DSosnowski - Vamped

by Vamped (v1. 0) [lit]

  “Change isokay ?” Isuzu repeats, nailing down the terms.

  “Well, maybe ‘inevitable’ is the better word,” I try.

  “Huh,” Rose huhs.

  “Ditto,” Isuzu dittos.

  “Am I missing something?” Robbie asks, clearly missing everything—God bless ’im.

  Isuzu leans into Robbie’s shoulder and delivers a peck to his cheek. “I think you passed,” she says.

  “Cool,” Robbie says, waiting for my nod before returning Isuzu’s kiss.

  30

  Guy Stuff

  So, this is where you met Rose, eh?”

  That’s Bobby—Robert—talking. It’s been decided that we should get better acquainted. Do “guy” things. That’s how the nonguy decision makers put it.

  “You should go do some guy stuff together,” Rose said. “Now.”

  “Yeah,” Isuzu added, opening the door. “Skedaddle.”

  So we skedaddled like a couple of good boys, and this is the guy thing I came up with. Teezers.

  “Yep,” I say, paying the cover for both of us. “This is where I met Rose.”

  “Huh,” he says, a tad judgmentally, it seems to me. He looks around, taking in the dancers, the munchkins, the mirrors everywhere.

  “You come to these sorts of places a lot?” he asks.

  “Once upon a time I used to come in, once in a while,” I lie. “I wouldn’t call it ‘a lot.’ And I don’t anymore. Of course.”

  “Except, here we are,” Robbie says, taking a seat.

  “Well, yes,” I admit.

  “Why?”

  “The womenfolk kicked us out so they could talk about us behind our backs.”

  “No,” Robbie says. “Why here? Why this place?”

  “It’s a guy thing,” I say. “We were told to do guy stuff and this fits the bill.”

  “Whose bill?” Robbie asks. “And who’s paying it?” He’s got both hands on the table in front of him, palms down, flat. His black headlights are aimed right for me.

  “Um,” I shrug. “My treat?”

  Of course, I can’t tell him the real reason. I can’t tell him I’m still hoping for one more chance to trip him up, to expose the real creep underneath that TV-trained smile. I can’t mention the recorder I grabbed on our way out, or how its tiny wheels are already turning, waiting for the crude comment that will damn him to eternal bachelorhood. The comment I’m getting less and less hopeful will ever come. At least not from Robbie.

  “Listen,” he says, still staring at me—just me—despite all the well-paid distractions surrounding us. “I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I’m not a big fan of voyeurism.” He pauses, breaks eye contact, but only to look down at his own hands.

  Of course!

  Of course Robert Little ofThe Little Bobby Little Show wouldn’t be a big fan of voyeurism for hire. What was I thinking?

  “I guess I’m like one of those tribes,” Robbie goes on. “The ones that think cameras steal your soul? Only with me, they stole my whole life right up until…” He points his index finger at his eyes like a gun. “Until I became like everybody else. And boring.”

  I click off the tape recorder in my pocket. I let Robbie keep his soul, the one I find myself forced to acknowledge yet again.

  Dammit.

  “So,” I say, eager to change the subject.

  “So,” Robbie says at the same time, eager for the same thing.

  We laugh uncomfortably. Stop uncomfortably. Pause. Sit.

  I extend my empty hand, palm up, yielding the floor to my reluctant guest.

  “What was she like growing up?” Robbie asks, giving the floor back to me. “What was it like being her dad?”

  They say that the Ebola virus—back when it still had victims to infect—would kill by liquefying its host’s internal organs. Their hearts would bleed, and then melt, and then just give up.

  I give up. Give in. Little Bobby Little’s a bigger man than I am without even trying.

  “Horrible,” I say, making Robbie smile. “It was the most wonderful horror you can imagine.”

  Ithink I understand,” Robbie says, after hearing me prattle on and on about What Being a Father Means to Me. “About these places,” he adds.

  I don’t get the connection and so Robbie makes it for me.

  “It’s not about the dancers,” he says. “It’s them.” He flicks a glance at the little kid look-alikes surrounding us. “You were looking for an Isuzu before you even knew there were any left to find.”

  I feel like I felt when Rose saw past my cheap excuse for playing it cool. I say now what Rose said then:

  “Busted.”

  “So,” we say together. Again. Laugh, again—perhaps a bit more comfortably this time. Robbie offers me the floor and I give it back.

  “What were your parents like?” I ask.

  “Dunno,” Robbie says. “I didn’t have any.” Pause. “I mean, biologically, I had to, but I never met ’em. I had a director. I had a stage crew. I had a security staff, a tutor, and a cuteness coach. But parents? Not really. Not like you and…”

  Robbie stops.

  He’s stopped looking at his hands and is looking straight ahead at something over my shoulder. I turn and there we are, the two of us, framed in one of Teezers’ many mirrors.

  They say that daughters look for their fathers, and you really don’t need much more proof than the snapshot I’m staring at now. Robbie and me, side by side, same short dark hair, same baby skin, same through-the-wringer eyes. And the same fangs, of course, but poking out of smiles tightening with the same sudden shock of recognition.

  Robbie’s the first to speak. “You know any other guy places?” he asks. “Someplace without so many…”

  “…mirrors?”

  “Yeah.”

  Ileave my car in the lot and we walk the dozen or so blocks to the Detroit River. The sky overhead is lousy with stars just like it was when I was a kid, before the night became polluted with light. That’s one good thing about vampires taking over. Our all-pupil eyes demand that we switch off the lights and let the stars back into our lives.

  “When I was a kid,” Robbie says, craning upward, “they never let me outside. It was too dangerous. The windows in my bedroom on the show weren’t real. They were a kind of special effect. Blue screen. The outside was dubbed in, but the only time I ever saw it was when I watched the videotape. Isuzu thinks I’m watching myself when I watch those old reruns. I’m not. I’m just watching the only daylight they ever let me have.”

  “When I was a kid,” I say, “I used to dream about being a movie star, like Fred Astaire. I thought it’d be the greatest thing in the world, to have all those people sitting in the dark looking up at you, larger than life and made of light.”

  “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Robbie says.

  “Same goes for the outdoors and daytime,” I say. “That’s when the bugs are out. Bees and wasps and mosquitoes. Nasty business, being outside during the day.”

  Robbie smiles. “I guess we both got lucky, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”

  31

  The Happy Ending

  Oh my God!” Isuzu squeals, seeing our little blue Twit for the first time. This is after the munchkin’s called, gotten Rose, asked to speak to me, and asked me to ask Isuzu if friendship was still possible.

  It was.

  Is.

  And there she is, standing in the doorway, wearing my blue vengeance to their first face-to-face since that little fangs-to-neck incident a few lifetimes ago. Isuzu is delighted by my fashion sense.

  “It’s adorable,” she bubbles.

  And it is. In the right light. With the right distance. The blueness of Twit’s skin is just unreal enough to invite touching. And so Isuzu does, reaching out, smoothing her pink fingers against the Azure Sky of Twit’s cheek.

  “You look just like a Smurf,” Isuzu says, cupping the cheek, confirming its reality.

 
“You look like the bride of Frankenstein,” Twit counters, meaning Isuzu’s neck, the baseball stitches.

  Isuzu blinks—a cat smiling. A cat suddenly remembering something. “You have absolutelygot to keep it,” she insists. “Promise me you’ll keep it for…”

  And then Isuzu stumbles, because she hasn’t really told anyone yet. Meaning me, who’s been eavesdropping, and Twit, who’s standing right there, already blue in the face over Isuzu and her secret life.

  “Keep it for what?” Twit asks. Not Halloween. Vampires still aren’t openly celebrating that one.

  “Um,” Isuzu ums. “Well,” she wells.

  “Um, well,” Twit mocks. “Spit it out, shit-wit.”

  “I’m getting married.” Isuzu winces, throwing up her hands to shield her face, her still-healing neck.

  Twit purses her lips tight and puffs out her cheeks. It looks like all the “fuck yous” and “goddammits” are just piling up inside, pushing out. Finally, she lets the air out in a low whistle, like a leaking tire. “How’s the popster feel about that?”

  “Popster didn’t know.”

  They both look at me. I nod. Hold steady. Steer between not altogether unexpected icebergs.

  It’s Rose in the kitchen who drops the vase she was filling. Broken glass. Water. The fluted heads of lilies.

  “You’rewhat ?” she says, storming into the living room, wiping her hands, joining the conversation late.

  “Getting married.”

  “Over his dead body,” Rose says, pointing at me, helpfully.

  And me? Seems everybody’s channeling my anger nowadays. And so I just turn the page of my newspaper and go on acting like I’m reading.

  Rose and I are sworn to secrecy and act surprised when the “official” announcement is made. When Robbie asks for her hand, I ask if I should get a meat cleaver from the kitchen.

  “You still have one of those?” he asks. “I bet you could get some serious cash on eBay.”

  I look at Isuzu, inviting her to reconsider. Inviting her to see the error of her ways, to imagine how long forever can be without an exit strategy.

  But she just points my eyes back to Robbie, who’s using his to wink.

  “Igot it,” he says, smiling, and then winking again.

  Wedding decisions start getting made. Plans are planned. And questions arise. Isuzu’s vamping, for instance, and who, how, when. Me—I can see all sorts of advantages to its being me, and its happening before the wedding. If it comesbefore the wedding, we can all breathe a sigh of relief, publish an announcement in theDetroit Free Press, invite friends and family, go as public as we like. If it comesbefore the wedding, we won’t need to lie on the license, or check with a lawyer later to find out if we need a do-over.

  But I get voted down. It’d just be so romantic for the new husband to do it, all the Weird Sisters agree.

  “At the ‘You may now kiss the bride’ part,” Twit suggests, sliding into her new role with surprising ease.

  “Yes!” Isuzu agrees.

  “Oh,yes,” Rose nods, darting a quick, sharp look at yours truly for some reason.

  Oh, yeah, that’s right, we’re still living in sin. Much to Rose’s overly apparent chagrin. She hasn’t said anything, hasn’t brought it up. At least not lately, and not in so many words. She just uses weird adjectives when talking about Robbie. Words like: “Decisive.” “Determined.”

  “Mature.”

  I look at Rose and try not to smile. Try to keep my mouth shut. Try not to spill the beans.

  Concerning who should officiate over this union—me, with some mail-order license to tithe, or areal priest—it seems all my efforts at Catholic indoctrination have suddenly come back to complicate my life.

  “It’s really sweet of you to offer,” Isuzu says, folding her still-warm hand over my still-cold one. “But…you know. It’s…I think the church…”

  Not that she’s ever been inside one. No. Everything she knows about church is what she sees on Sundays in a webcam window, kneeling before her computer. She’s asked me what it’s like, the real thing, and I’ve told her:

  “Echoey.”

  I lean my forehead into her forehead. “Okay,” I say. “Understood.” I add a faint, not-too-weary smile. “But don’t blame me if it gets weird.”

  “By ‘weird’ you mean…?” Isuzu says, backing her forehead away from mine, taking a good hard look.

  By weird I mean the measures—prophylactic, preventative, anticipatory—that will be needed. All the just-in-cases necessary to make sure she’s not murdered. When it was the price I paid for free therapy, I made sure Father Jack got his time’s worth. I fed him premium vicarious vampire porn. But now I’m regretting every grisly anecdote I let slip past my fangs.

  Plus, there’s the other thing. And even though she’s a young woman now, she’s still the youngest woman on the face of the planet. At least the youngest one without a price tag at the moment, or her own TV show.

  “You’re too young to remember this, but…,” I begin, proceeding to highlight the prechange infamy of some priests vis–à–vis innocence and its corruption. I mention Father Jack by name, but only to point him out as one of the good pedophiles. One of the self-torturing, nonpracticing ones.

  “And this is the person you want ushering me into marital bliss?” Isuzu says.

  “Listen,” I say. “Father Jack’s saved your butt more times than I can count.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not at liberty to elaborate,” I say. “Let’s just say raising a kid’s not easy.”

  “Oh,” Isuzu says, an unconscious hand rising to rub the back of her neck.

  “Oh,” she repeats. “K,” she adds, quite a bit later.

  Do you remember that time I told you about…”

  That’s how I start, before going on to remind Father Jack about one of my “gambling” episodes.

  “Yes?”

  “Um,” I um. “Well,” I well.

  “Spit it out, Marty.”

  And so I spit it out as Father Jack does the same thing. In my case, what gets spat is the unveiled truth about Isuzu; for Father Jack, it’s a beautifully executed spit take, thanks to his unfortunate decision to sip some nonconsecrated blood while we have our little heart-to-heart.

  “You have awhat ?” Father Jack demands, fine beads of sprayed blood measling me, the desk blotter, some still hanging in the air.

  “Child,” I repeat, wiping my face with my sleeve. “Mortal,” I add. “Grown now. Plans to get vamped and married.” Pause. “Married first, vamped second,” I clarify.

  “Hmm,” Father Jack says, blotting away at his own speckled chin. “Problematic.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And how old did you say she was?”

  “Eighteen.”

  “And one hundred percent human?” Father Jack says. “Mortal through and through?”

  “Yes.”

  Father Jack has a dot of blood he hasn’t caught on his eye. I notice this after the fact, when it disappears as the good father rolls his eyes ecstatically, contemplating the prospects.

  “And you want me to officiate?” he says, knitting his fingers together, a small, expectant smile playing across his face.

  “Provided,” I say, “certain conditions can be met.”

  Isuzu’s dress is her something borrowed—my mother’s. And Twit has agreed to be her something blue.

  “In more ways than one,” the little munchkin whispers to me, sadly, in spite of the good show she’s otherwise making.

  “Join the fucking club,” I whisper back.

  Rose hasn’t joined the blues club. Instead, she’s invented her own—the “jealous of Isuzu/pissed off at Marty” club.

  “What are you two conspiring about?” she asks, inserting her head between our whispering heads.

  “Murder,” Twit says.

  “Murder most foul,” I agree.

  “Can I ask whose, or is that a surprise?” Rose asks.

  I look
at Twit; Twit looks at me.

  “Surprise,” we agree.

  “Lovely,” Rose says, stomping off to go check something that really doesn’t need checking.