Fat Vampire (7 page)

D
OUG COULDN'T
concentrate for the rest of the day and did little more than watch the clock until three thirty. He didn't know if he was going to a secret meeting or a fight. Maybe more than a fight. Maybe Victor was going to kill him. Maybe he enjoyed it so much the first time he wanted to do it again.

“Why…exactly…are you meeting Victor Bradley by the drainpipe?” asked Jay after last bell.

“We just have some business to talk about. Or he wants to beat me up. I'll find out when I get there.”

Jay was thinking hard. You could tell because he looked like he was cleaning his teeth with his tongue. “I'm going
with you. Even though I'm still mad at you for ditching me. Although I think I really scored some points with the drama kids—”

“I'm supposed to go alone,” said Doug.

“Yeah, right—so then Victor can show up with the whole football team?”

“Are you really suggesting he's gonna need
help
kicking my ass?”

Jay shrugged. “You have vampire strength now.”

“Not during the day I don't. Look, thank you, but I'm going to go alone. If I don't call you by five, then you can panic,” Doug said. He was annoyed with Jay, annoyed with himself for even telling Jay about it. Plus people were making fun of his poncho.

He walked out past the bus bays and the throngs of people, across the parking lot and the soccer field, through a hole in the chain-link fence, and down an embankment. Victor was already there, alone. Victor who, if possible, was even better looking now that he was a vampire. It made his eyes smolder or something. It made Doug look like a blind cave fish.

The day was humid and close. The area around the pipe was rocky and lush green. Flies punctuated the air over something furry and dead. It smelled worse than Victor. Victor he was starting to get used to.

“I checked up on you,” Victor said. “I did. After I figured out it was you that I attacked. I came by your family's cabin and made sure you were okay.”

“Thanks,” Doug said, and wanted to slap himself. He
was thanking him for
this
?

“And then when I saw you
were
okay,” said Victor, “I knew I must have made you. I guess because I took too much?”

“I wonder if it's because you were bleeding, and I got some of your blood in me. You haven't made any other vampires?”

“I don't think so.”

“So you were made right before you made me. I was your first feed.”

“Yeah. I didn't know what I was doing. You could have been anyone. Anything.”

Doug nodded. He was sweating under his poncho. “You looked pretty fucked up that night,” he said.

“She was really rough,” Victor admitted.

“She?”

“My vampire. She was a total piece of ass. French. Looked maybe nineteen, but who knows, right? She could have blown Napoleon for all I know.”

So there
were
hot vampire chicks, at least. That was comforting.

The fact that Victor wasn't being a complete dick was coming as something of a surprise to Doug. That Victor was aware that Napoleon was both French and lived a long time ago wasn't entirely expected, either. He supposed he was going to have to give Victor more credit. He hated giving people more credit.

They had known each other since they were little kids. Never were great friends, maybe, but they'd played together during the summers at their families' cabins. They'd always
gotten along when there were no other kids around to complicate things. Then the two boys got older, and Doug simply assumed in Victor a growing cruelty and stupidity to balance out his more appealing qualities. Sure, after high school he might become a better person, find God or something, but for now, didn't he almost have to be evil? Wasn't that part of the deal?

“You haven't told anyone, have you?” asked Victor. “About any of it?”

“Oh…no. No. And if I was going to tell anyone, I wouldn't tell them about you. I'd probably claim my vampire was a hot girl, too.”

Victor gave a satisfied nod. Maybe he'd just gotten what he was looking for. Doug still had some unanswered questions.

“What the hell am I doing wrong, Victor?” he said. “I mean, look at you—you don't hide under a poncho all day. And that bat thing—”

“Yeah, well I figure I'm some kind of special vampire,” said Victor. “One that doesn't burn up in the sun. You're not 'cause you were an accident.”

“Oh,” said Doug. “I thought maybe being able to stand the sun was normal, like in
Dracula
.”

“Dracula burns up in the sun, dumbass.”

“Not in the book, remember?”

Victor frowned, and then looked down the drainpipe. “I haven't read it.”

Doug's eyes popped. “You haven't read
Dracula
? Are you kidding? I read it, like, first thing. Well,
re
read it first thing.”

“Yeah, big fuckin' surprise,” said Victor. “Meatball gives himself extra homework to do.”

“But it's like…our instruction manual, right? And in Stoker's book, Dracula can walk around in daylight all he wants. He's just powerless then.”

Victor picked up a chunk of concrete and pitched it down the drainpipe. Both boys paused to admire the firecracker sounds it made as it fractured and ricocheted in the darkness.

“Well…” said Victor, “so much for your instruction manual. I haven't read it and I'm doing a hell of a lot better'n you.”

Doug had to admit that was true.

“What've you been drinking?” asked Victor.

“Nothing,” said Doug reflexively. “I don't drink.”

Victor gave him a look.

“Oh…” said Doug. “Right. Well, there are these cows at the university farms—”

“You've been drinking cow? Jesus! Aren't there at least some, like, dork girls you could feed on?”

“I'm working on it. I don't want to just attack anyone.”

“Hey, who's attacking people? The girls I feed on
want
it. It's better than sex,” said Victor, then he looked thoughtful. “In fact, afterward, they seem to think all we did was have sex. They go into a kind of daze when I'm doing it, you know?”

No.

“I'm getting really good. I barely leave a mark, and I only take a little. Like as much as a Coke. But I do it enough so's I'm always full as a tick.”

Doug had stopped listening. He was listening, rather, to a rustling echo of footsteps coming from down the pipe. He held up a hand. “Shh, hold on.”

The boys squinted down the dark tunnel of the drainpipe. A man was walking slowly down its center, slightly hunched, carrying a silver tray. He wore a knee-length jacket, a vest, a tiny tie. His long face and tired eyes were a perfect mask of boredom.

“The hell?” Victor whispered.

They had all the time in the world to study his approach, though to Doug he gave the impression of the kind of unhurried cartoon tormentor who would always be calmly on your heels, no matter how hard you tried to get away.

He slowed to a stop at the lip of the pipe and glanced with distaste at the decaying animal in the rocks.

“An auspicious place to find you, young masters,” he creaked. “My compliments.”

“Who the hell are you?” asked Victor. “Why are you here?”

“Remarkable. The incisive quality of your questions staggers me. Allow me a moment of quiet awe.”

The man took his moment. The boys looked at each other.

“Now then. I am but an unworthy messenger,” the man rasped. “Please accept these gracious invitations from my mistress.”

On the silver tray were two small scrolls, tied with red ribbon. Doug hesitated, but then Victor took one, so he did, too.

 

You Are Invited

to attend

a Light Supper

and

Willing Congregation of Like-minded Individuals

at the Home of

Signora Cassiopeia Polidori

Midnight

The Hawthorne

Chestnut Hill

Watch Your Fingers

 

No sooner had Doug read the last line than he noticed his invitation was on fire. So was Victor's. The messenger flipped closed a Zippo lighter as the boys dropped their scrolls and stamped them out.

When the ashes were scattered and dead, the boys turned to watch the man retrace his steps down the pipe.

“Fucking crazy old fuck,” said Victor.

“He smelled like you,” said Doug.
Except not as bad
, he thought.

“He smelled like
you
, you mean. 'Cept not as bad.”

“Finally,” said Doug. “Cool vampire shit. A secret society.”

“I dunno. I'm probably not gonna go. Could be dangerous. You shouldn't go either.”

Doug thought about the
Vampire Hunters
. He supposed it could be a trap.

“Go drink some blood and stay home,” said Victor as he walked away. “You look terrible.”

D
OUG DIDN'T
drink any blood, and he didn't go home. Instead, he rode his bike to the street on which he thought Cat lived, and traced and retraced a long figure eight in the road. He thought he knew which house it was, which house Sejal was in. He'd been to Cat's once freshman year, when she'd hosted the cast party on the closing night of
Guys and Dolls.
But he wasn't certain. He wore his uncertainty like a veil. If he wasn't positive, he could be excused for not riding up the driveway and knocking on the door.

 

“Is he still out there?” asked Cat. Sejal spied through the black curtains of Cat's upstairs bedroom while Cat and Ophelia rifled through clothes. After learning of Sejal's baggage
mishap Ophelia had also accepted with brio the responsibility of dressing her. She'd arrived minutes before Doug with a Macy's bag full of outfits.

“He is,” said Sejal.

“He probably followed me here,” said Ophelia from behind a sheer green blouse. “It's weird how many guys are already into me this year.”

“Nah, he's here for Sejal. Did you see how he looked at her at lunch?”

“Should I go say hello?” asked Sejal.

“No way,” said Ophelia. “If he can't come ring the doorbell himself, then screw him. Besides, it's only Meatball. I mean, no offense—maybe in your country the weird-looking guys are the hot ones, I don't know.”

“I'm not certain he knows which is the correct house.”

“He knows,” said Cat. “Go talk to him if you want. He's smart. Pretty funny, too.”

Sejal smiled. “I'm not interested in him as a…suitor.”

“Suitor?” said Ophelia.

“Whatever.” Cat grinned at Sejal. “It's fine.”

“Truly, I am not.”

“Truly? Suitor?” Ophelia smiled at Sejal, too, a movie-star smile. “Are you the cutest thing ever?”

 

Doug was on the verge of giving up and leaving, as he had been for ten minutes, when the front door of the house-he-was-pretty-sure-was-the-house opened, and Sejal walked out. She was barefoot, in black jeans and a black T-shirt.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hey. Hey, I…
thought
this was your house, but…”

“Your skin looks better.”

“It's cloudy out.”

“You could carry an umbrella, no? For when it is not?”

“No, too faggy,” said Doug. Did Sejal's smile falter, then? “Sorry, I mean…too
homosexual.
”

Sejal folded her arms and looked at her feet. Her startling toes clutched at the grass.

They were like hazelnuts. Her toes, her feet were a golden brown—the same color as the rest of her, really; Doug couldn't imagine why it surprised him. He couldn't fathom why it made her feet look more naked than other feet.

 

Doug is staring at my feet
, Sejal noted. She supposed she'd just been looking at them herself, so she couldn't really…No, now he was watching that bird in the yard. Now a glance at her chest, now a pause at her shoulder. And again the bird. He was like a cat. He was like a cat at a mirror, looking anywhere and everywhere but at the pair of eyes in front of him.

She considered suddenly that he might be
her
reflection. There was something familiar about his eyes, his look of distraction. He was lost, maybe missing something, like she was. Perhaps he'd left his heart someplace, too.

Then he cocked his head and looked up at her face at last.

 

“Hey, you have a nose earring. I mean, a nose ring,” Doug said, though it wasn't actually a ring. “A nose…”

Sejal brightened and touched the small silver stud with her finger. “My mother convinced me that in America I should
leave the piercing empty, isn't it? Then I meet Ophelia, and she has one, too! It feels different, like it's a different kind of hole in you, here.”

“Uh-huhey, do you want to go see a movie sometime?” said Doug before he had a chance to think, or inhale.

Sejal reacted as if she'd just been pinched unexpectedly in the ass. “I don't know, Doug…”

“Oh, that's cool.”

“I arrived so recently, I still feel very…unsettled.”

“I totally understand. I just thought you might be interested in seeing an American movie, because you're probably just used to those kinds of dancey movies they show on Desi TV. That's this late-night channel here, I don't know if you've seen it.”

Sejal smirked. “Okay. I do not think I've seen any of the current American movies. Why not.”

“Hey, all right! Great. Um, well, I have this big dinner party to go to tonight, but Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” said Doug. “Well, I'll see you at school!” He stood hard on the pedals, then biked quickly away, before he was overcome by it. Before her yes could catch up to him and set him ablaze.