve got to return to my clients. Business is business.”
“Iggy.”
“Good luck, little sister!”
Iggy hung up the phone, and Nadia sighed.
She looked in the long mirror on the far wall. The bottom corner was cracked in a spider web design. She still had her Collingham’s nametag pinned to her sweater, crooked now. Her hair was a fright, too, but turning someone into a vampire was a little like using the treadmill at the gym; one just couldn’t look good doing it. Car lights reflected off the mirror, and she squinted.
Dennis Crane breathed steadily beside her. Lansing could wait until the following night. Nadia had torn a grapefruit-sized hole in the back of Dennis’s sweater dragging him up the iron staircase to their room, anyway. Fortunately for Nadia, the rooms opened straight outside, but one trip was still enough for the night. After she had secured blankets over each of the windows, she laid down beside him, putting her head on his shoulder.
She could see why he liked those sweaters so much. They were very soft, she thought. They were like cashmere, but not as girly.
His heart beat slowly. Nadia listened to it. It beat every second or so, then every three, then every seven or eight. By three in the morning, his pulse thudded every thirty seconds. Nadia held him close and buried her face in his sweater vest.
His skin was a lovely pallor, she thought, a gorgeous chalky tone. Vampirism could only work two ways, she’d noticed: either it gave a person a kind of ethereal beauty that frustrated housewives praised in the dark romance novels they wrote while their husbands were at work…
…or it made a human look like a basement dweller, a nerd, a freak. Nadia had always thought she fell into the latter category.
She swallowed back fear.
But she wasn’t frightened of what would happen if they were caught. She knew that, despite his questionable after-work activities, they were in good hands with Iggy Spalko.
She was frightened because she couldn’t keep a triumphant smile from her face.
V.
She missed the sounds of birds chirping in the morning. She hadn’t heard a bluebird say good morning in eight years. At this point, she’d be grateful for a rooster shrieking outside her window. A vampire woke up to the sounds of crickets or, if it was winter, the tail end of rush hour.
Nadia woke up the following night to the sound of choking in the bathroom.
Dennis was awake. She pushed herself off the bed, the thought of her medicine never crossing her mind.
The bathroom had a sulfur-yellow light to it. Complimentary bottles of shampoo and conditioner and lotion were scattered all over the vanity. A sweater with a grapefruit-sized hole in the back hung over the side of the bathtub, and Dennis Crane had his head in the toilet as he gripped the porcelain.
Nadia leaned on the doorframe and crossed her arms over her chest. She looked to the smudgy mirror above the vanity. Her hair stuck out like a Halloween wig, but she let it be. She didn’t need to fix it now. There was no reason to impress. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “This is all my fault.”
Dennis retched again, his gasps hollow and sick in the bowl. His stained shirt was unbuttoned to his chest.
“You can’t eat normal food anymore,” she said. “Your body is getting rid of it all.”
He pressed his cheek to the rim of the toilet and turned to face Nadia. His eyes were dark, but gleaming feverishly. Dennis gasped and wrapped his arms around his middle. “Hospital,” he managed. “I need a hospital.”
“Oh no! No, no, no. No hospital.”
“Wha—why?”
“Well, Dennis, we’re on the run,” Nadia said simply and then regretted dumping it on him like that. It was hardly courteous of her.
Then again, turning him into a vampire unexpectedly probably would’ve made Miss Manners spit.
“On the run? From what?”
“Oh… I don’t know. Maybe the law, but I’m not sure, so don’t quote me on that. At the very least, we’re on the run from Collingham’s department store.”
Thoroughly Modern Monsters Page 2
