“Hey, Mike, do you think Justin’s a vampire?” Her hand on her boyfriend’s arm, Liza leaned in close to whisper the suspicion.
Mike kept his face serious and countered in a low voice, “Why do you think he might be?”
“Well, I’ve never seen him in the sunlight, not even once. He’s practically nocturnal.”
Now Mike laughed and put his arm around his girlfriend, pulling her to him, inhaling her powdery girly smell. “You’ve never seen me in the sunlight—does that make me a vampire?”
Liza giggled, and blood rushed to her cheeks and forehead. “I have too seen you in the sunlight!” but as she said it, she wasn’t sure it was true. They’d met when Liza went on a date with Adam Fathi to Mike’s Halloween-themed birthday party. (She had been Lucy Westenra; Mike, James Bond.) They’d started dating in January; she’d moved in to Mike’s apartment in April, and now it was the middle of May. The Portland skies had been offering precious few sunbreaks this spring—the meteorologists were all freaking out about some low-pressure anomaly, or something—so it really was probable that she’d never seen him in the unfiltered sun.
“No more vampire books for you,” Mike chided, kissing Liza’s head. A moment later, he left to order another round of ale from their friend Justin, who stood idly behind the polished mahogany bar in a black vest and rumpled white shirt. Huber’s was sadly deserted this Tuesday evening, and whenever Liza raised her voice above a whisper she heard it bounce off the stained-glass vaulted ceiling until her voice filled the whole room. Mike had said that his engaged friends Alex&Trina were planning on dropping by sometime tonight. But it was half an hour to midnight, and there was still no sign of them.
Mike was talking to Justin instead of coming back with the drinks. Liza decided they were discussing the latest Halo 4 rumors until they both looked at her and laughed. How embarrassing! Liza rested her flushed forehead on her folded arms in front of her and dozed off—she had work in the morning.
What seemed like seconds later, Mike shook her awake. The restaurant was now completely empty. “Do I bore you that much?” Mike teased as they pulled on their Columbia Sportswear anoraks and prepared to reenter the drizzle.
To answer his question, Liza pulled her boyfriend to her and gave him a long, wet kiss. Hand-in-hand, the couple hurried down Third to the imposing brick Essex House, where they shared a seventh-floor apartment. In the mist, the streetlights were tall orange lollipops.
* * * *
Several weeks later, Liza awoke in darkness as she always did, thanks to Mike’s blackout curtains. However, Liza knew the sun had been up for at least an hour. She quietly dragged herself out of bed, slipped out the bedroom door, and ran to the huge living room windowpane: the sky was a seamless sheet of dark gray clouds. Cold air tickled her through the leaky window. Shivering in Mike’s “Geeks Do It with More RAM” t-shirt, she ambled to the bathroom.
She was so white! Well, Mike was white too, but it looked better on him. Liza examined her plump naked body in the bathroom mirror after her shower—even her tan lines from last summer were gone. Her overly-thick hair was also a mucky shade of brown because the sun hadn’t brightened it to strawberry blond like it usually did. At least she had fewer freckles, but that was little consolation. What they needed was a vacation—maybe in California. Yeah, California! It never rains in California!
Liza flipped on the TV and dressed in the hallway, listening to the weather report (clouds, rain, and more clouds). When Liza had moved in, Mike had insisted that she take the hall closet for her clothes so she could get ready in the mornings without turning on the bedroom light and waking him up. He’d even constructed a kind of vanity-slash-dresser in the linen closet for her. Mike was thoughtful like that.
Natali Marmion of channel 2 announced another tale of horror: last night a family of four had been burned alive in their gasoline-soaked beds. The house was gutted by the fire, but the saturated outer walls were still intact. This was just another in a string of violent crimes which appeared to be increasing in frequency as the rainy spring wore on. Mike had even bought a Tazer for Liza, and he insisted that she carry it on TriMet. After shutting the news off, Liza turned on the coffee maker and munched on a handful of dry Cheerios.
As Liza waited for the coffee to brew, she grabbed Mike’s MSDN Magazine and flipped through it. A folded-up piece of green-and-white-striped A4 paper fell from between the pages. Idly, Liza unfolded it—it was a list of words and numbers in German addressed to Mikhailo Mikhailovich Kozel, her boyfriend. One word repeated several times was investmentfonds, but the rest didn’t look too familiar. It wasn’t until after Liza had half a cup of coffee in her that she noticed the bolded number in the little box at the bottom of the page, preceded by CHF. She had to count the place values under her breath—ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and so on—before it made any sense: it was in the hundreds of millions!
Sweat erupted on the back of Liza’s neck. With shaking hands, she folded the paper back up and put it back in the magazine. Then she shoved the magazine under the toaster where she’d found it. What was Mike doing with all that money? He didn’t even have a car! At least, she thought he didn’t have a car. She didn’t really know that much about him, she realized. She wanted to look at the paper again, just to make sure she’d understood it right, but her hands were clammy, and she didn’t want to rumple the paper and give herself away. Her only comfort came in returning to her morning routine: she made herself a turkey sandwich, she packed her bag, and she pulled on her anorak. At the door she slipped on her practical Nine West pumps and let herself out of the apartment, locking the door behind her.
On the bus, Liza tried to read her book—this week she was rereading Dracula, trying to get back to the original vampire lore after reading the very untraditional Twilight series and watching too many episodes of Moonlight on DVD. (Vampires used to be villains, she remembered. Even Buffy knew that.) Though Liza was almost at the part when the brides of Dracula almost feed on Harker, the part that always made her abdomen tighten like it did when she read Carmilla, Liza couldn’t concentrate. She bit her lip and tried not to think about her early-morning discovery, yet by trying not to think about it, she succeeded on fixating on that horrifyingly large number all the way to Powell’s.
Powell’s City of Books, with its six stories of precariously tall shelves, double-strength musty book-smell, and vacant concrete stairwells was a perfect place for Liza to indulge in some dark imaginations about her boyfriend’s money. Maybe he won some super-secret, multimillion-dollar software lawsuit. That’s how John Grisham would have explained it, anyways, but how would he explain Mike not using the money or even telling Liza about it? Maybe Mike was a member of the Ukrainian Mafia. Maybe Mike couldn’t get to the money until his thirtieth birthday because his grandfather had written it into the will: maybe Liza was living the movie The Bachelor—maybe she was Renée Zellweger! Maybe . . . Nope, she was at a loss for a reasonable explanation. She shook her head and resumed shelving some new travel guides to Eastern Europe. The window beside her was just as gray as it had been in December, but this was June.
“Guess what finally came in!” Liza’s coworker and lunchtime vampire-gab buddy Lee leapt into the aisle with his hands behind his back. Before Liza could guess, Lee revealed what he had been hiding: “Nosferatu!” he sang as he presented the DVD. “The restored German version!”
“Oh, I’ve waited so long to see that one!” In spite of herself, Liza grabbed the DVD and perused the back cover.
“We should have another vampire movie marathon! This time we’ll watch Nosferatu, your copy of the Spanish 1931 Drácula, then I Vampiri, and to round it off? The Fearless Vampire Killers? I just bought that one last week, and I haven’t gotten a chance to watch it. Of course, maybe I should save it for a funny vampire marathon, when we could watch it with the Buffy movie and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. And then this week I could try to borrow that really cool thirties surrealist one from my cousin and we could watch all black-and-white films. What do you think?”
“Um, . . . that sounds good.” Liza blinked several times, and Lee thought that her hazel eyes looked a little unfocused.
Lee knew when he wasn’t getting the undivided attention he craved. He excused Liza for spending “another late night with Mike,” took back his disc, and pivoted on his skinny legs, ready to find someone else to gush to.
“Lee,” Liza called after him, “you’re a guy, right?”
He turned and smirked, “In a manner of speaking.”
Now she was looking him straight in the eyes. She bit her lip and then asked, “Why—I mean, under what circumstances would a guy have a lot of money but not let anyone know? When would a guy let his . . . family think he was a normal ol’ poor person when he had a ton of money in the bank?”
Lee smiled. “Is this mystery guy saving up for something, like the down payment on a house? Maybe for an engagement ring?” He awaited her reaction to see if his suspicions were correct.
But she didn’t even blink. “No, Lee, I mean a guy who has a lot of money. Like millions.”
She wasn’t giving up the details: this conversation was now officially boring. “I dunno. Maybe because he’s a vampire; they’re all filthy rich, but none of them work.” Lee heard the manager’s heavy gait on the stairs and flitted off to organize the Confucius texts in eastern religion.
* * * *
Saturday afternoon, true to his time, Lee arrived at Essex House with a damp bookbag containing classic vampiric noir cinema and a box of organic buttery-garlic–flavored microwave popcorn. Mike let him into the apartment; called, “Liza, your friend’s here!”; and disappeared back into his dark bedroom where a many-fanned computer hummed.
Lee found Liza lying languidly on the sofa, watching the rain pattering on the tiny patio. One of her round, snow-white arms encircled her head, and Lee was reminded of
a painting he once saw on a book cover—or maybe in art class at PCC. He couldn’t remember.
Liza was brooding about how she didn’t have a key to the mailbox. She relied on Mike to hand her her mail. What would Liza do if Mike died tomorrow in a MAX accident and the mailbox key was lost with him? She wouldn’t be able to get her catalogs! In answer to Lee’s greeting, Liza told him, “Today’s the summer solstice.”
“Where’s your DVD player?” His friend pointed to the Blu-ray player, and Lee busied himself trying to figure out the entertainment system: turning on the wall-mounted plasma screen, switching it to composite mode, configuring the surround sound, and inserting Nosferatu.
“How can it be the longest day of the year if we haven’t seen the sun all day?” Liza asked. She righted herself on the sofa, allowing Lee to sit beside her.
Now he had to understand the universal remote. He punched the buttons at random, trying to get the movie to play with English intertitles. The movie opened with ominous music and credits. Both Liza and Lee were strong readers, so while they were waiting for the words to change, Lee consoled Liza, “Well, they’re saying that we probably will get a sunbreak on Thursday.”
Liza grabbed his thin wrist and shook him. “Are you serious!” She looked like she might weep for joy. “Oh,” she sighed, “I’d sell my soul just to go for a walk with my boyfriend on the Park Blocks in the sunshine!”
“Liza!” Lee took his hand back. “We just missed part of the introduction!” He pressed a button to restart the movie and sharply remonstrated that she keep quiet. After all, he had been waiting his whole entire life to see this movie. Did she know how hard it was for him to not watch it all week when it was just sitting there in his apartment? Liza promised to shut up.
Twenty minutes into the silent film, Lee fidgeted in his seat. Liza was probably bored. Lee was, he was sure, the only person he knew who could stomach the slow pace and low-tech effects of twenties and thirties movies. In this one, the hero, Thomas Hutter, was fat and wore lots of lipstick. Their last movie night—focusing on sumptuous, poorly scripted blockbusters—had included Underworld and Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula. How could poor, fat Thomas Hutter possibly compete with the charmingly wooden Keanu Reeves?
However, when he sneaked a glance at his friend, he realized that his worries were unfounded. Her gaze was fixed to the screen; whenever the creepy orchestral music swelled, she trembled. When Count Orlok rose from his coffin on the doomed ship, Liza yelped with the ship’s first mate. She bit her lip as Ellen gazed sightlessly across the waves, calling the vampire to her in a somnambulistic dream.
Near the end, a blue-tinted Ellen threw open the window and invited the nosferatu to her bed—sacrificing her blood to save the town. Liza scooted forward in her seat. Her hazel eyes were dilated; her nostrils, flared; her face, paper white but for two red spots on her cheeks and her wet, red lips. For all that he’d said about anticipating the film, Lee suddenly found the woman next to him infinitely more fascinating than the movie. Liza clutched the arm of the sofa, and her breathing quickened by degrees as the decaying monster’s shadow crept up Ellen’s body. The shadow claws finally closed around Ellen’s heart, and Liza stopped breathing, for a split second hung in suspended animation: back arched, muscles taut, lips parted. At the scene change, she fell back onto the couch.
Lee decided not to watch Liza anymore. He felt vaguely voyeuristic, as if only Mike should see her like that. Lee’s only question, which he would never ask: Was she playing the victim or the vampire?
“Whoa, that was good,” Liza breathed as the final shot—Count Orlok’s empty castle—faded from view.
Lee bounced off the couch and stretched his legs. “How ’bout I make some popcorn before we watch the next one? It’s garlic—I thought that would be fun for a vampire movie night.”
Liza murmured her assent and stretched out on the couch like a cat. Her friend found the microwave in the kitchen, put in a bag of popcorn, and pressed the popcorn button. “The bowls are in the top cupboard to the left of the stove,” Liza informed him with a languorous gesture.
Before the first kernels started popping, the door to Mike’s lair swung open and the man himself emerged. Today his dark hair was combed into partial submission, and his black t-shirt that read “i void warranties” emphasized his clear, pale complexion. He sat in front of Liza on the sofa and combed his fingers into her long, thick hair until they got stuck in the waves. “How was the first movie? Are you scared yet?”
His girlfriend giggled and massaged the inside of his elbow. “A little bit.” She gazed up at Mike with what Lee, from the kitchen, could only describe as adoration, and then she pouted, “You should watch the next one with us and hold me when I’m frightened.”
Mike’s face bunched up. “What is that smell?” he demanded of Liza.
“Lee’s making popcorn.”
“Did he burn it?” Mike made a couple of gagging noises.
Liza’s brow contracted. “No. Do . . . you want some?”
“Hell, no. Oh, God, it’s getting worse!” Mike ran to the patio door and propped it open. A gush of damp, cool air wooshed into the apartment, and Liza shivered. Then Mike stalked into the kitchen, pushing past Lee, to turn on the fan in the oven hood. Finally he opened the bedroom window and flipped on the bathroom vent.
At this point, Lee had the astuteness to turn off the microwave, even though the popcorn was only half popped. It was too late, though. The tantalizing aroma of popcorn and hot garlicy butter had already permeated the apartment—probably the hallway too.
Still grimacing, Mike went back for his jacket and moved to the door, pausing to put on his shoes. Liza wearily lifted herself from the couch and hurried to him. “I’m going to Alex&Trina’s for dinner,” he stated after tying one shoe.
“But I’m making Bloody Marys—you love Bloody Marys,” Liza protested breathlessly. Her hand jerked towards his arm, but she arrested the wayward hand halfway and pulled it back to her side.
Mike’s shoulders relaxed, and he smiled down at the pale, anxious face before him. “Okay, save me some. I’ll be home sometime after midnight, and we can party then.” He grabbed Liza by the shoulders and kissed her. Halfway out the door, however, he turned back and looked both of the vampire enthusiasts in their respective eyes. “Get that smell out of here before I get back,” he commanded. Then he was gone.
“Well, at least we can eat this popcorn,” Lee said, pulling the offending bag from the microwave, “because the damage’s already done.”
“No,” Liza countered, “we should just throw it in the dumpster. Every second it’s in here it just soaks in more.” Muttering to herself, she moved towards the bag of popcorn, but Lee volunteered to do the honors. He even emptied the kitchen trashcan while he was at it.
When he came back, Liza was sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa and her arms around her knees. She was chewing on her lip and staring at the rain that blew inside the open patio door. Awkward, Lee occupied himself by examining the large black bookcase next to the couch. Liza’a books, shelved two deep, were on the bottom three shelves, and Mike’s books were on the top two. Lee had already seen all of Liza’s books—he’d borrowed some of them—but, seeking occupation, he looked through them again. Sure, her collection included the popular standards: everything by Ann Rice and Stephanie Meyer; the Darkangel Trilogy; Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight; Sunshine; I Am Legend; Brown Girl in the Ring; the Anno Dracula series; The Historian; and lots more that Lee often saw on the shelves at Powell’s.
Far from sticking with pulp fiction, Liza also had a lot of old books from the very beginning of the modern vampire: everything by John William Polidori; In a Glass Darkly and Spalatro by J. Sheridan Le Fanu; a critical edition of Varney the Vampire; three different editions of Dracula (one illustrated), Bram Stroker’s Notes for Dracula, and a collection of Bram Stoker’s other works; The Picture of Dorian Gray; a fancy old copy of Lord Byron’s poems; Vathek; The Gothic Reader; a collection of Eastern European folktales; and many, many more crowded the shelves. She had topped off her collection with several books that explored the sociological reasons for the mass obsession with vampires—or in other words, books that tried to explain Lee and Liza.
“Hey, can I borrow Our Vampires, Ourselves?” Lee asked.
“Sure, take it,” said Liza, shrugging, “but it’s kinda dumb. The Vampire Monologues is better.”
Lee packed both in his messenger. Next, he examined the books on the top three shelves: technical books, like Software Engineering, Vector Calculus, Computational Logic, and Biophysics Problems; a few classics like Göethe’s Faust (in German) and Homer’s The Odyssey (interlinear Greek and English); The World is Flat; and several books in Russian or Ukrainian or some other weird language like that. “Hey, Liza,” Lee repeated, “what does Mike do, again?”
“He makes software.”
“What kind of software?
“Dunno, something about medical billing. When I asked, he told me it was boring and complicated and that I shouldn’t worry my pretty head about it.”
“Well, where did he go to college?”
“I don’t think he did.”
“But these are college textbooks—I know ’cause I worked at the buying counter for a while, and people brought in these two a lot,” he pointed. “But this is the second edition,” he held out Software Engineering, “they’re at least on the seventh by now.”
“Okay, fine! Maybe he did go to college! I don’t know!”
“Whoa, down, girl!” Lee held up his hands in feigned innocence. “Why don’t we eat?” Liza didn’t respond; she had turned her head back towards the window. He opened the fridge and stuck his head inside. Somebody liked borsch—there were at least ten bottles of the thick purple soup on the top shelf. Lee helped himself to a few things from the cupboards and started cooking. All the time Liza just stared at the rain and shivered.
By and by, Lee handed Liza a bowl of macaroni with tomato-and-meat sauce and a fork. She thanked him and picked at the food listlessly. Lee asked her if she still wanted to watch Drácula or if she just wanted him to pop in a disc of Forever Knight or something.
“No, it’s okay. Put in Drácula; I want to see if the Mexican Mina is really better like they said on that website.” Groaning, she climbed back onto the couch. Lee did as he was told, and soon they were plunged into the uncanny world of Béla Lugosi’s Dracula without Béla Lugosi. Liza fell asleep before Drácula even left his castillo, but when Lee pressed stop, she awoke and insisted that he start the movie back up. She did her best to stay involved throughout the rest of the movie, making comments about the cinematography and asking Lee silly questions about vampire lore: Is sunlight fatal to vampires, or do they just avoid it? Do they really hate crosses? What about garlic? Why are some vampires ugly and others inhumanly beautiful? What about turning humans into vampires? They made it in a similar manner through I Vampiri and Vampyr, but Liza was asleep on the couch again when Lee let himself out.
* * * *
In the wee hours of the morning, Liza felt warm breath on her face and struggled to open her eyes. Mike was kneeling beside the sofa; his eyes were yellow in the sulfurous glow of the streetlights outside the window. He ran a finger down her cheek. “Your skin is ice,” he whispered.
“Ughmf,” said Liza.
Mike handed her a glass of water that he had already prepared. He helped Liza prop herself up, and she drank greedily. When she was done, he lowered her head back onto the arm of the sofa. A gust of wet wind blew in the still-open patio door, and Liza shivered. Mike closed the door and then resumed his place at Liza’s side.
“I never made the Bloody Marys,” Liza apologized. A tear fell out of the corner of her eye and splashed on the leather couch cushion.
If Mike had heard her confession, he didn’t react to it. He leaned in towards her face and kissed her forehead, her chin, her ear. Liza’s heart fluttered and her limbs ached for him to kiss her again. He paused inches from her neck and waited. Her heart beat one and, two and, three and—
“Lee says the sun’s gonna come out on Thursday!” she blurted.
Mike reached around and grabbed her by the base of the head, right where it met her neck. He forced her head up, leaned in, and Liza didn’t say much after that. Well, she didn’t say any words, at least.
* * * *
The people at KATU were as optimistic as Liza, for on Monday they still predicted a sunbreak on Thursday. On Tuesday, Rhonda Shelby said she thought the temperature might climb to eighty on Thursday, but on Wednesday she amended that prediction, saying it would probably be more like seventy-six. Liza was in an agony of anticipation. She asked her boss, Marilyn, for Thursday off, but Marilyn refused—half of her employees had already requested the exact same thing. The most Liza could hope for was that the sun would still be out at four-thirty, when her shift ended. She confirmed that Mike would be in the apartment at five so they could take that walk on the Park Blocks together. In fact, she confirmed her plans with Mike several times, to the point that he said he wished the sun would never come out if it was going to make her so annoying.
Since she couldn’t sleep, Liza watched Thursday dawn through a thin veil of clouds. The sky was first blue, then red gold, then it settled to its usual gray. But maybe it wasn’t the usual gray—Liza could tell the sky was a little lighter than yesterday morning. Plus, the air seeping in the living-room window was a little warmer. Triumphant, Liza headed for the shower. She put on a short-sleeve shirt and no jacket to prove her faith in meteorology, and she got goosebumps while she waited for the bus.
Once the day got going, however, Liza was grateful for her light shirt. The air inside Powell’s was sweltering; the employees swam through it like beachcombers in wet sand. Liza tried to stay near the windows, circling the building as she looked for customers in need of assistance. Very few people had ventured in today, however, and the ones who had were watching the windows almost as intently as Liza was. Out on Burnside, the lull continued. Only a few of the usual drifters stood idly against the crumbly buildings, watching the damp breeze drag discarded flyers up the street. A fly landed on Marilyn’s shoulder, and Liza watched it amble around sniffing Marilyn’s pink sweater for a full forty-nine seconds before the woman shooed it away.
At eleven-oh-two, the air was electric; the fine hairs on Liza’s arms twitched. She tried to pay attention to a tiny old woman mumbling about how she wanted a book about Handel or Haydn for her grandson or great-nephew—who was studying music or art or something at some big university or conservatory or someplace—but Liza’s mind refused to attend. At eleven-oh-three, the clouds parted. A low collective whoop resonated throughout the store—throughout the city, really—as mellifluous sunlight poured into the world. It started at the tops of the trees and buildings and dripped down to fill all the moldy crannies and gild all the sullen surfaces. The old woman turned from Liza abruptly and shuffled out of the store. “They say it might not last long and whatnot,” she shrugged.
Liza leaned over a short bookcase and pressed herself to a scratched Plexiglas window. It wasn’t enough. The plastic must have been filtering out the lovely euphoretic UV rays. She hurried to Marilyn: “Marilyn, I have to leave for an hour,” she announced, surprised at herself as she said it.
Marilyn raised a painted eyebrow.
“It’s an emergency,” Liza added.
Marilyn sighed. “Your break is in an hour; why don’t you take a walk then?”
“But it might not . . . but I need to go now.”
The boss shook her head. “I know how much we want to be outside in the sun, Liza, but I can’t even leave the store right now. If I let you leave, then everybody’s going to want to leave work right now. You can wait an hour.” She turned away to make an invisible mark on her inventory sheet.
Liza thought about
a Ray Bradbury story she’d read in middle school about colony of humans on the planet Venus, where the sun only breaks through the clouds for one hour every seven years. She was seven-year-old Margot, shut in a dark closet while the other children frolicked in the warmth and light. If Liza let this hour pass, she’d be doomed to another lifetime of rain. Liza headed for the stairway.
Lee hurried to block the landing—“Don’t do this, Liza,” he whisper-urged. “Do you know how many people are lined up for your job? You can’t just go get another one in this economy.”
With surprising strength, Liza pushed past her friend, nearly knocking him down the stairs. She descended a couple flights, navigated another bookshelf maze, and burst through the double doors into the sunshine.
It was balm on her skin, soaking into every pore and warming each and every strand of her hair. She held her glittering, golden ivory arms out to it and tossed back her head to feel the light on her face. Liza felt as if she were reunited with an old friend—no, a parent. No sooner had she hugged the sunbeams “welcome back”, but she remembered whom she wanted to share this fulgor with.
Liza hurried to her bus stop, but the 17 was nowhere to be seen. Rather than wait for it, she started out for the apartment on foot. She was shod in low pumps with no socks, and it wasn’t long before her feet started to protest her rapid pace. No one else she passed was walking with any sort of purpose. Most people had simply stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to sunbathe. Several hobos asked her, “Hey, lady, what’s the hurry?” as she sped by empty store fronts on Broadway, but she ignored them and pushed on. Within a couple blocks, the scenery improved, and now she elbowed past suits who had come out from their offices. As she passed an Everett College building on Washington, a large blister erupted on her right heel. Another block later, it burst and a little blood trickled out. Her foot slipped around inside its shoe, lubricated by blood and sweat, but she curled her toes and managed not to twist her ankle. She turned onto Third, and the same thing happened to her left foot. A single cloud flitted over the sun and away, so Liza doubled her pace. Her steps were now much more labored and clunky, her legs great tree trunks she lifted with difficulty and dropped with a thud. Yet she still had nearly half a mile to go . . . now a third . . . now a quarter. She silently recited a mantra to keep time with her stomping feet: Gon-na get Mike now, gon-na get Mike now. If she were still a child in Tigard, she mused, she would have removed her painful shoes and continued barefoot, but the Portland sidewalks were littered with bits of glass and the occasional needle, rendering that thought useless. Another cloud shaded the sun for a moment, and now she was jogging the last two blocks: Gottaget’im, gottaget’im, gottaget’im. Panting, she reached the door, found her key, and unlocked it. She took the elevator, for stopping to find her key had destroyed any hopes of a second wind. The elevator rumbled as it stopped at he seventh floor.
Liza heard the elevator rumble again as she shoved open the apartment door and ran into Mike’s dark bedroom, not even bothering to shut the front door behind her. In the gloom, Liza could see Mike tangled in the bedclothes. She ran to the blackout curtains, pulled them open with a shout of glee, and turned to witness Mike’s inevitable delight at the sunny day.
Another rumble. The room was suddenly and briefly illuminated by a white flash. That is to say, Mike’s body flashed as if the lightning had originated from him. He was leaning on his elbow, grey eyes open and staring at his girlfriend. His square face was void of any detectable emotion. Seconds later she heard the thunder, and Liza realized that his skin was like skim milk, as he’d looked that cloudy day in April when she first removed his shirt and seen the contours of his chest and arms outlined in blue on luminous white. She looked back at the window and keened. The golden sun was gone; to its place angry storm clouds rushed.
* * * *
As he frequently did, Mike was watching Liza sleep. Tonight she had worn his blue dress shirt to bed and wrinkled it past redemption, but he didn’t mind too much because three of the top buttons had come undone while she slept and afforded him a pleasant view of her ivory neck and chest. Plus he felt manly when she wore his shirts to bed. That she just might not own any pajamas never occurred to him.
Liza snored softly. Mike propped up her chin with his finger until she breathed easier. Where her sleeve had come up, he saw a dimple he’d never noticed before on her left elbow. He loved her dimples. Maybe it was just because his mother had always said dimples were a sign of health, but perhaps he liked Liza’s dimples because they were flaws. Mike had a soft spot for flaws.
She snored again, and again Mike lifted her head from where it had slid off her pillow. Her long lashes fluttered; she gazed at him with sleepy ingenuous eyes.
“Happy birthday,” Mike whispered, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
Liza’s eyebrows contracted and then flew up her forehead. Those suddenly awake honey-colored eyes rolled as she shot out of bed: “What time is it?” she demanded.
“About eleven-thirty.”
“Eleven-thirty!” She rushed to the window and peeked between the drapes. The sky was a pleasant light silver today, and the clouds were just a little higher than usual. They didn’t weigh on the buildings and the pedestrians’ shoulders so much.
Mike blinked several times at the triangle of light occupying his girlfriend. “Well, we didn’t get to sleep until, what, four? You needed to sleep in.”
Liza sighed and grumbled about how she needed to keep to her normal schedule if she was to find another job with normal hours. The gap in the curtains snapped shut, and she hurried out of the room to shower.
About an hour later, Liza emerged from the bathroom fully made-up and with her sparkly hair twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. She was tying a dark brown sash around her
short green-and-ivory-striped poplin dress.
“You know, that’s my favorite dress,” Mike told her. He poured Krusteaz pancake batter into a skillet.
Two dimples briefly blossomed on Liza’s cheeks, “Yeah, I know. You told me the last time I wore it.” She joined him at the stove and looked into the skillet. “Is that a maple leaf?” she challenged.
“It’s for Canada Day.”
“Mi-ike!” She punched his bicep. It didn’t hurt.
He flipped the pancake. “I already made two twos and an exclamation point—they’re in the warming drawer.”
“Mm,” Liza murmured, “and that’s why I love you.” She stood on her tippy-toes and pecked his cheek. Their bare feet touched as they watched the pancake sizzle.
“Happy birthday,” Mike repeated as they sat down at the counter to pancakes and apricot syrup. He was especially proud of the leaf veins he’d created in his Canadian pancake. He’d really reached a new level of quick-bread art.
Liza unfolded a napkin on her lap and looked at the 22! on her plate. “It’s too pretty—I don’t want to eat it.”
Sighing, Mike reached over with his knife and fork and chopped her breakfast into little pieces.
“Thank you,” Liza told him with a kiss. She devoured her now-boring food.
Mike had devoted himself to Liza’s service that day. First on the schedule, after he had washed the dishes, was that he watch Moulin Rouge! with Liza. She was sure he would like it, but she had never been able to get him to sit through more than the first five minutes. Now he was chained to the couch watching androgynous cancan dancers wiggle around to Christina Aguilera.
“I mean, I know it’s your birthright, Lyz,” he complained, “but this is tyranny!”
“Oh, shush! He hasn’t even seen Satine yet,” she countered, curling up around his arm to anchor him in front of the television.
Two hours and eight minutes later, Mike was very glad it was over. The whole thing had come from some orientalist’s acid trip. He tried to think of something noncommittal to say: “That reminded me of an opera I saw once.”
As soon as he’d said it, he knew that Liza’s next words would be, “You’ve been to an opera? Were you lost?” He decided to use the “I once had a girlfriend” excuse because he’d recently used the “my mother taught me” excuse when they went to the Portland Art Museum and he knew way too much about M. C. Escher’s life in Switzerland. However, the melodrama had stripped away his girlfriend’s earlier gaiety. Her eyes swam. “What if I were dying slowly?” she wondered. “Would you come in the middle of the night to take me away from Paris?”
“Um . . .” Mike responded.
“Paris was killing her! Everyone knew that but Satine. I keep thinking that if Christian would have just tried harder to convince her to run away with him, they could have lived a good life in the French countryside. I mean, she’d still be sick, but they’d be together longer at least.” She sighed. “The Moulin Rouge ate away at her soul until there was nothing left. It sucked the life out of her.”
“Well, if you ever become a consumptive courtesan in Paris, I promise to take you away and load you up with antibiotics.” Mike kissed her head. “Go get your sweater—we’re going for a walk on the Park Blocks.”
It didn’t rain at all, so they bought some meatball sandwiches from a food cart and ate them on a bench by Rebecca at the Well. Liza sought warmth inside Mike’s arms when the wind started up. They hurried inside the Heathman Hotel and sipped hot tea in the sumptuous Tea Court and explored the art exhibit upstairs. Whenever a hotel employee passed, they stopped giggling, frowned, and pretended they belonged in—were even bored with—the lap of luxury.
As much as Liza enjoyed her birthday activities, the closer it got to eight o’clock, the more she wanted to move on to the final event of the evening: the Death Cab for Cutie concert at the Crystal Ballroom. Mike’s excitement mounted as hers did, and soon they were so jumpy that a cough at the opposite end of the hallway would send them both into fits of nervous laughter. Finally the time came, and they jumped onto TriMet for the short journey up to Burnside.
“Thank you so much for getting these tickets!” Liza gushed again as they approached the crumbling edifice. “We are so lucky! Death Cab never plays in Portland, and then they finally come to the Crystal Ballroom! It’s like the perfect musical convergence! Oh, I’ve wanted to see this band for at least six years, and now I’m going to at the Crystal Ballroom!” Mike just smiled at her, so she continued: “None of my friends could get tickets—it’s crazy: They announce it only a month before they showed up, the tickets sell out before anyone even knows about it, and they’re not even on tour! Seriously, this is almost the most exclusive concert ever, and we get to go! Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” Just before they reached the door, she initiated a make-out session against the Ringler’s Pub window. Several anorak-clad late-twenties passed with disapproving looks born of envy.
“Well, I can’t take all the credit,” Mike admitted, coming up for air. “Gustav got the tickets for me since ninety-four–seven was in charge of distributing them.”
“Then I guess I’ll just have to kiss Gustav instead,” his girlfriend shrugged. She sauntered off to show her ticket to the bouncer.
Just inside the narrow, dirty concrete landing, Liza was waiting for Mike. “Where do we go,” she whispered, “Lola’s Room, the mezzanine, or the main ballroom?”
“The mezzanine,” Mike answered. He placed his hand on the small of her back and steered her through the poorly lit maze and up the stairs to the balcony. On the landing, he nodded at Brian McMenamin, who nodded back.
“Surprise!” everyone yelled.
Liza froze. A thousand thoughts flowed across her face in quick succession. The crowd surged towards the birthday girl. Mike stepped away as his girlfriend was encompassed by friends and family.
Gustav was explaining his latest achievement on World of Warcraft while his wife rolled her eyes and fed a Nanaimo bar to her son. Mike simultaneously listened to the armory triumph and examined the ballroom’s pink and blue blown-glass chandelier.
Liza appeared at Mike’s elbow, her eyes narrowed. “Did you rent out the whole place?” she hissed.
“Don’t be silly,” Mike smiled and patted her arm. “I just reserved the mezzanine. Gustav was the one who made sure that certain people won the radio station’s free tickets.”
The wife of the man in question pulled on her husband’s elbow, “You did what?” Gustav led her away to a corner by the bar to explain.
Mike chuckled. “Your parents were pretty shocked to win tickets to hear a band they’d never heard of.”
“I’ll bet.” Liza stared at a mural of a thirties couple dancing in the clouds with angelic Ziegfeld girls. The other concert goers were starting to arrive on the ballroom floor. They hustled and bustled and drank beer from the downstairs bar. Liza shook her head and spoke low by Mike’s shoulder, “This is too much.”
“Why?”
“It’s not just the concert; first you made breakfast, then you spent the whole day as my personal slave, then Death Cab, then it turns out you rented part of the Crystal Ballroom—even if not the whole thing—and threw a Canada-themed surprise party of all things, and then the presents aren’t done because I felt that box in your coat pocket when we kissed earlier. You’re giving me too much.”
“So what should I have done for your birthday?” he grumbled, crossing his arms.
“No, it’s not really about my birthday, Mike,” she amended. “I need . . . I feel like you just give and I just take. You’re keeping me. There’s no reciprocity.”
“Hey,” Mike turned Liza’s shoulder and trapped her gaze in his, “that’s not true. That will never be true, okay? You give me more than you know.”
Her luminous eyes narrowed, “Oh, yeah? Like what?”
Before he could answer, they were accosted by a couple in their late forties. The woman was blonde and plump and wore a large gold crucifix. Her husband was thinner, with graying auburn hair and a thin silver chain peeking out from under his shirt collar. The woman spoke first: “So, Eliza, do you two have a date yet?”
“Mom!” Liza snapped.
“Tell me, Mike, what do you call this place again?” Liza’s father inquired, staring at the painted harlequin heads that lined the ceiling.
Mike cleared his throat. “It’s the Crystal Ballroom. It was built in 1914.”
“Eliza dear, I do wish you wouldn’t wear horizontal stripes,” Mrs. Murray was saying. Liza looked at Mike with a silent plea.
“Mary, Paul,” Mike offered, “have you tried the Quebecker french fries yet? I think you’ll like them—they’re covered with gravy and cheese.” His hands clasped behind his back, he led them off to get some beer and sustenance.
When he rejoined Liza at the balcony, she was watching the opening act play. A man’s slow, deep voice rang out, “Oh, Marianne, who cut you down to size? Who slashed your throat, plucked out your pretty eyes? Who drew your blood straight from your heart? Who spelled your name on the ground with a cursive mark?”
“Oh, my gosh, it’s Vandaveer!” Liza shook Mike’s arm violently. Her eyes glittered and smiled.
He kissed her cheek, and his lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “So, are you more in love with me or the macabre?”
She shrugged, “It’s a toss-up.” Her taper arm was around his waist; her hand clung to his shirt.
During the intermission they did cake and presents. The cake was red-on-white and read “Happy Canada Day! (and Liza’s birthday)”, which Liza found hilarious and her parents didn’t understand. She got a lot of gift cards: Barnes and Noble, McGrath’s, Music Millennium, even one for Powell’s from her older sister, Cathy, who was just a little out of the loop. Alex&Trina gave her Goth: Undead Subculture, a book she’d been coveting forever, and Lee upped the ante with the Ultraviolet miniseries on DVD. She squealed and jumped up to hug Lee and hung from his neck. Her parents gave her $22 cash in the card and another jar of homemade apricot syrup. Mike waited to give her his present last. Below they could hear Death Cab for Cutie shuffling around and plugging things in, but Mike knew they wouldn’t start playing until Liza was ready.
Once she stripped away the tissue, which was printed with red maple leaves, Liza found an oblong black box. From behind him, Mike heard Mary Murray’s disappointed sigh—the box was too big to hold a ring. Silence rushed from the box and settled over the crowd as Liza lifted the lid. Inside lay a short string of glassy scarlet beads separated by the occasional worked-gold spacer. In the middle, a gold filigree pendant surrounded a larger red stone. Two little red beads and a tiny golden key hung from the pendant. Liza’s hands trembled as she took out the necklace and held the large stone up to the light from a chandelier. Red dapples danced in her hair. In the center of the stone appeared two tiny flaws, like teardrops in blood. The necklace dropped and clinked on the floor.
“Wow, that’s pretty,” Cathy breathed. Several other people murmured their assent.
“It’s just antique costume jewelry,” Mike assured everyone. He picked it up from Liza’s feet and fastened it around her neck. It fit snug and high. Liza’s lips were white, and her eyes large. “Do you like it?” Mike asked, his voice low.
She nodded and fingered the pendant that rested in the hollow of her throat.
“One thing’s for sure, Mike,” Paul Murray declared, his face flushed from several beers, “you sure know how to shut ’em up! I should buy some necklaces for when my wife starts going on about her NCCW meetings!” He tried to slap his daughter’s boyfriend on the back, but Mike turned away at the last minute. The slap landed on Lee instead.
Mike went over to the balcony and nodded at Ben Gibbard. The band began to play.
* * * *
Even Natali Marmion looked bored now: Incest. Murder. Mayhem. It was just so passé. The populous seemed to be rebelling against nature’s summerless summer by defying natural law. Portlanders had always been a lot hardened to seasonal affective disorder—braving nine rainy months a year with a stoicism marveled at by out-of-towners. However, it seemed that denying them their precious hundred days of sunlight was enough to drive many into psychosis.
On this collective dysphoric mania, no one was a better expert than Liza Murray. Since losing her job at Powell’s, she had little to do but watch the news—except every Saturday, when Lee would come over and loan her his latest cinematic acquisition. Mike kept to his normal routine, and the sight of him rising at one and bustling about on the computer, chatting with his coworkers on his Google G3, and going out for walks along the waterfront while things compiled grated on her. He had offered to take Liza book shopping several times, but her favorite pastime was now tainted: she couldn’t go back to Powell’s without shame, and all the other bookstores reminded her of Powell’s with their sheer inferiority. Liza’s mood did not improve as she ran out of food she liked. She used to hop on TriMet after work sometimes and bring back a few things from Zupan’s, but it seemed silly to go all the way over there when she only had $19.77 in her checking account and no expectation of any more. As he always had, Mike only bought his food—mostly sausages, borsch, and various plastic boxes from Katina’s Deli and EuroDish. He probably would have bought food for her too, but she was too proud to ask. That Mike was not bothered by her nonpayment of the rent only recalled to her the suspicious bank statement hiding in his MSDN Magazine.
On the last Saturday of August, Lee came over to find Liza’s nose buried in New Moon and an episode from the second season of Buffy—the one in which Buffy’s friend Ford tries to feed a bunch of deluded goths to a herd of hungry vampires—flickering on the plasma screen at low volume. Mike had gone to Wham! with Justin and Alex&Trina, Liza informed him, yet she had elected to stay behind because she didn’t have the money to buy any of the Anne Taintor postcards she knew she’d covet.
Tonight they were to watch a selection of movies about Elizabeth Báthory: Countess Dracula, The Brothers Grimm, Stay Alive (rented—Lee would never own such drivel), Bathory, and The Countess. Lee was already planning his arguments about how misrepresented the blood-bathing murderess had been in film for their inevitable discussion on the subject. However, first they needed to sit at the kitchen counter and eat the falafel sandwiches that Lee had bought at Habibi.
Lee swallowed his second bite and asked his friend, “What happened to yours?”
Liza shrugged and looked down at her licked-clean hands, “I guess I was pretty hungry.” Her eyes searched the empty counter for a nonexistent second pita.
From his messenger Lee lifted another white bag. He’d been saving this for tomorrow’s lunch, but he could always buy more. “Lucky for you, Liza,” he extracted the bag’s contents, “I also got hummus and stuffed grape leaves.”
“You’re the best,” Liza mumbled, her mouth already full of garbanzo-y goodness.
Several minutes passed in a silence only broken by soft, satisfied moans and the occasional lip-smack. When Lee had one bite of his falafel left, he put it down on the white IKEA plate so that Liza wouldn’t feel bad that he had finished eating before she did. “So, did you hear about the book Mr. Darcy, Vampyre? It’s inspired by that amazing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”
She was slowing down now. In fact, she’d left half of the hummus intact to focus on the stuffed grape leaves. She shook her head and bit into another plump, olive-colored roll. Meat and tomato juices dribbled down her chin. “I guess I’m a little out of it on the literary front these days,” she said after she’d swallowed and wiped her face. She polished off her fourth wara’ and sat still. Lee finished his falafel. Liza washed the dishes and put them in the drainer by the sink.
“Lee,” Liza asked as they settled on the couch, “how come we never go to your place?”
He shrugged. “You have a better TV. In fact, I don’t even have a television. I just play DVDs on my laptop.”
“But how do you watch the news?”
“The Internet.”
“Oh.”
Lee had decided that The Countess would be the best film to start with since it mostly stuck to the original legend. As he got it all set up he thought about how much he wouldn’t want Liza to go over to his apartment if he were Mike. Mike probably liked their movie nights better at his place so he could intermittently drop in on his girlfriend and her male movie buddy. On the other hand, Mike didn’t really seem like the jealous type, nor did Liza seem like the cheating type. Now that was a rare combination.
Liza picked up New Moon and stroked it absently. “Lee?” she asked again when he sat down.
Lee paused the opening sequence, but Liza didn’t finish her sentence. He reminded himself to be patient.
Finally she opened her mouth again, “Lee? I think . . . Well, this is going to sound really weird, and it probably is just crazy and stuff but there’s so much evidence . . . I guess first I should just ask, and this is totally serious, and, um . . . Do you think vampires might really exist? I mean, obviously fiction has gone all crazy with them, but what if they did exist . . . in some way?”
The receiver of her question opened his mouth and closed it several times without saying anything. Finally, he raised an eyebrow and smirked at Liza, “Nice try, Liza Lou. I’m not falling for that one. C’mon, let’s watch some virgins get slaughtered.”
He was about to hit play, but Liza grabbed his arm and jerked it so hard that he dropped the remote onto the light grey carpet. “I’m not joking, Lee,” she insisted.
“Well, I guess anything’s possible,” he allowed, but then he quickly amended his statement: “There’s those weirdoes who think they’re vampires, of course, and some people think a rabies epidemic started the original vampire scare. So I guess in a way vampires do exist.”
“But don’t all the vampire wannabes dress all gothic and hang out with other fake vampires and talk about how they need blood energy or whatever all night?”
“Pretty much,” Lee yawned, but then an idea piqued his interest. “Are you thinking of going over to the dark side, little Elizabeth Murray? Are you craving a black vinyl corset? Are you going to stalk me tonight and suck my blood?” he laughed, and a piece of soft exposed flesh where her green “Forks, Washington: Watch Your Neck” shirt came up was too much of a temptation. He tickled her mercilessly.
“No! Stop!” Liza screamed between giggles. She wiggled around on the white leather couch until she slipped right off it. Her attacker leaned back on the couch, still chuckling, while she sat on the floor and sniffed back her bruised dignity. The tickling had broken through a barrier—removed some inhibition between them—so when she got back on the sofa, she asked her question more directly:
“So what are the chances that a vampire could be a computer programmer who keeps his hair relatively short and doesn’t own any makeup, capes, or vinyl clothing?”
“Oh, so that’s it,” Lee realized: “Edward. It always comes back to Edward.” He folded his arms and resumed his bored demeanor. The DVD had automatically gone from paused to stopped. He picked up the remote.
Liza’s arms were already wrapped around her midsection to protect it from more tickles, or she would have folded them at this. “Lee, you know I was always for Jacob.”
“Well, then you’ve chosen the wrong obsession, girlfriend.” He shrugged and pressed play. She could have told him. Then he would have given her Blood and Chocolate—he’d been looking for someone to pawn it off on so he could open up some space in his DVD racks for some movies that were actually good.
* * * *
No matter how much she begged him, Lee refused to participate in the second activity she had planned for the evening—searching Mike’s stuff for signs of vampirism. She pouted and pleaded and promised, but Lee was just too freaked out to stay. He apologized before he headed to his shared broom closet in Northeast, though, and she got the distinct impression that he’d thought she’d completely lost it. Maybe she had. It didn’t matter.
Liza turned on the light in the bedroom and searched through Mike’s dresser, which yielded nothing particularly interesting. Next she opened the doors to his closet, which she rarely did. Several reinforced backup units breathed warm air on her face, and she knelt on the floor to examine his fire-proof safe. Unfortunately for Liza, Mike kept all of his secrets—software and otherwise—behind sophisticated locks that required an eight-digit code to open. Unfortunately for Mike, Liza still remembered something from one of Trina’s drunken lectures that had been so common when she and Alex were still on-again, off-again: the date of the Ukrainian Unification Day. Keeping in mind the European date format, Liza entered 22011919, and the safe popped open.
The inner safe contained two parts: a shelf for bulky items above and a pull-out drawer of hanging files below. The shelf contained an antique Ukrainian Bible, several velvet boxes containing some unspeakably beautiful women’s jewelry in the style of the necklace Mike had given her, and a few jeweled cufflinks. It also yielded bullets and several black handguns whose cold heft both fascinated and repelled Liza. They even smelled deadly, like fresh blood.
Most of the papers in the file were written in Cyrillic, whether Russian or Ukrainian, Liza was ignorant. She quickly found four passports: Mike’s current Ukrainian passport, his current United States passport, and two yellowed Soviet passports. One belonged to a beautiful young blonde with strong Slavic bone structure who looked progressively older in each of her three photographs, looking into the camera with fear in her light eyes. Her name was Любов Іванівна Козела, and she was born 07.01.1947. The other featured three black-and-white photos of Mike wearing outfits from three different decades and the name Михайло Михайлович Козел, which Liza had seen before because it was Mike’s name in Cyrillic. The birthday on this passport: 31.10.1941.
Liza’s hands shook, and she dropped the passports on her lap. She was hyperventilating. He could just look a lot like his father, she reminded herself. She dumped the other papers out and trawled through them, searching for something that looked like a birth certificate to prove that another Mikhailo Mikhailovich Kozel had indeed been born on 31 October 1981 and named after his father. Nonetheless, she had no idea what a Soviet birth certificate would look like, so the search was fruitless. “Oh, please, God, make it not true!” she murmured, but nothing turned up.
He could have been doing this for centuries! Liza studied the four passports again, noting that although the older Mike’s hair and clothing styles changed in his three photographs, his face remained virtually the same—as ageless as Mike looked in his current passports. On the other hand, his bride evolved from blushing young girl to a rather overweight middle-aged woman. How many women had there been over the years? Was Liza the fifth? The fourteenth?
Liza’s heart was racing so fast that she lay down on the floor to calm the thumping in her ears and the pressure behind her eyes. An eternity later, she slowly raised herself up and stuffed the disordered papers back into random files. In doing so she discovered a bank statement similar to the one she’d found in June—the number of Swiss francs in the account still teased her with its enormity. She shut the safe and wiped away her greasy fingerprints. By tomorrow morning, he would know that she had opened it, but it still felt wrong to leave it dirty.
* * * *
This time Liza was still wide awake when Mike arrived, smelling of sweat and smoke. The living room was dark—even the curtains were pulled against the glittering skyline—but Mike had very good night vision and could easily make out Liza’s silhouette standing stiffly beside the window.
His initial greeting hung unanswered in the air for several moments before dissolving away. “What was the best line from the movies you saw today?” Mike asked. He stepped toward his girlfriend.
“They were all dumb,” Liza finally mumbled. Her arms were crossed.
“That’s too bad.” Mike held out the plastic bag he had brought in with him. “Here, I bought you that magnet you liked so much with the bitchy fifties lady on it.”
Liza growled and knocked the bag onto the floor. “Oh, I wish you wouldn’t! You’re just distracting me!” Her hands clutched at her scalp, drawing her wavy hair up and out.
“Isn’t that a good—” Mike snatched back the hand with which he had tried to stroke her cheek. This newborn Medusa had actually snapped at it.
“Why don’t you like garlic?” she demanded.
“I—What are you talking about? I like garlic. Borsch is my favorite food, and it’s half garlic.”
“I thought it was beets,” she countered.
“Yeah, half beets, half garlic.”
“But—” She paused and chewed on her lip. “But when we made garlic popcorn, you freaked out!”
“Liza, I don’t like popcorn,” he soothed, stroking her hair.
“Okay, so then why don’t you even have a car when you’re a billionaire?” Her voice was low, like sandpaper.
That came out of the blue. Mike blinked a few times. He thought about denial, but Liza was past falling for that. “Did it ever occur to you that some people want to live under the radar? If you go around telling everyone you’re rich suddenly you’re on a tabloid like Paris-freaking-Hilton!”
“Well, where’d you get all that money anyways?”
“That’s not your business, Liza,” Mike growled back.
“Oh, God! What really happened to your parents?” Liza shrieked. She quaked with indignation.
Mike winced and rubbed the hollows in front of his ears. “They died fighting for Ukrainian independence, I told you that.”
“When? Was it the First World War? Or were they fighting Catherine the Great?”
“Nineteen ninety-one! They were betrayed by Soviet conspirators. Seriously, Liza, are you drunk?” He anchored Liza with his left hand and rested the back of his right hand on her forehead. Her skin was warm and papery dry.
They were only a few feet from the door to the balcony. “C’mon, Liza,” Mike coaxed, “let’s go outside for a sec and cool off.” He tugged at her shoulders.
“No!” Liza clawed at his arms. “You murdered them, didn’t you? You drank their blood!”
Fighting Mike, it turned out, was pretty pointless. Within seconds he had crossed her arms in front of her and held them immobile from behind. Liza growled and kicked her bare heels into his shins. Grunting, Mike half-lifted, half-dragged her through the balcony door and into the cool, steady rain. “Please don’t confuse fiction and reality,” he cautioned, his voice low. “You’re better than that.”
Liza struggled and screamed, but Mike was as immovable as marble. Minutes passed. Water finally saturated Liza’s mane and ran down the back of her neck. Her jerks turned to shudders, her shudders to trembles, and her trembles to shivers. Mike released her; she slithered onto the wet concrete. “You’re sucking the life out of me,” she whimpered. “You’re sucking the life out of me!”
* * * *
The next morning Liza awoke late. Pure, unadulterated sunlight streamed through the bedroom window and pooled on the sheets. She was alone, and for a moment she couldn’t tell why she was so sure she was alone. Then she realized that the ambient hum of Mike’s computer was gone. So was the computer. Mike’s closet was empty, and his books were gone from the bookcase. Liza’s books were now spread over the whole bookcase, alphabetized by author’s last name and by publication date (oldest books first). On the kitchen counter was a receipt from the Essex House manager verifying one year’s rent prepaid and a magnet that Liza had coveted the last time she visited Wham! It featured a smiling forties woman holding a plate of food. The caption: “bite me”.
Wondering whether she was happy now, Liza picked up the phone and called Lee.
