In the backseat, Gray held himself and rocked back and forth. Lorraine put her hand on Roger’s shoulder. “You should go,” she said, “before those things...”
“I hate this place,” said Roger. “But I can’ just leave the people around here to be eaten. And what about the other vampires?”
“You can go,” said Doris. “The other vampires are why this car isn’t being overrun. And well, there weren’t enough to keep the ghouls from getting Mab.”
“Oh,” said Roger. “Is that all they wanted?” With a deep sigh, he moved the car ahead.
7
High Score
“Why,” said Desmond, “do I feel so cold? Shouldn’t a guy who got bit get a fever, too? To cancel the cold out ...”
Desmond squeezed his hands around Gesine’s waist. She didn’t know if it was because he had a hard time holding on to her, or what she could vaguely understand as a human need for warmth.
Gesine pulled over in a dark spot on a street much sparser than their dead-end one. “You don’t have a jacket,” she said.
“Shit,” said Desmond. “You’re right.”
“I usually am,” said Gesine. She could feel Desmond shivering.
“Things must be bad,” he said, “if you’re joking.”
Gesine put her hand on the back of his head. She appreciated whatever was in it. And not just the brain itself (though she was terribly hungry). He’d seen a world with people who were cursed, whose humanity was either twisted or, as with the pale-faces or the stereo-jockeys, reduced. If she thought about it long enough, she could go from one side of that scale to the other quickly, and despite that, he was still nice to her.
“I’ll take you someplace warm,” she said.
It was a Tuesday night, and Vincenzo’s Pizza was unusually crowded. Aaron had introduced a vegan pizza that didn’t taste like cardboard or melted plastic, qualities which drew even more of the crowd Desmond used to live around. He and Roger still went to Vincenzo’s partly because, well, it was the closest pizza place they liked and it also had a swell arcade machine. But it also politely had a cold shoulder for most of the new crowd and their shoulders – which were cold for everyone among the old crowd who wasn’t a disc jockey or an arbiter of authentic urban culture, so long as they didn’t have to live right next to too much of it.
For Desmond, who had always tried to be an optimist, living in a place where he was mostly ignored made it easier to be so than the alternatives. Before he’d moved in with Roger, his old neighborhood had been halfway between the land of brownstones and where Roger lived.
It was around the brownstones that Roger’s great uncle Simon had been bitten by a vampire, where Simon’s friend died at the sight of his own bloodied friend and the commotion was the only reason anybody cared about the two black men dying on the street. Desmond could only be optimistic about that, in that he thought it was their loss – the loss of people like Shiba’s owner. And that being in-between that realm and the one where the Greenblatts lived, which bore the weight of people chalked up to or who had embraced being the boogeyman, was the best place to feel like the world wasn’t just would-be giants and people who would be giants – just so they didn’t have to feel just how much of some horrible free-for-all it they’d been left to.
Desmond had always considered Roger an optimist at heart, and it was strange that his only friend lived in a place that sometimes seemed to make things that much harder for him. Strange not so much in what Roger could afford, but that he could remain there and be nice enough to want to be around.
For himself, Desmond didn’t think he could do it long-term. Sure, when Roger’s last living relative became undead and got lost in the ether, Desmond wanted to be in the Greenblatt house, as someone else who was alive to look out for a friend. If Roger trusted people that were alive-like, so did he. But being in that neighborhood itself, beyond the winter, did not seem like an optimistic prospect – not in the way it did when he got used to Gesine being around.
When they first started watching TV, she would periodically stare at him. Generally she seemed to find him and his reactions to whatever he was watching more interesting than the latter.
Gesine also taught Desmond that pepperoni didn’t need to be cooked, and that as far as her diet went, it was tolerable. When he ordered pizza, as long as it had pepperoni on it it was something they could both eat together.
So where else was there to go when Desmond had been bitten by some strange ghoul?
The chitchat lowered as Gesine guided him to a stool at a new counter that had been placed along the side-wall up front. Desmond sat down and rested his head on the counter. As Gesine went into Desmond’s back pocket and pulled out his wallet, a brown-skinned woman who looked like she could have been part of Gesine’s tribe once upon a time watched her with a look of disgust.
“Uh no,” she said to the people at the table with her. “That guy is not right. He looks like he’s got some kind of bird flu.”
Gesine ignored her and went to the counter. Aaron was on his way back from the back with a pizza he slid onto a wooden platform. He had on a pair of large headphones, which he slid above his temples.
He nodded at Gesine. “How can I help you?”
Gesine put ten dollars on the counter. “Whatever his favorite is. And something with extra pepperoni ...”
“Raw,” Aaron said with a nod, before Gesine could finish. He looked over at Desmond. “Is he okay?”
“No,” said Gesine. “But the food will help him not to think about that.”
“Yeah,” said Aaron, “but I don’t know if food can do as much as he seems to need right now.”
Gesine put her arms around each other, consciously mimicking Doris. “A tiny bit is better than nothing.”
Desmond moaned, and everyone else in the restaurant wrapped themselves up in their many layers and left.
“Hey, Des,” said Aaron. “Are you sure you don’t want me to call an ambulance?”
“No,” said Desmond. “Believe me, Aaron. It wouldn’t help. I’m not … I’m not dying, exactly.”
Gesine figured she would try something new, however awkward it felt. She put her arm around him. She didn’t know if it helped anything, but eventually he sat up – even before the pizza came.
“How long do you think I have?” said Desmond.
“I don’t know,” said Gesine. “I think I was wounded, when it happened to me. I died in her arms ... Doris’ arms.”
Desmond nodded, slowly got up and took the plate with the pepperoni pizza from the counter. He handed it to Gesine, who devoured the pepperoni while watching and following Desmond as he took the plate over to the arcade machine in the back. It was a fighting game – ten characters, some otherworldly, some not, fighting in some kind of tournament.
“Someone beat my high score,” said Desmond. “I guess it doesn’t really matter.”
“No,” said Gesine, still chewing pepperoni. “But you’re probably nicer than them.”
Desmond shook his head. “I’m not that nice. I don’t know if it even matters … Hey, wait. Can you even see the rankings?” He slowly reached up his hand and cleared the hair from Gesine’s face. “On second thought ...” Looking at the game screen, Desmond messed her hair up again. It once again obscured her vision of the score rankings.
Gesine hoped it would be possible for him to still do as much, when he was like her.
8
Houseguests
Where were they going to go? Splitting up into smaller groups and staying in hotels with the Old World’s petty cash didn’t seem like the most human option. Lorraine’s wasn’t out of the question. Her building was close to the company headquarters, where Mab, already angry with grief, would certainly not be taking well to the proposition of a hostile takeover. But Mab knew nothing of Josephine Drearden or “Limbo Should Be Less Bright.”
Josephine and Roger both worked the warehouse’s late shifts, though their schedules didn’t always sync up. As it
neared the time she was about to clock out from her shift, Roger parked the car on some side street with a quietness enhanced by the cold. All Roger knew about where Josephine lived was that it was a basement apartment with a stairway entrance.
Roger called her.
“Eight houseguests,” she said over the phone, “including a woman who bought one of my books?”
“Yes,” said Roger weakly.
“Will the others buy a book?”
“Uh …”
Lorraine nearly jumped in the backseat; inside the trunk Robin or Emilia had knocked on the back wall. Move it along, they seemed to say.
“Sure. Yes,” said Roger.
“It was just a joke,” said Josephine. “You sound like you could use one of those. More than usual.”
Roger drove over to the warehouse lot, parked and promptly preceded to get a little lost in his head.
“Whatever he’s going to be,” Roger said to himself, “I just hope he’s still more alive than me.”
Gray, who was holding himself in the fetal position, laughed nervously. “What do you mean? We’re all at least alive here, aren’t we?”
The dog Desmond pet-sitted – Shiba – was still silent in Lorraine’s lap. Incessant yapping, thought Roger, had always seemed to be its way of reminding the entire universe it existed.
“Yes,” said Doris sympathetically. “Some of us are just … less alive than others. Or what it means for most people.”
Gray began to rock back and forth again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what you mean. It’s been hard for me to think lately.”
“That’s okay,” said Roger. “It usually is.”
Josephine emerged with dozens of warehouse workers, a couple of whom threw their middle fingers up for Roger specifically. He was sometimes considered a bit bougie.
Doris scooted over next to Roger, and Josephine took the front passenger seat. Her mouth inflated with a stifled smile.
“I know you,” she said to Doris.
Doris nodded. “I bought one of your books.”
“Small world,” said Josephine.
“Yes,” Doris said. “Particularly so when things are perfumed and it’s less colder.”
Josephine looked at Doris quizzically.
“Don’t mind me right now,” said Doris. “Or generally, but mostly right now ... Just trying to keep it together – like the creature in your book. The latest mad scientist’s patchwork creature.”
Josephine buckled her seatbelt. “Huh. I guess there could have been more scientists playing God since the old days,” she said. “I’d always thought the first successful patchwork being could still be going.”
Doris poked Roger. He took a deep breath and started the car again.
Josephine’s house was on the edge of Roger’s neighborhood, in a semi-quiet spot marked by car dealerships. When Roger parked the car on her block, Robin and Emilia were already outside the car; he told Josephine they were with them as they went down a stairway into her home.
Actually seeing it, Roger figured when it snowed heavily she must have had to constantly shovel the snow from the steps – so as not to be snowed in. Still, it seemed quiet enough. Before earlier he would have surely taken what she had over his great uncle’s old home, which had just been to finally feel like a home since Simon literally vanished underground.
Even with whatever Doris and Mab were capable of given their conditions, he looked forward to getting home with them there wandering around at 1 a.m. or later. Along with Desmond.
When they were in Josephine’s home, Doris seemed to be giving him some distance. He didn’t know why. He was used to space, generally thought of it as golden. But sometimes he thought it would be nice to have someone be next to you. Doris lingered under the lintel between Josephine’s kitchen and the living space where everyone else was. Gray was lying down the floor, as if he was still bound.
Roger watched as Robin thumbed through the books on the shelf above a mock fireplace. The latter went to the other side of it, where there was a green book – a book about a bunch of outlaws in a forest, led by the aristocrat who somehow rallied them altogether. It was one of the few books Josephine had that didn’t have any people of color in it.
“I liked your haikus,” said Robin to Josephine. “Or is it haiku?”
“Haiku,” said Josephine. “And thank you. Well, you can all make yourselves at home. Feel free to raid the fridge. I’ll sleep in my bedroom. There is only just the one, but feel free to lounge anywhere you want, and let me know if it’s too cold.”
“I’ll pay you,” said Lorraine hovering above a quiet Shiba. “For any food we take.”
Josephine looked over at Roger. “That’s not necessary for any of you but him.”
Roger smiled a tiny bit. Nodding, Josephine went to her bedroom.
Lorraine practically collapsed on the couch, and Shiba hopped up and rested her head on her lap.
“I know,” said Lorraine. “You miss your friend.”
Robin put the book he was looking through back on the shelf. He took out a flask and drank from it. Then he tossed it over to Doris, who promptly tossed it back.
“You should have let me die,” she said.
Everyone in the room was silent.
Roger sighed. “Doris … That wasn’t your fault. Desmond’s not going to die, exactly, right?”
Doris shook her head. “He’ll be like Gesine.”
“Hopefully,” said Robin.
“Hey,” said Roger. “I just want you to know how much I’m thinking about throwing this stupid book at your head.”
“Apart from the aristocratic part, what’s so stupid about it?” said Robin. He held up a finger as a phone buzzed inside his coat pocket. “Excuse me.” After a moment or two, he ended the call and put the phone back in his pocket. “Reinforcements are here.”
He turned toward Doris.
“I’m staying,” Doris told him.
“It’s your life,” said Robin, “but can I have a word with you in private?”
***
Doris followed Robin and Emilia up the stairs. It had begun snowing again. She glanced up and saw his companions perching on the roof of Josephine’s building.
When she lowered her head, Emilia had turned the corner of some alley to join them.
“Reinforcements are here,” said Robin, “so we can take over your company – not that it was ever really yours.”
Doris crossed her arms. “I did some good things there … I think.”
“Those are the things that we hope to build on. Not like Argall … and Mab. But I guess she was always more of a follower.”
“No,” said Doris. “She was the first friend I made when I was turned. Even though I didn’t exactly turn as pale as most of you.”
“That’s one of the best things about us,” said Robin, “that we don’t really see skin color. Or at least not the way that they do.”
“If you say so.”
“The giant you helped,” Robin. “The old ones think it’s one of the fallen. They can’t back a company that would try to feed off such a being.”
For a moment, Doris was wide-eyed. But only a moment. Sometimes Gesine was only so-so company, but Doris’ world had been emptier when she devoted so much time to fantasies of a life in dreams – in the dreams of a being so powerful and wise that it could make dreams seem real.
But now, she had messed up Roger’s world, and she would not abandon someone as had been done to her.
Robin handed her the flask. “So you don’t drink any of your friends.”
Doris took it. The flask was silver. She’d never really looked at it before. She couldn’t tell if it was the one from almost a century ago, or if it was new.
Robin leapt and clawed his way to the top of Josephine’s building, off to wherever.
Doris wandered a few meters up the block. As Doris stood by herself at the curb in front of a nearby house, she felt someone’s eyes on her. She looked to the w
indow and saw a man – brown-skinned, elderly, probably from a brown-ish ethnic background – staring at her, trying to move her from inside of her house with her eyeballs. She’d been quietly standing there for all of ten seconds. She moved, managing to not let her eyes burn red.
With such a neighbor, Doris didn’t envy Josephine. She envied none of the self-aware humans of color she knew. She wished she had her subterranean world at the company, free of all but a few humans. Still home to at least one other being who wanted to be free – but had to settle for so much less.
She hit her forehead a few times. Had she done enough to protect Saber from her partners?
She knew she was going to have to fight for it – her world of books and blood drives, and it would never be like it was. Thanks to Robin’s coalition, Mab would probably try to hurt Roger, Gesine, Lorraine and … Desmond. Was it too much to hope he could be like Gesine?
Doris heard someone sprinkling something in the stairwell.
Roger was there with Lorraine. They were talking.
“It’s good to see you again,” said Roger. “I knew you’d be back.”
“I seemed to come at a really shitty time,” said Lorraine.
“That’s ,” Roger said. The two of them said nothing as they sprinkled salt, but when they looked up, Doris was sitting at the top of the stairs, her head leaning against the railing.
“Do the words ‘hostile takeover’ mean anything to you?”
9
Hiking
Even with all the TV shows Simon and the custodian watched – everything from a black and white program in which a black sheriff dealt with a bunch of sociopaths on the prairie, to sitcoms about friends who lived in a small apartment where they couldn’t hear each other talk over the loud laugh track coming from above them – it was when they went out into any vestige of sunlight that was strangest to Argall.
He found himself staring up at a rocky hill on a half-cloudy day, with Simon and the custodian looking down on him as he stood in the shade of a nearby try. He held his hand up and flexed his fingers.
The Howling Twenties Page 6
