The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (39 page)

Everything passed inspection. I looked good, or as good as I was going to get, and my breath didn’t stink (
I had munched a whole tin of Altoids on the way over
). This was it. It was now or never.

I rode the elevator up to the twentieth floor, one of the two floors my company occupied. Mindful to be as discrete as possible, as I was, for all intents and purposes, technically considered
disabled
, I used my company badge to let myself in through the side entrance. I walked down a hallway past the sea of cubes, the clicking noises of many keyboards filling the air. At last it was in sight, Jim’s office. Seated at a desk just outside of it was his assistant, Sheila...the girl who owned my heart, non-beating as it were.

She was slim, about five-five, with shoulder length dirty blonde hair. She had the most unusual eyes, almost a grey in color. They kind of looked like the sky on a cloudy day. Okay, enough of that. Too many of those thoughts, and I’d probably be writing shitty goth poetry next thing I knew. Anyway, suffice it to say that, to my eyes, she was truly something to behold. Hers was a different kind of beauty than Sally’s. Whereas Sally would have looked at home on the cover of
Vogue
,
Playboy
...or even
Skank
magazine, Sheila was more of the girl next door type. She never would have passed as a fashion model, but she had a warm, inviting smile that said she was approachable in a “Hi, I’m really glad to see you” sort of way, as opposed to the “Please stick a twenty down my G-string” type of look I had gotten used to from my coven-mates. I tried to summon a little of my Dr. Death persona as I approached, minus of course the claws, fangs, or anything else that might scream undead demon from Hell.

It didn’t work. Dr. Death was taking his vacation from the coven very seriously, it would seem. Bastard! I could feel my resolve slowly starting to crumble in the wake of her presence. My steps slowed, my knees started shaking, and that’s when she looked up.

“Bill? Is that you?” she asked. Holy shit! She
did
know my name. Thank you, God!

“Hey, Sheila. Long time no see.” Argh! Why did I have to sound like such a fucking douche-nozzle?

“Yeah. We haven’t seen you in months. I had heard you were sick.”

“Oh, not sick so much as I have a bit of a condition,” I stammered. “I’m getting treatment. I actually feel pretty good today.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” a friendly smile spread across her face. “You look good.”

“YOU LOOK LIKE A GODDESS!” I wanted to scream, but instead just replied, “Thanks...um, you too.” At least I sorta managed to sputter a compliment with that last one.

“So what brings you here?” she asked, her smile still making me melt from the inside out. I wonder if getting staked felt like that...nah, probably not.

Hold on! What
was
I doing here? Motherfucker! I had spent so much time working my way up to the actual getting here part that I hadn’t bothered to come up with a single simple reason to actually
be
in the office. Unfortunately, “professing my love to you,” wasn’t really an answer that I felt like giving out quite yet. Goddamn it! Think, stupid.

So I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “I’m here to pick up my paycheck.”

“On a Thursday?” (
Shit!
)

“Well...”

“I thought you were on direct deposit.” (
Fuck Fuck Fuckity Fuck!
)

“Sorry, I didn’t mean
pick up
my paycheck. I needed...to...change a few things on my W2.” (
that was better. The engines were reigniting. Maybe I could pull out of this death-spin.
)

“Oh. Did you get married?” (
Mayday! Mayday!
)

“NO!” I said, way too emphatically. “Nothing like that. Still single. Yep, just another eligible bachelor in the city. That’s me.” (
God, I want to die! Seriously, please let Sally or some other vampire be sneaking up behind me with a stake to put me out of my misery
)

“Oh,” she said, looking a little confused. This was not going how I had planned. Well, okay, my plan had more or less consisted of walking coolly through the hall and her flinging herself into my arms at first sight. What? I never claimed my plan was realistic.

“I think HR usually takes care of that stuff,” she finished.

“Oh, I know that. I just wanted to pop by. Check out the old homestead. You know. Say hi and all that.” (
not to mention, stand around and stammer like a retard
)

“Well, I’m glad you did. It’s good to see you again,” she replied with that same smile. I could stare it all day. Although I had a feeling I had better not do so for more than a few seconds; otherwise, I might end the day staring at the much less friendly smiles of building security.

Hold on just one second! What an idiot I am. She just gave me an opening.

Time to man up, pussy!
suddenly screamed my Dr. Death persona from somewhere deep in my subconscious. It’s about time he woke up. Yeah. I could do this. It was now or never.

“I’m happy to see you again, too. Speaking of which, Sheila, I wanted to ask you a...” *RING*

“Sorry. I better get that,” she said, going back into work mode and picking up the phone. Why now!? Does fate hate me so much? Don’t bother answering. It was a rhetorical question.

She listened to someone speaking on the other end for a moment or two. Please let it be a wrong number. Maybe it was just some dickhead vendor making a cold call. Anyone who she could quickly get rid of before...

“It’s the VP of Marketing. I should take this. Good seeing you, though,” she whispered quietly to me before returning to the call.

Too late. The moment was over. I could feel whatever bravado I had spent nearly four years building up drain away in an instant. Damn you, Marketing VP! Damn you to hell! It was even worse because I knew the guy was an asshole. His name was Harry Decker. He joined the company a short while after I contracted my
condition
. I hadn’t met him in person, but had been on enough teleconferences with him to know that he was useless in all areas except kissing the CEO’s ass. Note to self: sic the coven on that fucker.

It didn’t matter, though. I was finished. Rather than stand there and let fate continue to shit on me with the force of a thousand pigeons, I slunk away while she was still on the phone. I let myself out and got back onto the elevator. Once the doors closed and I was alone, I did the only thing I could think of...I banged my head repeatedly against the wall. I deserved it.

I looked up...okay, I didn’t deserve it
that
much. Crap! Sometimes I forget the whole vampiric strength thing. There was a very visible dent in the wall of the elevator that hadn’t been there a few moments ago. I quickly tossed on my daytime cover-ups so I could make a quick escape once I was back at the ground floor. I didn’t need a repair bill from building maintenance to add to my shame.

* * *

Despite a nagging urge to rip off all my clothes and running screaming into the sunlight, I didn’t. I managed to make it back to my apartment no worse for the wear, physically at least. Unfortunately, my pain was just beginning. Ed was in the living room waiting for me when I walked in.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” I said, walking toward my bedroom / office.

“She shot you down?” Even from behind me, I could feel the grin on his face as he asked it.

“Don’t want to talk about it,” I repeated.

“You didn’t even ask her did you?”

“You know,” I spun around to face him, baring my fangs in the process, “it might not always be a good idea to piss off the
scary-ass vampire
you’re living with.”

“So scary he can’t even ask one girl out on a date?” he asked, his grin going into full shit-eating mode.

Goddamn, I hate when he’s right. My anger deflated, and I walked back to slump down onto the couch.

“You know what your mistake was?” Ed asked, sitting down next to me.

“Being born?”

“No. That was your parents’ mistake.
Your
mistake was that you forgot one important rule: you
never
ever
try to confess your feelings without first fortifying yourself. You should have stopped in a pub on the way for a little liquid courage, if you know what I mean.”

I looked up and met his gaze squarely. “I’m fairly sure women aren’t entirely impressed by guys who profess their undying love while reeking of Jack Daniels.”

“I didn’t say to bathe in it. I’m just saying a shot or two to calm the nerves...maybe three or four in your case.”

I chuckled slightly at that. “Maybe you’re right, oh wise one. At any rate, I probably couldn’t have fucked it up any worse than I did.”

“Fortunately for you, it’s not too late,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure I screwed up asking her out.”

“Oh, it’s too late for
that
. I meant it’s not too late for some liquid fortification. You, my friend, need a drink, several of them in fact. Who knows, maybe I’ll even buy one or two for you,” he said, walking over to get his jacket. “And when you’re finished, you’re going to go to your parents’ house this weekend and do it again until you are so shitfaced you don’t even remember your own name. You kill off enough brain cells, and you won’t be able to help feeling better about things.”

Sage advice, if ever there was any.

Note to self: don’t listen to Ed’s advice
.
Traffic was surprisingly light for a Sunday night. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Ed’s two-seater piece-of-shit, watching the miles slide by. My roommate was behind the wheel. We were heading south on Route 287 toward the Outerbridge Crossing. He had been good enough to come down and give me a ride back home, which kind of made sense as it had been his counsel that had given me cause to want to flee back to the relative safety of Brooklyn. Nevertheless, I was glad for the ride. It had turned out to be a long weekend, and I was in no mood to deal with the idiocies of mass transit to get back home.

Since it was early Fall, there was no Jersey Shore traffic to contend with. Even so, considering it was only about six PM, traffic was pretty light heading toward Staten Island. Oh well, it was that lull that tends to happen around late September / early October. People were still burnt out from the summer, and the holiday rush was a good month or so off. This was one of those rare times when people just stayed put. In short, the asshole ratio on the roads was low. I liked times like this. Sadly, they were too few and far between as of late.

We had been listening to some rock music on the radio, or at least what the DJ was calling rock music. There were very few real rock stations left in Jersey. Most played either classic rock, which was mostly tolerable, or a combination of lousy ballads and pop rock (
which had just enough guitar riffs to be outside of the Justin Bieber demographic...barely
). We had been discussing how real kick-ass rock music was such a rare commodity when my cell rang.

I had been expecting it. I picked it up and answered with a “Hello.”

“William, is there something you would like to tell me?” asked the voice of my Dad.

Uh oh. That wasn’t a good sign. If he was calling me William, it meant he had noticed the little
mistake
I had left behind from my weekend of house sitting.

I decided to do what I did best, play dumb. “Nope. It was a quiet weekend, Dad.”

“I’m sure it was,” he replied in a tone that said he didn’t even remotely believe me. “Your mother and I appreciate you coming down and keeping an eye on the place while we were at the beach.” The
beach
in this case being some of the many casinos down in Atlantic City.

“No problem, Dad! Anyway, well I gotta...”

“Hold it!” commanded the voice on the other end. “I guess I won’t beat around the bush. What the hell did you do to Angel?” At the mention of the name of her favorite cat, I could hear my mother in the background. She started wailing and carrying on. It pretty much sounded like she was in the middle of a major freak-out. Not too surprising, all things considered.

“Mom sounds kind of upset.”

“I noticed,” said my father, sarcasm oozing out of his voice. “Do you want to know why?” he asked, despite the fact that I had a pretty good idea and he most likely knew it.

“Why?” I asked innocently.

“Because right now she’s vacuuming up a pile of Angel dust.”

“Angel dust? You know, she should hold on to that. I hear the street value’s off the charts if it’s the good stuff.”

“I’m not laughing, William.”

“Sorry, sir,” I automatically replied, despite being an adult, having a job, living on my own, and...oh yeah...being a freaking vampire. “What happened?” I asked, genuinely curious. After all, I wasn’t
entirely
sure how things had played out...especially since I’d made it a point to bug out before my parents got home, even going so far as donning a hoodie, sunglasses, and ski mask so as to brave the daylight without bursting into flames. It probably wasn’t the manliest way I could have handled the situation, but I’ve always thought there’s a fine line between bravery and idiocy. Sticking around would have definitely crossed that line.

“When we got home, your mother noticed the cat was acting a little strange,” my father explained. “It was hissing and carrying on.”