Vampire Weekend, page 13
Plus, there was the opportunity with Pete this weekend.
“I’m not sure,” I finally said, trying to consolidate all of those things against the eyes staring back at me.
“Okay, fine. Fuck you too,” he said, his words seething. “I’m so—”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just,” I started, justifications bubbling to the surface. “I work at night. I mean, I’m a night janitor at a hospital. I can’t just decide. I have to plan in advance.” Which wasn’t technically true, trading shifts with coworkers was easy when jobs paid overtime.
“You can’t call in sick again? Take the day off?” Ian’s eyes widened, his tone turning to desperation. “Maybe I can just stay here with Lola. You know, take care of her while you work. I have coding projects. I can work on those. Or I can clean your backyard.” He finally exhaled, shoulders deflating. “I just don’t want to think about them for a few days.” His hands pressed against his temples, and though he tried to hide it, his eyes gave away the fact that his armor was cracking. “Before I,” he said quietly, “you know, actually have to.”
On the other end of a trip home was the possibility of life taking another harsh turn for him. He simply wanted to delay it. And being away from it must have felt like the easiest escape.
“Please,” he said, “give me this weekend.”
Lola must have sensed it too; she hopped down from the couch and approached. We silently watched as she waddled into the room before plopping on Ian’s feet, several stray corgi hairs tossing into the air for me to vacuum later. She rested her head on Ian’s shoes.
Perhaps she lobbied on the kid’s behalf.
So while I understood him, practicality got in the way. I played out a mental checklist in my head: Blood sat in the fridge. He’d also need to eat. And sleep. The curtains had to stay drawn, but my daysleeper work schedule could explain that. I considered each room for any vampirisms that might give myself away, but it all came back to my blood supply and the security of my bedroom.
Turned out, living like a vampire was actually pretty mundane as long as he respected my schedule. My dog required more maintenance than me. The issue really did stem more from the prospect of potentially letting someone get too close to my day-to-day secrets.
But then there was also the issue of the audition with Pete, of one more shot at making it work with a band. I’d need all weekend to get competent on a full set list, especially if they had a gig a few days after.
This wasn’t something to half-ass.
“I was looking up bands in town,” he said quietly. “I was thinking, maybe... It’d be my first show.”
A first show. That first discovery, the swirl of ear-bleeding noise and bright lights and a thick mass of humanity moving in unison—he’d gone from being curious about guitars to exploring bands on his own, a full-body immersion that broke free of the real world’s troubles.
That part, I understood.
I’d been a little older than Ian when I’d hit that moment. Sixteen to be exact, and just old enough to drive. That night, I was supposed to have been studying for a history exam, which, in a way, I was. I’d driven two hours to witness David Bowie, which was life’s ultimate education. My slight frame helped me wiggle my way up near the stage—not the front, but probably a third of the way back, enough that Bowie and Mick Ronson and the others stood clear onstage, light reflecting off their costumes. The opening rush toward the stage as they jumped right into “Hang on to Yourself” created a visceral stir, a dizziness as I tried to comprehend what was happening between the lights and the sound and the ocean of bodies around.
Then the opening chords of “Ziggy Stardust” hit, the drumbeat carrying my legs, my voice projecting in a full body roar that blended into the swirl around me. Every single line came out of me; every single snare hit swayed my body, an experience that seemed equal parts blissful delirium and hypnosis. It drove itself, song after song, my mind and body united in autopilot, and when the proper set finished, Bowie and his band stormed offstage, the crowd shimmering from the experience. That break in connectivity returned me to my own body, a realization that songs and minutes had passed and though I’d heard it, seen it, felt it, somehow it floated through me while carrying me at the same time.
Every show I’d been to, even the bad ones, they all carried that tangible sense of combustion, a liftoff that only came with live music.
Ian sought that. He sought stability and peace in a cacophony of drums and guitar. He didn’t quite understand what he was looking for, yet somehow he felt this pull.
And though I hadn’t been to a show since Marshall died, I could give this to him.
But this weekend was my shot with Pete’s band. They even promised to work with my weird schedule to get me into their practice space. If I didn’t take it, they’d get someone else. They had a gig; they couldn’t wait.
I looked Ian over one more time as I reached over to scratch Lola’s neck. She pulled away, then turned to me with big eyes followed by a whimper, and I wondered if Ian possibly trained her to do this while I’d been in the shower.
Because damn it, it worked.
I grabbed the phone off the table and typed a quick reply to Pete.
Sorry, turns out I have family in town. Let me know if your new guitarist doesn’t work out later.
“Tell you what,” I said. Lola’s collar jingled as she turned to look at me. “Let me talk to your grandpa.”
Several seconds passed, as if Ian needed time to properly absorb what I meant. Which was good, because I needed that same time to fully grasp the commitment I was about to make. “Are you serious?” he finally asked, his voice lifted.
“I am. But I gotta get some stuff done first. I’ll figure out my work schedule but I’m not changing my sleep schedule. Got it?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
“Maybe you can work on that while I talk to your grandpa,” I said, pointing at my phone, which still awaited a fix to remove Eric’s app. A show, without Marshall—but with Ian.
If I was going to go back into the hallowed space of live music, Ian’s first show seemed a good enough reason. “And one more thing—if we’re going to a show, I’m picking the band.”
CHAPTER 18
Vampire power myth #7: Vampires have the ability to bend people to their will.
This clearly wasn’t the case. I couldn’t force EJ into letting Ian stay. In fact, I was probably making it worse. As EJ’s voice rose in irritation, my own nerves steeled up, a flood of rebuttals and insults surfacing.
Arguing with my brother again awoke long-dormant instincts. Closing my eyes created a form of time travel, his weathered old voice suddenly the young tween arguing with me on the porch of a postwar house, the sun from a too-hot summer giving the memory the yellow tint of a faded photograph. All of it created a full-body muscle memory, even changing the way I held my posture to avoid him looking over my shoulder before yelling at him.
But no, this wasn’t about verbally beating my younger brother over something that ultimately didn’t matter. This was about Ian, who sat at the table squinting at my phone, my dog now following him everywhere because of a single French fry and a high five.
“He should be with his mother,” EJ said, while I held Ian’s phone up to my ear. “Every second counts.”
“Look, I get that.” My tone tipped into levels of irritation only family might activate, and it took several breaths to temper further urges. “But he needs space too.”
“You just met him.” Maybe EJ recognized our relationship on a subconscious level too, because his voice took a similar turn. “What makes you his advocate?”
Which was a good question. Because really, I’d only known him for a few days. But that rage he embodied, and his catharsis through music, that thread overcame the decades of life experience between us. “Because I remember what anger felt like at that age.” My brother had grown up, the belligerent smarm of Stephen evolving through rites of passage like getting married and having kids into EJ. Whereas time passed for me but I didn’t age, freezing me in a perpetual cycle of playing punk songs and going to shows, my worldview much closer to Ian’s life. “He doesn’t need hope. Or false hope. He needs a pressure release.”
The line went quiet, the only noise coming from Ian mumbling to himself while he tapped on my phone.
“It’s a few days,” I said, quickly crossing and uncrossing my fingers. “I’ll take him to the airport myself Sunday night.”
EJ sighed loud enough to make the phone’s audio crackle. “Alright. But tell him to help me pack now.” EJ listed off a few other scheduling things, all of which I agreed to quickly; I needed time to humanproof my house.
The line went silent as we signed off with each other, and I took a step back to scan my home, a place that had suddenly become a bed-and-breakfast for nonvampires.
The rough checklist in my head came back, and my pulse thumped with the velocity of anxiety, the kind that triggered when a semibad idea edged on reality. Where would I get groceries? Would Lola be weirded out? Should I store my blood in a cooler in my room? I looked around my house, every piece of furniture and decor becoming individual pieces of a giant burning question, my sudden willingness to empathize with a troubled teen now colliding with the fact that I lived off blood rather than sandwiches.
On the other side of the room, Ian still sat while squinting at my phone, Lola resting on her side at his feet.
Maybe I didn’t have to answer all those questions perfectly. I could just give a teen a place to couch-crash after his first gig, with access to fast food as needed.
How very punk rock.
“Hey, good news,” I said, walking over to the kitchen table. Ian remained hunched over my phone’s glowing screen, tapping with both speed and intensity. “I worked it out with your grandpa. He asked for you to meet up with him now, though. I know I was originally gonna drop you off at the hotel on my way to work, but I’ll get you a rideshare now—”
“Wait,” he said, looking up at me. A different shade of concern projected from his eyes, not the life-altering blend of fury and fear he’d had when he discovered his mom’s circumstances. The knobs were dialed down on this look, more the creased brows of concern and a squint of frustration. “I’ve been looking at your phone—”
“It can wait. I really need a nap before work.”
“I don’t know if it should. There’s something very weird with this app on your phone. It’s supposed to just be, like, community messages, right? But it’s not.” He held it up, the screen split between Eric’s app and some diagnostic code below it. “It’s the most invasive app I’ve ever seen.”
CHAPTER 19
Just how invasive was Eric’s app?
According to Ian, it wormed its way into accessing everything on my phone. Which, at first didn’t seem like much, given how few apps I put on my phone. But right when Ian left, realizations hit, one by one.
My browser history, with every band I’d researched for auditions. My photos. Lyrics I’d whispered into the audio recorder during late-night inspirations. Vampire jokes I made to Lola. The sun protection I’d bought, the “vampire or werewolf” discussion at work, my every move as I trekked around looking for blood between my hospital, University Hospital, and Eric’s delivery question.
Ian found that Eric’s app hooked into all of that, exploiting every existing app and function to spy. My not-very-exciting vampire life, all encoded in bits and bytes for... What purpose? I didn’t quite grasp how any of this could unify the community or get us more blood.
Did they put all of this data in the context of being a vampire? Because if it tracked everything I said and did, then how would it reconcile the human food I just ordered?
A notification came across the screen, a message stating that my grocery order was being prepared. A slew of nonvampire things was set to arrive: bananas, corn chips, bread, a packet of sliced ham, milk. All of this information flowed across digital streams to Eric’s servers.
And for now, there was nothing I could do about it. Though maybe the groceries would at least throw off their algorithm. In the meantime, I had to shake off the fatigue tugging at my eyelids and consider my fridge.
How did you make a refrigerator accessible to a guest when it was filled with blood?
The last time I considered this, I went with the direct route. As in, I bypassed any pretense and just said it. Marshall was, after all, my best friend and my bandmate of a decade at the time, logic dictated that at some point he should have come over, and if anyone earned the right to my true identity, it would be my songwriting partner. “You realize this is the first time I’ve been in your house?” Marshall had asked as he stepped in and scanned the framed concert posters lining the wall.
“Are you sure?” I said, scooping up the scampering corgi puppy before she started leaping onto Marshall’s ankles.
The question was intentionally misleading because of course it was. I don’t know why I’d finally told Marshall to come by. Functionally, his text of: I’m close by, can I pick up my kit? led to the convenience of geography. But he’d asked before, and those times, I’d come up with excuses, sometimes legitimate and sometimes a white lie to hide my vampire lair.
Yet this time, I’d said yes. Without any fuss. And why should there be a fuss? He needed a little TLC after a bad breakup and I had no plans for the night. Lola furiously licked my cheeks as I let him in, and I guided her back to her crate to continue training her for my nocturnal schedule. Her attention turned to the rubber toy stuffed with peanut butter, leaving me to give Marshall a brief tour of the house. Somehow, it felt far less intimidating than expected.
Living with Laura had been different. It had been her house, after all, and I was the one who moved in. But other than the contractors who mounted my new TV on the wall, no one else had stepped inside for years.
I’d put Marshall’s electric drum kit out in the hall for him to pick up, but five minutes was all it took for us to veer off on a tangent. “You know,” he said, grabbing Gail from the wall to once again show off that he could play slap-bass and I couldn’t, “what confuses me about this breakup is she said I care about music too much for someone in his thirties. But she’s a DJ! She spins at the Cat Club every Thursday night.”
“Women,” I said, hopping on my drum kit.
“Men too,” he said, continuing his impromptu funk riffs. “No luck there when I tried. How hard can it be to find someone that you just sit with while you listen to a Siouxsie remaster on vinyl? Forget sex. There’s your sign of true love.”
“People are the worst. That’s my conclusion.” I kicked into a disco beat, open hi-hats alternating between a tight snare beat, and our improvisation became the worst funk song of all time, something that lasted for a good five minutes before I gave up and moved to my keyboard rig.
“You know, this really isn’t fair,” he said, moving to a popping slap-bass solo.
“What’s that?”
“This space. You have a whole studio we’ve never used before.”
“I inherited it from my aunt.”
“You could seriously book this for recording time. Make a whole side gig out of it.” He laughed, and I was half-surprised he didn’t make some reference to his day job as a bookkeeper for a CPA. He looked around, taking in the soundproofing I’d put up by hand. “Seriously, all of this would be a tax write-off. Your gear would practically be free.”
There it was.
I let myself dream for a moment, of a life where something like that was possible and I didn’t have to steal blood from SFGH’s blood bank. I pressed down on Nancy, my keyboard rig named in honor of Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem, and I started synthesized choral chants, a faux-goth melody to play opposite Marshall’s faux P-funk lines. The groove went on for several minutes, soon joined by a generic preset dance beat, a logic defying culture-clash that wouldn’t have existed anywhere else.
But then again, a vampire and an accountant being best friends and playing in punk clubs for a decade didn’t make much sense either.
Except the vampire part was secret. Community rules dictated it be that way.
The song continued on, Marshall adding dramatic vocals without a live mic, the words melting into the wall of bad sound around it. We went for several more minutes until the goth-funk jam ran its course, eventually ending with his laughter and, “Okay, seriously, enough of that.”
We looked at each other, indulging the simple comfort of our presence. And right then, I realized it was really dumb that I hadn’t invited him in until now. If I couldn’t trust Marshall, who could I trust? And at some point in our friendship, he’d probably notice I wasn’t aging.
Fuck the rules.
“Hey, since you’re here,” I said, tapping a light synth-pop riff to combat my nerves, “there’s something really wild I should tell you.”
“Yeah?” he asked, and though he kept playing notes on Gail, his whole demeanor shifted, an unexpected glow coming to him.
“You know how I can’t do any daytime gigs?”
A puzzled scrunch took over his face. “Yeah, what, are you finally changing work shifts?” Our improvising continued, juxtaposing a poppy New Wave soundtrack to the most serious conversation topic in the world.
“No, it’s not that.” My left hand started playing on the lower keyboard, chords to give breadth to our jam. “So, I have this, um, chronic condition. It’s why I have to work nights. And eat a special diet.”
“Oh shit.” The bass went silent, and my keyboard soon followed. “Why didn’t you tell me you had health issues? We’ve been friends for how long? Are you okay?”
His concern brought a smile, toothy enough that my fangs grazed the inside of my bottom lip.
