DSosnowski - Vamped

by Vamped (v1. 0) [lit]

  “Maybe,” I say. “Like I said, I’m still exploring the situation.”

  More eye rolling.

  “I’m doing this partly for you, you know.”

  “Oh yeah?” Isuzu smirks. “Which part? The one where you skip out on me every night of the week? Or the screwing-some-bimbo part?”

  Smart-ass. I’ve raised a smart-ass without even trying.

  I point at my hand. “This is me,” I say, “slapping the crap out of you for what just came out of your mouth.”

  Isuzu blinks. She knows I’d never hit her, but knows I threaten it only when she crosses the line.

  “And she’s not a bimbo,” I say. “You’d like her.” Pause. “I think it’d be good, having a woman around here for you to—”

  “Jesus,” Isuzu says, spitting the word out like a cherry pit. “Isthat what this is about? You’re trying to find me a mom?”

  “Is that such a bad idea?”

  “I had a mom,” she says. “A couple of your pals cashed her in for the deposit.”

  Whenever she’sreally pissed, Isuzu starts referring to vampires in general as my “pals.” Linking me and my “pals” to her mother’s death is as good as a “Fuck you.”

  I point at my hand again. She says, “Go ahead.”

  She says, “Go ahead, and pray I don’t bleed. I wouldn’t wanna be accused of being a clot tease.”

  I’ve already got one hand in the air. It’d beso easy. It’d be so deserved. Just a dip and torque as palm flat collides with cheeky cheek. Doing it’s not a problem. It’s the stopping I’m not so sure about.

  And so I don’t. “Truce,” I say, raising my other hand, holding both out there like twin stops signs.

  Isuzu starts to say something. Thinks about it. Stops. Reconsiders. Says: “I think these little heart-to-hearts are a good thing, don’t you?”

  “I was just gonna say this went a lot smoother than I expected.”

  Pause. Time to think. Me, about what I’d do without Isuzu. Isuzu, what she’d do without me. When one of us speaks again, it’s the one with the most to lose.

  “So,” Isuzu says, “does Mom Number Two have a name?”

  What do you look for when you’re trying to figure out if your vampire girlfriend can be trusted around your mortal daughter?

  “What do you think about kids?”

  Prepared how, exactly?

  Yeah, that’d be a bad sign.

  On the plus side, I don’t have to worry about curiosity with Rose; she already knows what blood tastes like “on tap.” She was one of my early recruits, recruited to recruit others. There was no need for her to rely on the lab-grown stuff until we all had to make the switch. And it’s not like she doesn’t know the thrill of the hunt, the taste of fresh-squeezed adrenaline from a victim who knows his time is up. The Benevolent Vampires were mainly about preventing murder, sure, but every new recruit was offered a few justifiable homicides. To get it out of their system. To make the world a better place by getting rid of some of those people that just needed killing. Wife abusers, child abusers, rapists, Republicans—your basic scum of the earth. When skimming was called for, we let our new recruits skim.

  It was a win-win situation.

  If anything, what I worry about is nostalgia. Whatever you can’t get anymore always seems better, more precious than whatever’s freely available. That’s why old junk becomes antiques and costs more used than it ever did new. That’s why gas is $5 a gallon, while lab-grown blood averages about a buck fifty. I’ll admit it; evenI ’ve had moments of longing for the old-fashioned stuff—especially the way Isuzu’s been lately. But I’ve got my ace in the hole. All I have to do is wait until she’s ready to graduate to vampirehood. Sure, it’ll be willing blood, not the hunted kind, but it’s way past too late for that. Even if I were to go nuts tomorrow, Isuzu wouldn’t scare. Her not scaring is why she’s still here. She’d just laugh at me like before, thinking it was a joke right up until it was too late. So I wait, sticking to the Plan as planned.

  Except for Rose, of course. Rose wasn’t part of the Plan, but she is now. And so the questions come back:

  “What do you miss most about the old days?”

  Killing my lovers’ kids…

  I shake my head. Listen to the broken glass and rusty nails clattering around in there. Get ready for avery long night.

  Candlelight. That’s a good start.

  Candlelight, and our black marble eyes staring into each other, watching the reflections of the dancing flame. My hand reaches across the table, finds hers.

  “Rose…”

  “Yes?”

  “I have something to tell you.”

  “Yes?”

  This would be easier if she didn’t keep saying “Yes” like she’s been practicing, just in case I’ve got a ring hidden on me somewhere. “I…”

  “Yes…”

  “…have a child.”

  There. It’s said. It’s out there.

  “Where? Tied up in the trunk?”

  Yikes! One of thebad responses.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not like that. I’m raising it. I mean, ‘her.’ I have been for some time now.”

  Rose looks at me and I look at her. We’re really hating the way these dead crow eyes of ours make our emotions so hard to read. Not that emotions were a piece of cake before, but they’re a bitch and a half now.

  “I’m waiting for you to make a noise,” I say, after she hasn’t.

  “I’m thinking.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “Hard to say,” she says. “I’m still doing it.”

  “Maybe talking it out would help.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Let’s see. I’m trying to figure out if I should be pissed, or flattered. On the pissed side, there’s you lying to me.”

  “I wouldn’t say ‘lying,’ exactly,” I lie. “It’s not like you said, ‘Marty, do you have a kid?’ and I said, ‘No.’ ”

  “Being a jerk now doesn’t make the thinking part go any easier,” Rose points out.

  “Sorry…”

  “To continue,” Rose continues. “On the flattered side, there’s you trusting me enough to risk telling me now.”

  “If voting’s allowed,” I say, “I’m all for being flattered.”

  “Yeah. See. That’s the thing,” Rose says.“You don’t get a vote.”

  I begin to object, but am cut off by the sound of a bottle neck clinking against the rim of an empty glass, followed by the warm glug-glugging of blood being poured. Rose drains the glass and refills it several times, bent not only on sating her appetite, but clubbing it to death like a baby harp seal.

  “Still thinking?” I ask, after the fifth glass.

  “Still thinking,” she says, slamming it, and starting another.

  “Still?”

  “Still.”

  Eight. Nine. An even ten.

  And then:

  “So,” Rose says, dabbing her chin with her napkin. “This kid got a name?”

  Isuzu, Rose. Rose, Isuzu.”

  The two women in my life. All my bad ideas, made flesh.

  There they are, squaring off like a couple of prizefighters, trying to decide what part of the other to smash first. Their eyes drill small holes into each other, and I can read both their minds, because both their minds are thinking the same thing:

  “What the hell does he see in her?”

  Rose is the first one to break the ice, or perhaps freeze it more solidly. “Don’t the eyes freak you out?” she says, as if Isuzu’s not even there. “I mean how the white part makes it soobvious what she’s looking at.”

  At the moment, Isuzu is looking at a point between Rose’s monotonous eyes, imagining, I’m sure, how she might arrange to drive in a six-inch spike right…about…there.

  “Your eyes used to have a white part, too,” I remind Rose. “We all did.”

  She flicks the comment away like a pesky fly. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she says. “Ancient history. Just li
ke them argument shoes.”

  “ ‘Argument shoes’?”

  “You know,” Rose says. “The ones that looked like they were made from a couple of beagles?”

  “Hush puppies?”

  “No, no. The two-tone jobbies.”

  “Spats?”

  “Yeah. That’s them.”

  Isuzu—who’s been ping-ponging from one speaker to the next with her own two-tone jobbies—finally shoehorns her way into the conversation.

  “Are those boobs for real?” she asks, zeroing in on the meanest question she can find.

  Rose is a 32-B. To imagine her current bustline as the result of some form of enhancement is to imagine a former chest not only flat, but perhaps actually concave.

  “Isuzu,” I scold. “Is that any way to treat a guest?”

  “Beats me,” she says back, like a dare.

  The words “Don’t give me any ideas” are already on my tongue, ready for blurting when it occurs to me that Isuzudoesn’t know how to treat a guest. In fact,Rose is the first company we’ve ever had. And it’s not exactly like there’s a surplus of appropriate role models out there. As nostalgic as vampires are about the cute side of growing up, almost nobody wants to relive their teenage years, not even in period pieces on TV. To the extent that teenage-lookingcharacters appear on the tube, they’re invariably Screamers. And that’s it. Those are my little girl’s role models for growing up, a bunch of pint-size fuck-yous.

  Lovely.

  Rose, meanwhile, seems to have taken the whole thing in stride, and may even be affording Isuzu an inch or two more respect, for not letting the eye comment go unpaid. “Regarding my tits and their realness,” she says, stepping right into the thick of it, “yes, they are. My nose, on the other hand,” she adds, offering us her profile, tilting her head back slightly, “this bit of cuteness is as fake as a three-dollar bill.”

  “Really?”Isuzu practically squeals the word, showing real interest, sarcasm-free. I should probably worry about her nearly orgasmic enthusiasm for appearance-related topics, but relief gets in the way.

  “Oh yeah,” Rose says. “The honker I was born with—Jesus.Scare babies, crack mirrors, the whole nine yards. It looked like a goddam dinner roll, right there in the middle of my face. Plus, on the tip, it had a kind of butt-crack thing going.”

  Isuzu goes, “Disgustoid,” and shakes her head, but otherwise shows every sign of—dare I say—“warming” to our guest.

  “ ’Course, Iwas thinking of getting a boob job, but that was years ago. Before.” Rose turns to me suddenly and winks. “Beforesomeone decided to lock down my looks forever.”

  Which is true. Cosmetic surgery just isn’t done anymore. Not after the first few tries. Vampires heal too fast. The incision closes before you can stick anything inside. In a few cases, the cut actually healed around the doctor’s wrists—photos of which bounced around the email joke circuit for the next couple of weeks, bearing subject lines like “What a Hoot(er)” and “Beats Mittens.” Holding the wound open with a spreader didn’t work, either. All that did was force the edges to heal separately, and bingo, you bought yourself a brand-new hole. With results like that, it didn’t take long before the whole 32-B-or-not-to-be thing wasn’t even a question anymore.

  “Yep,” Rose sighs. “Hair and makeup. That’s pretty much it in the changing-my-looks department.” Pause. “So, a word of advice, kiddo. Before Marty even gets close to vamping you, make sure it’s all nailed down tight, ’cause forever’s a long time to be staring at even a freckle you don’t like.”

  The whites of Isuzu’s eyes are aimed right at Rose, playing along the This and That, checking her out, confirming the truth of the wisdom just conferred. Her whites show awe. Her whites show envy. And admiration. And a grudging recognition that, yes—despite her expectations, despite her spiteful wish for it to be otherwise—yes,here was someone she could finally talk to about all the stuff she couldn’t talk about with me.

  Rose lets her look a bit longer. She’s used to being looked at. It’s what she does. It’s what she’s paid for. And then she catches Isuzu’s eyes, smiling the tiniest smile, before darting a look in my direction. But it’s not a look for me; it’s a lookat me. It’sfor Isuzu, whom she turns back to, and then winks.

  Isuzu looks at me, too, and then back at Rose.

  Winks.

  Sothat’s what female bonding looks like, I think; it looks likethat.

  Like trouble, that is. Like two against one.

  Even though both cats are out of both bags, and have met without blowing too much fur, I decide to keep my home away from home. It’s the sex mainly. The vampire sex and all the steam and hot air it calls for. I can’t imagine Isuzu sleeping through it. What I can imagine, however, is her waking up drenched in sweat, the bedsheets clinging to her like a grabby ghost, her brain poached just shy of heatstroke, and needing a glass of water. What I can imagine is her stumbling about our apartment-turned-sauna only to come upon Rose and me. And let me assure you, stumbled-upon sex hasn’t gotten any prettier in its vampire incarnation.

  Take the practice known as “pulsing.” You slice aY incision in your palm and your partner does the same, on the opposite hand. And then you squeeze them together quick—cut to uncut, left to right—the wounds stitching you to each other as they heal. You can feel the liquid tickle of your lover’s pulse, feathering the soft pad of your uncut palm. There’s no mingling; vampire blood doesn’t get along with vampire blood; but you share a pulse all the same, that most basic ticktock at the core of your being, synching up right along with your body temperatures. It’s wild. It’s almost like being able to read your partner’s mind during sex, and with sex, the more synchronicity, the better. You decouple at the point of orgasm, ripping open both wounds, which then go on to reheal, separately. It’s messy. It keeps the makers of bleach in business. But it’s also something you wouldn’t want your teenage daughter to catch you doing.

  I start the car with Isuzu in bed and plenty of good darkness left in the night. My cell phone and earplug are back in the apartment, in a drawer. Isuzu’s a teenager, having periods and everything. It’s about time I gave her a little privacy.

  “So,” I say. “Whatcha think?”

  “About Isuzu?” Rose closes her door and we begin heading out to find a little privacy of our own.

  I nod.

  “That’s one fucked-up little mortal you got there, Marty.”

  I want to object just as much as I want “fucked-up” clarified—and now.

  “What I mean is,” Rose continues, “I think she’s swell. A lot like me when I was—well, I was neverreally her age. Extenuating circumstances. I got matured against my will, thanks to a grabby uncle-in-quotes with detachable pants, but…And actually, I guess thatdoes make us kinda similar, both being treated like prey from a tender age and all, but…” Pause. “Yeah,” she concludes. “I like her. You done good. Well, as good as you could, given the extenuating circumstances.”

  Sothat’s what she means by “fucked-up.” Okay, I guess.

  “So, is it true?” I ask, changing subjects.

  “Is what true?”

  I point at my nose.

  “Shit, no.” Rose laughs. “That was a—whaddayacallit?—docudrama. ‘Inspired by actual events.’ Only, they didn’t actually happen tome. A friend of a cousin of a friend. Whatever. It was just something to say to get her off my tits.” Pause. “Funny how she just zoomed right on in there, going for the jugular two seconds after hello.”

  “That’s not how I raised her,” I insist. “I think it’s the TV.”

  “Hey, don’t get me wrong,” Rose insists right back. “I was impressed. It takes real talent to go from kid to bitch in sixty seconds. And it’s not like the world’s given her a lot of reasons to be Little Miss Sweetness. Come to think of it, I think she showed amazing restraint.” Another pause. “Deadly accuracy, sure, but amazing restraint, too.”

  “By which you mean,” I say, “you reallywere thinki
ng of a boob job before I closed that door.”

  “Oh yeah.” Rose laughs. Stops. Looks out the window at the traffic going by. “Had me a little scalpel fund going and everything.” She sighs.

  “Well, I’m glad you didn’t,” I say, grabbing her knee, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

  And I mean it. I really do. Contrary to what you may have assumed, not all male vampires are breast men. There’s a world of difference between “suckling” and “sucking”—a bigger world than that littlel might suggest. For me—for example—I’ve never been one for imposing breasts. And the fake ones are always so obviously fake, you have to wonder who they think they’re fooling. As far as I’m concerned, they’re worse than tattoos. At least tattoos are up-front about what they are—no pun intended—but fake tits are just lies told in silicone.