The Meridian Gamble (7 page)

He’s still standing close enough. And
I can’t stop myself. I reach out to touch his face, to make sure I’m not
imagining him. I stroke my hand against his cheek, and Adam presses back
gently, seeming to hunger for my touch. I run my finger along his lips, the
ones I already know taste delicious, reminding myself that they feel just like
those of a human male.

But not everything is the same.

“Show them to me,” I whisper. “I
want to see them again.”

And instantly, he pops out his
fangs once more.

They’re mesmerizing. And lethal,
but I have to do it. I run my index finger down one of his teeth, which gleams
a dazzling shade of white, like those of an actor’s perfect smile. I’m almost
afraid to touch it, that it might be sharp like a knife, but it only feels
solid, like one of mine. And I press the pad of my finger into the tip, testing
to see how much pressure it would take to puncture the skin.

Adam begins panting, heavily. He
doesn’t even realize it, and I can tell he’s getting turned on.

“Be careful,” he mumbles, almost
goofily. “I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

I run my other free hand over his
chest. I can feel his hard pecs and the ripples of his abs through the flimsy
T-shirt, and now I’m the one getting turned on. He’s the perfect physical
specimen, just as you’d think a vampire would be. And again I feel the warmth I
had noted before. I wasn’t imagining it. His body burns hotter than normal,
which must be a vampire thing. I wonder what it would be like to nuzzle up
against him in bed, if I would feel like a lamb curling up in the paws of a
jungle cat.

I run my hand lower. It feels
slutty and cheap, but I begin to stroke a rather promising bulge that begins to
form in his jeans. It’s fascinating, that he can get excited in the way a
normal man does. And I wonder if he still makes love as normal men do, if he
can get a woman pregnant.

Adam slides his hand under my
T-shirt. I haven’t worn a bra tonight, and he caresses my breast. With his
other arm, he pulls me close, just the way I like it, kissing me ferociously.

And that’s when I know I’ve gone
insane. This isn’t safe. He’s dangerous, a killer. And yet, Adam is so
wonderfully sexy, and it’s been a long time since someone has touched me in
this way.

He pulls away from my mouth, and
begins kissing my neck, running his tongue over it hungrily, the way he would
if he was about to devour me.

Adam lied. He does want to eat me. I
can tell he wants to clamp onto my neck, and is struggling with every ounce of
his will to stop himself. And a part of me wants it too, to know what it feels
like to be under his control. A part of me wants him to consume me, so I can
become one with his beauty. Yet, another strange thought enters my mind.

“Kill the vampire.”

A voice whispers the words in my
brain. A thought comes into my head; I’m so close to one of them, I could claw
at his neck and finally kill a vampire for my people. But what the hell does
that mean? I don’t know who my people are, and I certainly don’t want to kill
him. And I brush my latest strange thoughts aside.

As he runs his lips along my neck,
I look over at the young yuppie couple, who are covertly staring at me,
laughing quietly. To them, I’m just another slut on a rooftop, letting a man
grope me. They have no idea what I’m truly going through.

It all becomes too much, and I
finally push Adam away.

“I can’t. I can’t do this …”

He stares at me, still filled with
passion, and I can tell he’s equally overwhelmed by his feelings. But Adam
stands still, and slowly gets his breath under control, calming himself.

“I don’t want to force you to do
anything you don’t want to do,” he says. “All you have to do is ask me to leave
and I will. I’ll never come back. I’ll never bother you again.”

“You will? It’s all that simple?”

“Yes, but I’m serious. Never means
never. If you say the words, you won’t ever see me again.”

It all happens so quickly, before I
can even think, or stop myself.

“That’s what I want. Leave here,
please. Just go.”

I can see the pain on his face over
what I’ve just said, even though Adam tries to be strong, and I immediately
regret my words. He seems sad in a way I can’t quite comprehend, and I feel
like I’ve wounded him. I’ve driven a stake through his heart, and I want to
take it all back, but I can’t quite bring myself to speak.

“All right, Meri,” Adam says. “But
I’m going to miss you.”

He walks away into the darkness of
the rooftop, and I feel a strange mix of relief and regret. For a moment, I
think about following him, to try to see where he went. But he seems to have
just disappeared over the edge of the building. Or maybe he jumped, and flew
away.

My eyes fix on the little light
that hangs over the door to the stairwell. And finally, I do what I should have
done in the first place. I run.

As I get to the door, I can hear
the yuppie couple laughing in shock at my panic. But I don’t care about them
anymore. Let them get eaten by vampires, for all I care.

I run down the stairwell, and the
sound of my sneakered feet echoes lightly against the walls. This place has
always reminded me of something out of a horror movie.

And now, it is.

I slam the door of my apartment,
locking the chain as I pant. And I look around at the bland little one bedroom
I struggle to pay for every month. It still doesn’t have enough furniture to
fill the place, despite the fact that I moved in two years ago. But that may be
a good thing, because I will probably be moving again soon. Maybe Staci will
let me sleep on her couch for a while.

Because my building is swarming
with vampires. God, maybe some of them are tenants!

Even the locks are of no use, since
I rent from the bloodsuckers, which means they have keys for the door. So I
look around for a sturdy chair. Luckily, I bought some chunky seats to go with
the kitchen table, instead of the really cheap ones I would normally get. I
prop one up beneath the handle of the front door, to make it more difficult to
open. And it’s completely ridiculous to think it will stop an immortal creature
of the night.

Now I’m wishing I had asked Adam
more questions, if garlic and crosses and holy water really work. Or maybe for
some of those self-defense lessons. But, of course, the price of that knowledge
is going out on a date, which is more than I’m willing to do.

So I sit on
the sofa with the television on and stare straight forward in shock. And my
brain reels over the knowledge that I’ve survived my first vampire attack.

I wake up face down on the couch
the next morning, still wearing my grungy sweats from last night. It always
feels gross to wake up in your clothes from the night before, and even worse,
it’s late in the morning. The clock on the end table reads 10:00 a.m. I never
sleep this late, even on a Saturday. The last thing I remember is sitting in my
living room in a panic, watching the first rays of sunrise come through the
window, wondering if a vampire was about to break through the door. So I
suppose my body needed some sleep.

I take a shower, and put on another
pair of sweats, my cute Juicy ones that are pink with the logo scrawled across
the butt. I look adorable in them, but it doesn’t matter, because the last
thing I want to do is leave my house today. But after taking one look in the
fridge, I realize I’m kidding myself. There isn’t much left from my work week,
other than a few stale English muffins, which I toast to a point that makes
them somewhat edible. And as I gnaw on my breakfast, I wonder if I
subconsciously dressed in something appealing because I knew I would be going
out after all.

And that someone might be watching
me.

Going to the market starts to seem
like a better and better idea. That way I can hole up for the weekend in a
fully stocked place. And won’t it be safer to go during the day? Vampires can
only come out at night, can’t they? That’s when I met Adam, but then again,
maybe the whole fear of sunlight thing is another false notion, like the idea that
they clamp down on people’s necks to survive. It’s another question I wish I
had asked him. But it’s too late for that now.

Never means never.

I grab my reusable, canvas shopping
bags, the kind all the good, eco-friendly yuppies carry around to save the
planet, and I go downstairs. It’s a beautiful day, with the sun shining down in
a way that warms me. Usually, I would want to spend a morning like this
shopping, maybe call up Staci to hit the stores for a while, but at least I’ll
get to enjoy being outside for the few shorts blocks to the local upscale
supermarket. But as I try to soak up some Vitamin D on my way there, I can’t
help but to look at the people on the sidewalk and wonder how many of them know
that vampires exist. And I wonder why no one has told me about this before. Then
again, I’m not exactly screaming the information on the street corners myself.

I usually try to get to “The
Gourmet Shop” early in the day, before too many people arrive. The aisles are
fun to walk down, if you don’t mind fighting for treats with aggressive,
well-to-do New Yorkers. They have beautiful produce that’s lined up in bright
stacks, and a bakery section filled with vegan treats, though I usually select
the non-vegan ones with extra fat and sugar. And they have an especially nice
prepared food bar, though when I go up to it, two old bats with walkers are
parked in front, sampling the dishes at their own slow pace in a way that
blocks everyone else. And I wonder how the store makes any money with shoppers
like these.

So I peruse the aisles for a bit,
regretting that I didn’t go to the cheaper chain market down the street. The
prices here are outrageous, but I figure I deserve a treat with all I’ve been
through. So I get crackers and organic chicken, bottles of Kombucha tea and
tamales from the deli section. I grab some plump grapes and a bag of those
yummy red and yellow cherries, as a woman in a light blue lululemon outfit
picks out produce near me.

I know her gear cost hundreds of
dollars, and I wonder how people in this city can even survive. I live paycheck
to paycheck, and if I spend any more on my credit cards, I’ll risk hitting the
point where I’ll never be able to pay off my debt. And I think about the tanks.
One month of your life for a small fortune, one that would pay for a lot of
credit card spending sprees. And a lot of lululemon. I look around, wondering
how many people in the market have struck such a bargain to afford their
overpriced groceries.

I go back to the prepared food bar,
and finally push my way past the two old women to fill a few tins with my lunch
and possible dinner. They gasp at me in shock, acting offended, and I think to
myself that I should feed them to Adam. Would the vampires really be so bad if
they drank up the lives these two hags cling to so desperately?

I take my tins of food and bags of
groceries home, and spend most of my time gorging myself and watching TV. And
as the weekend progresses, my fear of the vampires dissipates. And my mind
keeps drifting back to Adam.

I should push him from my thoughts.
He’s lethal, and I’m never going to see him again, anyway. But I can’t get the
taste of his lips, those luscious black curls out my mind. And when I close my
eyes, I feel like his beautiful, unusual green eyes are staring back at me.

I wish I could be a robot and turn
off my needs. As cold as I can be, there’s still something human about the
inescapable hunger for touch. And I have to admit that his touch more than
satisfied me.

It’s been so long since I’ve been
intimate with a man. And as handsome as Trevor was, big and masculine in a way
that I love, our tumble between the sheets was a disappointment. After a short
round of awkward sex during which he grunted over me a few times and then left,
he never called me again. Or returned my calls. And I felt like I had done
something wrong. It seems stupid to be so preoccupied with the sexual act. Thinking
about it makes me feel like an animal at times. It’s not like I want to have
kids, though I have ample time to change my mind. But nonetheless, I want to
feel that connection with a man again that makes me feel like we’re one. And
when I’m alone like this, I find myself wishing even more strongly for a bit of
companionship, that a stranger will magically appear to fulfill my needs.

The way Adam had done, on the
rooftop.

He didn’t seem like something from
a horror movie. He actually seemed sweet, in an odd way, sincere when he said
he didn’t want to hurt me. But what else would a vampire say if he wanted to
lure me to my doom? Yet, if he did want to hurt me, wouldn’t he have just done
it? Adam clearly had some sort of powers, super-strength or … something from
the way he flew off the rooftop. And despite his encouragement, I hardly put up
a strong defense.

Perhaps the strangest thing of all
is that I realize he reminds me of someone. It feels like a name that’s on the
tip of my tongue. And I think of the way he changed, looking as though he came
from ancient times. And then I remember the second story that I’m writing, the
one set in Egypt, the tale of a young girl named Saga sent to spy on the royal
family in the temple of Pharaoh. And I realize that Adam reminds me of a prince
in the story, one who visits from a foreign land and steals the heroine’s
heart.

So is that it? Did he change for me
because he reminds me of one of my characters, the way Staci has? Or if Staci
is Marjorie from a past life … could Adam be the prince I’ve tried writing
about, since he’s lived forever? I shake my head, as it all becomes too
confusing for me.

And by the time Sunday night rolls
around, I can’t take being confined in the house any longer. I put on some
tight jeans and a nice T-shirt, and go up to the roof again with the excuse of
facing my fears. When I get there, two or three people are up top, having a
little dinner party on the wicker furniture, and their presence helps ease my
mind, even though the yuppie couple had been useless. And I tentatively creep
out to the same spot where I had met Adam before.