“You know it’s not safe out at night by yourself.”
“Yes. The time got away from me … Dad.” I rolled my eyes excessively. I reached into my purse and pulled out Garin’s flash drive, “I wondered when you’d stop by so I could return this.” I tossed it to him over the roof of the car. A bad throw. Yet his hand snatched it out of the air like in those old kung fu movies where they caught moving flies with chopsticks.
He asked, “Do you need a ride home?”
“I’m close to my car. It’s in the public lot right over there.”
“I hoped to see you.”
“For the flash drive?”
“No, just you. A good excuse to see you. I thought.”
“Maybe,” I should say something about his car. The paint job is kind of cool. “What did you have in mind?”
“How about a little drive? I know I can’t keep you out too late.”
“I can probably do with a drive. I had more tea than I should have and my nerves are anxious. It’ll be late before I can fall asleep.”
He came around and opened the door, “You can give me an opinion on the repairs I did to my car.”
“Repairs?” I looked from bumper to bumper quickly. “It looks in great shape.”
“I finished replacing the interior.”
“Oh.” That could be good. Or very very bad. I thought of the stories my mother told me about staying away from stranger’s cars. Creepy old vans with no windows. Offers of candy or puppies. The thick black tinted windows on this car made it as shadowy as a windowless van.
I looked at his eyes. Deepest black against the night, dilated with almost no iris but a thin blue ring. But something about them didn’t seem like he took drugs. Those eyes drew me in. “Are you safe?”
“Honorable intentions,” he glanced down to the seat inside the door, “If you’re uncomfortable tonight we can try a more formal date some weekend night, if you’re interested?” He eased the door closed.
“– No,” I reached for the edge of the door, “I mean, no don’t close the door. I’m interested.” I’m sure my smile sparkled too much.
The car sat low and close to the curb. I had to sit first and swivel my feet onto the floor mat. When my feet touched the carpet he softly closed the door. And then he looped around the car and into his seat surprisingly fast. The interior was as dark as the exterior paint. The almost stifling, powerful new leather smell seemed comfortable and familiar. Like the smell of a new purse.
“I ordered new seat covers and new trim a couple of weeks ago and they came in while I was out-of-town. I finished putting the seat covers on yesterday after work.”
“Traveling?” I had been worrying for no reason.
“Yes,” he looked both ways on the empty street to ensure no one came through and eased the car away from the curb. He reached for the shifter and clutched into second gear smoothly. A little bump of pressure from the power train propelled the car noticeably faster. The buildings became shorter on our way out of downtown Livix.
The seats wrapped me comfortably and like the advertisements they enveloped me in comfort. The luxuriously soft leather and the exceedingly regular and tight stitching a marvel of craftsmanship. After years of shopping for jackets and purses I could tell these had been well made. I ran my hand along the side of the seat next to my leg, “These are really nice seats.”
“I ordered them from a leather manufacturer I know in Brazil. I did some work for them and knew their manufacturing process. Argentinian leather, something about the pampas grass fed steers makes better leather than anywhere else in the world. Then the guys in Brazil know how to fit them to seats.”
“How do you get them on?”
“Warm them up with steam and stretch them by hand. It can take all night to get it together, without rushing and risking damaging anything.”
“All night?”
“… I have a kind of insomnia. Staying busy keeps me out of trouble.”
“Idle hands, I see.” I looked out the window. The caffeine still surged through my mind, a balancing act in my head between jittery and a possible migraine. That would be bad. My mom told me to stay away from caffeine after 4pm. She had a rule and reminded me when I seemed to lapse. Some days I argued with her, what did she know about migraines, she graduated from high school somewhere in the dawn of time even if she had taken those advanced placement biology and chemistry classes.
A street light passed overhead. The light rippled sensuously over the curves of the car body. Glinting here and there on hidden edges and creases. Pulling up over the hood like a bed sheet, it shone through the windshield into the interior, splashing across our faces and down our bodies spilling back, fluttering at the edge of everything. I could see the wink of light as he reached for the shifter, clutching, and jamming it into a higher gear. The engine roared and the tires chirped launching us to a greater speed. We left the light at the far intersection fluttering and splashing the ground like forgotten bed clothes.
I pulled at my seat belt as our speed approached excessive. While seeming safe I knew we traveled at the edge of too fast. “Why so rapid?”
“This isn’t fast. But I forget.”
“Forget what?”
“If you don’t drive fast all the time you’re unused to it,” he looked at me with those piercing eyes of his, framed by his heavy brows, “I also know after that light the police stop putting up their speed traps. Old habit, sorry.”
That seemed a little creepy.
He continued, “I’ll tone it down. It gets curvy up ahead anyway.”
I hadn’t been watching close enough and empty unfamiliar countryside blinked at me through the windows. A lonely road, a fast car, and a new boy I recently met. Mom would be angry.
He reached over and put his hand lightly on top of mine that gripped the seat next to my thigh. That was nice and reassuring. I loosened my fingers clenching the leather. He slowed the car down and put both hands on the wheel. We started going around a crazy number of curves surrounded by woods and brush. Back and forth and up.
Out of the darkness of the woods we hit a clearing and the moon filled the horizon big and full. It washed over the car seeping into the paint. The dark tattoo detailing on the hood changed and lightened up in the moonlight into more of a bright fire-engine red now instead of the nearly black red I saw under the street lights where it looked like days-old spilled blood.
The pavement ended and the road turned gravely. Garin continued forward.
“Aren’t you worried about scratching the paint job or making it rust faster from stone chips?”
“Cars are transient. A blink of the eye and they are gone. There’s always maintenance.”
“But your investment in it will be damaged.”
“Don’t casually throw around the word investment. Vehicles are not an investment, necessary transportation, joy at times, but never an investment.”
“I read about collectible cars selling for thousands of dollars.”
“Very specialized vehicles, collected by people as furiously as salt shakers and teapots.”
“People put a lot of work into those collections.”
“And that’s it. A lot of work and when you put it together, it’s collecting for the love of the objects. The possible increase in value is accidental. Not investing.”
“So you put a lot of work in these seats?”
“Not for an investment. Joy. The leather on these seats costs as much as many new cars –”
I instinctively pulled my hand back from the seat worried I could stain it.
He laughed at seeing me recoil, “You won’t hurt it. If I sell this car I won’t get more than the baseline cloth covering. But then I don’t tend to sell my cars.”
“– what happens to them?”
“I drive them until they get too worn and the maintenance gets too excessive. Then I use the accumulated real cash I would have spent on a new ride that I put into real investments that grew to buy the repl
acement vehicle.”
I hoped he didn’t think like that about relationships.
The car rolled forward. The gravel new and crunchy. A little dust stirred up to the vehicle and billowed passed us as Garin stopped the car. The moon shrunk as it came away from the horizon. Some shadowy clouds hung overhead and would shield the moon soon.
“Where are we?” I asked as we got out of the car. It looked like an empty park. Some benches huddled by a shock of maple trees and looked over toward the city lights of Livix.
“The highest spot for miles around. High enough to look out and see the city of Livix.”
“I’ve never been here before.”
“No good boyfriends? Or they didn’t know how to scout romantic locations?”
“I guess not.”
“I come up here from time to time if I need to get away. But not really be away as I can see the town,” he walked to one of the park benches and sat down.
I followed him over and sat next to him. I glanced at the car. It stood there at a perfect angle with the wheels turned a little. Like the picture of an advertisement. “That’s a great paint job.”
“Thanks.”
“How does the pin striping change color in the moonlight?”
“An advanced nano-tube fiber infusion. I’m not even sure how they do it and I’m an Engineer. A friend of mine did the actual painting. It changes color under street lights but is best in the moonlight. In full sunshine it’s hard to tell it’s there at all. Other than the few micron thickness of the paint to reflect the light differently.”
His care for the car made me a little more at ease, “So where did you get the car?”
“It’s not good to frighten the villagers.”
“– What?!”
“I’ll tell you about it but you need to promise you are ok with it.” He watched me intently before continuing. “Some things on the car are new out of necessity. Like the seat covers and much of the seats themselves. And the wheels and tires. And other bits. The rest are from used cars.”
“That’s not so bad. That’s recycling–”
“Better than recycling it’s reusing.”
“Yeah, no extra melting it down and reforming it.”
“Take it off a broken car and put it on the rebuilt car.”
“That’s ok.”
“This car is pretty new … or I should rather say the model is recent. General Motors started building these things six months ago. A limited number are out even though the plant is building more every day. When you add up the number of people that are out looking to buy these cars, the number built, and the number on the road … It’s not easy to find used cars.”
“That means car sales are good? That’s good to hear since Livix is so close to Detroit, jobs for our industries.”
“Yes it’s good. But I looked for used. I fix them. It’s an Engineer thing.”
This is good. Handy with his hands and skills at doing stuff. Warmth spread in my body and I wiggled to sit up taller, pressing my knees together.
“So what did you start with? Was it a blown engine from someone racing it too hard?” I’d watched some of those Furious movies.
“No. Are you sure you want to know? Maybe another time. It’s not something romantic for the first date.”
“Is it a drug car?” I peered suspiciously at it, “Bank robbery?”
“Ok.” He looked at the car and then out over the city, “It’s actually parts of three cars. One was in a crash in Northern California. Someone with too much Pinot Noir after an angry argument with their business partner. The second came from Southern Texas involved with a drug deal gone bad and shot up with an assault rifle. The third came from an icy road and a weak guardrail over a cliff in the Catskills.”
“Oh … my …” I took a deep breath. Dead people. A lot of them. “Why do such a horrible thing?” I stood up and stamped around in the grass, “That’s like buying a house where someone was killed. You think their ghost might come back.”
“Ghosts? No. They don’t exist. But if they did I’d have fifteen of them in that car.”
“Fifteen? What?! Is that thing a clown car? Or. Or like rebuilding Stephen King’s Christine?”
“No, it’s not Christine,” he got up too, brushing my arm. “It’s a machine. Its gears don’t know they are running a Camaro or a Kenworth truck, well they would show different wear because the duty cycles are different, but you get the idea, right? Just a machine. Pieces and parts.”
“Why not bolt together a dozen coffins and drive that around?”
“That’s funny. But have you seen the red-line for coffins, or their stopping distance?”
I flounced down on the park bench crossing my arms, “Those nice seat covers hide a lot of blood and gore.”
“All cars have some pain in them. You cannot escape it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Cars are made of steel and plastic and aluminum. Hundreds of chemicals and elements. Thousands of parts – somewhere over twenty five thousand parts in a regular vehicle.”
“So?”
“So, because of their size and cost, they are one of the most highly recycled devices on the planet. Every winter storm where you hear someone ‘totaled’ their vehicle and really did smash it beyond most repair then that car gets essentially melted down and turned into new cars. Or even into your new metal deck chair at The Garden Store.
“The problem with that though, is to remelt steel you’re talking close to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. A lot of energy. Melt it down, then keep it hot to roll it out into sheets, cart that coil to a stamping plant and put oil on it to form easier between the dies of a thousand ton stamping press with huge motors that make the jaws go up and down. Then an army of workers to do the remaining steps of the process from welding to painting in producing that new fender.”
“Or you take the usable parts off three killing machines and make one good one.”
“Yes … The other thing that car does because I know the history of its parts, parts I extracted and reassembled myself; it’s a reminder that keeps me from foolishly drinking and driving.”
“Is that a problem?”
“No, not a problem.”
“That’s good.” I sat in silence, “I guess you aren’t going to ply me with beer out here or anything …”
“A popular high school and college pass time, right? I didn’t grow up that way. Never understood it. More of a European outlook on drinking from my mother so not so mysterious and rebellious that I needed to do that in school.”
“I didn’t see it either. But you know. Some do.”
He sat next to me again. Not close but not far away either.
The light of the moon brightly illuminated the lawn, the car, and us. But the edge of the moon touched the bank of clouds hanging above us like a billowy blanket blotting out portions of the sky.
He gently lifted my hand to his lips and kissed the inside of my wrist. Like a butterfly landing, soft and cool. The sensation traveled around my body alighting my nerves in anticipation. I reached over with my other hand and touched the side of his face bringing his eyes into mine. He leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. The surge at my nerve endings rose and crashed like a far off ocean surf. I opened my eyes seeing his beautiful eyes of blue and onyx glistening in the moonlight. Studying me. He leaned back.
I asked, “What’s wrong?”
“‘O! She doth teach the torches to burn bright!’”
“Plying me with Shakespeare!” I brought my hand back to my lap but he held my other carefully in both of his strong fingers. I looked at the moon. A quarter of it remained free of the clouds.
“There, I can see that smile. There it is. You have a nice smile you know.”
“Thanks.” I knew I blushed from the heat rushing about my broadening smile. We sat there for a while watching the moon disappear. As the last sliver of it quivered at the edge refusing the anxious clouds, he shocked me.
“I ha
ve something to tell you. Something you need to know about me.”
“What do you mean?”
He sat silent. His eyes brooding over the town. He looked at me and then back to the distance.
“I … I …” he hesitated and struggled with the words and the way to say them, “I’m a Vampire.”
“Yeah, right. It’s almost Halloween … in three months. You bring me out here far from the city and other people, kiss me, feed me Shakespeare, and then tell me you’re a Vampire. To frighten me!”
“No, not to frighten,” His eyes burned red, red pupils ringed thinly with those effervescent blue irises. His lips curled slightly revealing canines that had grown with a snapping click. Sharp wicked points glinting in the waning moonlight.
I shrieked and recoiled but he held my hand. The soft caress between his hands before had changed into a vice-like grip, trapping me, tethering me in his clutches. “Am I to die here?”
“No!” He growled, snapping his teeth against the air like castanets. “I wanted you to know who I am.”
He released my hand and I pulled back to the farthest I could go on the park bench. The iron of the bench armrest hurting hard into my back. I drew my legs up and held them with my arms. I stared at him trying to repress the rapid breaths heaving my breast. The pounding of my heart in my ears. He sat still. Waiting for me. “Am I safe?”
“Yes.” The redness left his eyes. Although the receding moonlight darkened quickly. He had frozen there, not moving, not threatening. Waiting.
“What are you waiting for?”
“For you. I can tell you’re processing a lot of sudden, and frightening, and abhorrent news.” He turned to look over the city. I glanced too. The lights shone more brightly.
“Aren’t you supposed to reveal your warts the second or third date?” I finally said, turning back to him. For some reason I became calm. I knew I shouldn’t. I should be running down that hill, passed the car, and along the road back to town. I would never make it but my gut told me I should be running. Get moving. Keep moving. Don’t stop until safe behind a locked door. Even if that door proved too weak to protect myself. Yet a corner of my mind found this weirdly, curiously interesting. No ghosts but vampires roam the world.
One Night Burns (The Vampires of Livix, #1) Page 3
