by Unknown
"Wait! No, wait! Mr. Chatham," the library director said, stepping in his path. Robb looked up from his phone in irritation.
"Please, Mr. Chatham, I understand your time is valuable and I promise it won't take long. Ten minutes, tops." The director grasped his hand in both of hers, obscuring his phone's screen, and looked up at him, her eyes beseeching. "We have the university president attending. Please."
"Fine, fine," Robb said, shaking her hands off of him. "I'll be back in ten minutes."
Robb wandered upstairs to the private rooms of the library. There was one room in particular where he knew he would not be disturbed: the poetry collection room he'd founded years ago. Nobody ever had time to read poetry anymore.
At the back of the upstairs hall, he unlocked the room and stepped inside. The air was stale, dusty, and the shelves were piled high with antique books that looked as though they'd fall apart if you looked at them too hard.
Robb walked down the last row, letting his finger slide over the spines of the books of poetry. At the end of the row he found the book he was looking for. Pulling it out, he lay down on the small couch in the corner and swung his legs over the couch arm. He flipped through the book, reading snippets of poetry at random until he found the one he was looking for.
Summer Dawn, it was called. That poem had always reminded him of Eliza. He began to read, and the first line took him back to the time when he was ten and he'd read to her. She'd thought it was wondrous that he could take the letters on the page and translate them into songs, and he thought it was wondrous that she could not. He'd read them with exaggerated lyricism, and she'd read along, her finger moving with his across the page that he'd copied laboriously from his tutor's worn books.
Now, sitting back on the couch arm, he read the poem the same way, his finger moving from line to line. His lips moved only slightly as he read the words.
Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
His eyes filled with tears at the thought of Eliza reading the poem to him in her stumbling, half-certain syllables, looking up at him with pride when she managed a section by herself. He'd thought himself so far above her that even in his love he'd let his arrogance taint him. That was his sin, and he would never forgive himself for letting pride supersede his love for her.
It did not matter now that his vision was watered and blurred. He knew the poem by heart and continued to read, though the words now were fuzzed. Eliza loved the next part, she did...
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn
He blinked, and a tear escaped the corner of his eye, running down his cheek. He continued to recite the poem, his eyes closed. He kept them closed.
There would be no dawn for him. He would always have this seething darkness inside of him, and he would never again be able to love. There would only be the next girl that he used for his purposes for a brief moment, and then she would go and the next girl would come along. And the next. And the next. Could he do this forever?
A book dropped, and he wiped his hand quickly across his cheek as he sat up to see who had made the noise. It was a girl with dark hair, and for a moment he thought it was Eliza. But no, no of course it wasn't her, it was a young woman, a student. She looked up, and—
Her eyes. Robb found his skin hot, and he swallowed the lump that must have risen in his throat when he had been thinking about Eliza. Instantly he shamed himself for being so put out by a clumsy girl. He drew his face into a practiced expression of aloof disdain and looked down at the girl, trying not to let her eyes distract him into falling in love.
Falling in love. He'd tried before, whenever he found the flickering of desire inside himself, and been rewarded with abject failure every time. Inevitably women hated him for something: an intuition, maybe, that the charm he'd worked on them had already worked on hundreds of women. He could never let them know the black secret he carried into every human relationship—that their desire for him was largely due to the chemical reaction that occurred when he bit them lightly. They fought with him, they insulted him, they left him or cheated on him and he left them. After living four hundred years, he could not work up the energy to care about the trifling disagreements that tore his relationships apart. Eventually he'd stopped trying, and he'd accepted his fate. He was a monster, after all.
There was no room in his world for love.
CHAPTER TWO
"Ninety-nine empty test tubes on the wall, ninety-nine empty test tubes. Take one down, pass it around—"
"Very funny."
A strand of Liz's dark hair fell into her eyes. Again. She contorted her shoulder upward, trying to nudge the disobedient strand of hair back behind her ear.
"When you're done figuring out what pubs to visit, maybe you could help me wash some of these." Liz took the wire cleaning brush and snapped it in Jenny's direction, sending a light spray of water over her. There were test tubes piled in the sink, on the counter, everywhere, and Jenny had had her nose in her phone for ten minutes, looking up pub specials.
"Eek! I'm coming, I'm coming." Jenny wiped the drips of water off of her phone and stuffed it into her pocket, tossing back her blond ponytail as she rolled up her sleeves and came to help Liz wash the glassware. "You know, that used to be a British song. It was ten green bottles when I was a kid."
"I suppose Americans like their beer more than you Brits."
"That is not true!" Jenny brandished a test tube at Liz. "You take that back, you dirty Yank."
Liz grabbed the test tube away from Jenny and began to wash it. Ninety-eight empty test tubes on the wall...
"Come on," Jenny said. "We can do this tomorrow."
"Or," Liz said, "we can do it tonight. And then we won't have to do it tomorrow."
"Lizzzzzz..."
"Jennnnny..." Liz said, raising the wire brush in a threatening pose.
"Have some fun! Come on, it's the beginning of the semester. There's a happy hour at Rossi's across the street. We can do this tomorrow."
"The lab program director will be here tomorrow." Liz hadn't met anyone in the chem lab except Jenny, but she wanted to make a good impression on the program director. And Jenny, god bless her, was not the labmate she had imagined working next to during her graduate study. She was friendly, sure, but she seemed more interested in what was on tap at the brew pub than getting the lab ready for the beginning of the year. They'd been working a week and, while they'd started a few lab culture tests, the remaining clutter from the year before had yet to be cleared out.
"He won't show till afternoon,” Jenny whined. “Come on, my mates have been killing me to meet you."
Liz sighed and lay the wire brush down in the sink.
"The last few cases of glassware haven't been put away, and I wanted to pick up those books from the library for reference for the director—"
"He probably won't even care about the lab!" Jenny said, her impatience bubbling out of her. "He just writes the checks, anyway."
"Still..." Liz looked at the dozens of test tubes strewn across the counter.
"Please. I promise we can come in early tomorrow to clean up." Jenny's face shone up at Liz, like a puppy begging her to take it for a walk to the nearest pub. "Pleassssse?"
"Okay," Liz said. "But —"
"You are amazing! Yes!" Jenny grabbed Liz's hand. "Let's go!"
"Whoa, hey, careful, I have substrate all over my hands right now," Liz said. "You wash your hands right now along with me."
Jenny rolled her eyes and, with an exaggerated sigh and a beaming grin to belie it, she squirted soap onto her hands and washed them under the running water.
Ahh, hot water. Liz loved the feeling of soapiness, of letting her fingers glide across each other and untangle in sensuous knots. The feeling of being clean was nice, yes, but the real reason Liz didn't mind all of the safety precautions of the lab was because she loved the ho
t water. She'd always enjoyed the sensation of getting into the hottest shower she could possibly stand, letting the water run through her hair...
"Hello? Earth to Liz?" Jenny bumped her with her hip and Liz refocused her attention. Right. Washing hands. The pub.
"Sorry, woolgathering," she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. "Ready to go?"
"Did you want to change before we go out?" Jenny asked. Liz looked down at her clothes. An old hoodie with a stylized chemical molecule of caffeine on the front, fraying at the sleeves, and jeans with more chemical splatters on them than her lab coat.
"Is this not okay?" she asked.
Jenny burst out into peals of laughter.
"Liz, you are the silliest. Don't you want to pick up any guys?"
"Not particularly, no." Liz shrugged. "And definitely not if they don't like my hoodie."
"You're a strange one, Ms. Elizabeth," Jenny said. "Now let's go get laggered."
"Laggered?"
"You know, pissed," Jenny said.
"Pissed?" Liz was so confused.
"Silly American girl," Jenny said brightly, grabbing her by the hand and tugging her out the lab door. "We're gonna get drunk!"
At the pub, Liz tried her best to get laggered. The first ale she ordered turned out to be darker and more bitter than anything she'd ever drunk, though. And the fish and chips she ordered must come with an extra side of grease...she could see oil dripping off of her fries when she picked them up.
She had her lab notebook tucked under her arm to protect it from the grease. All of the initial lab culture results were in there and she definitely didn't want to have to rework all of the runs she'd already done in preparation for the beginning of the year.
Jenny was having a blast, dancing in the middle of the pub to the overloud music. She'd managed to reapply her makeup on the way to the pub and Liz watched her in envy. She had on a cute skirt and top with heels that she definitely had not been wearing in the lab—did she keep her shoes in her purse? Multiple guys hovered near her, hoping to get to talk to the beautiful blond girl. Liz sighed and took another sip of beer, wincing at the taste.
Everything on the radio seemed to be American, Liz noticed, or maybe that was just the rock station. She made the mistake of nodding along to a few beats, and then Jenny had tossed her notebook onto the bar, taken her by both hands, and was hauling her out onto the floor to dance.
"See any cute guys?"
"Uh, I don't know." Liz cast a glance back to make sure her lab notebook was okay. Come on, Liz, she told herself. Nobody at a bar is going to steal your precious lab notebook. "How about you? Any...um...cute guys?"
"I like... that one!" Jenny pointed, randomly it seemed, to an athletic blond guy standing at the end of the bar. "You like?"
"Um..."
"You haven't flirted with a single guy," Jenny said. "Go hit on him."
"No!"
Jenny scrunched up her face at Liz in confusion. "Are you queer? Not that that’s bad or anything. Actually, I know another pub—"
"No!" Liz laughed nervously. "I don't really like bars, though."
"Not a pub kind of girl? Okay, that's fine."
Liz relaxed, thanking heaven that her labmate would leave her alone. But Jenny had a twinkle in her eye, and she continued on.
"We'll have to get you flirting somewhere else, then! Maybe I can bring a few of these boys back to the lab with us. Then you can talk to them about hematological malignancies."
"I'm sure that would charm their pants off."
"Ooh! You should flirt with the director tomorrow!" Jenny's eyes sparked with excitement.
"How many tequila shots have you had?" Liz asked.
"Less than I'm going to have tonight." Jenny leaned into the wall.
"Can you stand up straight? I'm pretty sure that your neck is going to ache tomorrow."
"No, but seriously. You should totally flirt with him," Jenny said.
"An old wealthy benefactor who bought a directorship? As tempting as that sounds, I'll pass."
"No wrinkled old cocks for Liz to suck on?" Jenny asked, tilting her head playfully.
"I'll suck wrinkled old cocks when I'm old and wrinkled, and not a second before."
"He's not even that old," Jenny said. "He's just five years or so out of college—well, he dropped out of college—"
"Oh, a college dropout," Liz said. "What did he do, play videogames until he failed out of class?"
"Kind of," Jenny said. "I mean, his whole business was digital renditions—"
"Excuse me." A couple of guys walked up to them, looking decidedly sketchy in tight hipster jeans and leather jackets that smelled like cigarette smoke. The one who spoke leaned on the wall near Jenny.
"Yes?" Jenny said.
"Hey loves. You're looking cute tonight," the guy said. His breath stunk like the cheap three-for-a-tenner gin and tonics that seemed to be ubiquitous in the pub.
"We're just here to dance," Liz said. With her eyes she tried to message Jenny: No!
"Then let's go dance," the other guy said, touching Liz on the elbow. Liz shrugged off his hand. Jenny was checking her phone, ignoring the guy next to her.
"We're both staying here," Liz said, shooting a pointed glare straight into the face of the slouched figure against the wall. He got the message, straightening his jacket as he stood up from the wall.
"You sure you two don't want to party?" the man near Liz asked. "We have things to party..."
"No," Liz said. The word came out softly but fiercely, like the low hum in a lion's throat when she threatens to roar. She clutched her lab notebook to her chest as if to ward off the guys with her academic rigor. It worked surprisingly well.
"Let's go," the man said, hitting his friend on the shoulder.
"What? Okay, yeah." They walked away and didn't look back.
"What was I saying?" Jenny put away her phone, seemingly oblivious to the guys who had just interrupted them. "Oh, right. Anyway, the director is kind of cute if you like that look."
"What look is that?"
"Billionaire playboy." She grinned.
"Shut up."
"No, but really. He's got like, harems of girlfriends."
"Ugh, like Hugh Hefner in his mansion?" Liz said. "That's horrible. I would never date anyone like that."
"Oh yeah? Who would you date?"
Liz's ears burned red and she tried not to let the sudden scratching in her throat turn into a coughing fit.
"Come on, Liz," Jenny said, poking her in the ribs. "What's your type?"
"A-ahem," she stammered. "The academic type."
"What, like a sexy professor?"
"Yeah, sure," Liz said, relieved when Jenny finally turned her questioning to the kind of beer Liz was drinking and how it compared with the beers they had back in America.
Liz really didn't know what kind of guys she would date. None of the guys at her undergraduate college had been interested in her, which was probably a good thing. They all seemed immature, wanting to party more than study. Liz had paid her own way through school, and she didn't have time for anyone who wasn't serious. And all of the serious boys were...well, they were too serious. It seemed like all of the cute and funny guys were on one side, and the studious, ambitious types were on the other, but there was nobody in between. No, the person Liz would date was nonexistent.
After finishing her pint of ale, Liz begged out of the pub and found her way back to the small apartment by herself. She tripped over a pile of clothes on the floor on her path to the bedroom and cracked her head against the wall. She scowled, rubbing her head. She would have to talk with Jenny about being neater. A shirt on the floor was one thing, but Jenny was her lab partner as well as her roommate, and Liz did not want to spend the rest of the year working in a sloppy lab.
Picking up the discarded outfit and slinging it over the back of the couch, Liz made her way through the tiny apartment to her room. She threw her notebook onto her desk.
The first time sh
e'd seen the London apartment, she was astounded at how tiny it was. The living room doubled as a kitchen, with the TV perched precariously on top of the microwave and the fridge shoved up against the back of the sofa for space. The fridge door, when opened, blocked the hallway to the bedrooms that were so small as to be closets.
Jenny seemed to be used to living in such cramped quarters, but for Liz it came as a bit of a shock to see what a month's pay could rent you in London. But she was close enough to the university to walk, and that was what mattered most. She could get to her experiments at any time.
In the morning, Liz woke up to a slight hangover. She swung her feet out of bed and gulped down some water from the bottle she'd left on her bedside table, and took a couple of aspirin for good measure. The dawn light streamed in through her window, making bright pinpoints out of the floating dust in the room. Liz's feet were cold on the hardwood floor, and she shivered before pulling on her socks and getting dressed. Today she would meet the director of the lab! Liz hoped that he would be excited about their research. She and Jenny would be able to tidy up everything and get the lab perfectly ready!
Fully awake, she tiptoed into Jenny's room and set down the water and aspirin bottle next to her roommate’s bed. She'd be grateful when she woke up.
Jenny stirred in her sleep, and Liz realized with a jolt that her roommate was not alone in her bed: alongside her, another person shifted under the covers. Embarrassed, Liz backed away, hoping not to wake either of them. She stepped on a pen cap—ouch!—and bit her lip to avoid squealing. Backing quickly out of the room, she shut the door behind her.
"There goes that plan," Liz muttered, scooping up a protein bar and another water bottle and dumping them into her bag. She would just have to get the lab ready by herself. First, though, the library.
At the library, Liz found that the librarian had already picked out the chemistry reference books she'd placed on hold and was waiting on the library assistants to unpack the morning shipment for the last book.
