Underdead (14 page)

As if realizing our usual seating order would be too harsh a reminder that Bob would never again sit in “his” chair, my colleagues sat at random around the rectangular table at the Italian restaurant. Becky had saved me a seat between her and Kendra.

It was a somber table. Everyone wore navy or black, out of deference to Bob’s memory. Even Becky was dressed conservatively in dark slacks and a black turtleneck sweater. “Where have you been?” Becky whispered as I sat down. She kept her voice low, in keeping with the funereal atmosphere around the table.

I just shook my head and Kendra touched my arm and said in a low voice, “We ordered for you.”

“Yeah, the scampi. Your favorite.”

“Thanks,” I said, though these days I would’ve preferred a very rare steak. “I’m starved.”

“Have some bread.” Becky grabbed the basket at Roger’s elbow and held it out to me.

“No, thanks.” Normally, I could have eaten the entire basket of warm, fragrant rolls, but now they looked unappetizing. I silently cursed Will for destroying my appetite for pretty much everything that wasn’t rare beef, coffee or chocolate. I hoped it wasn’t permanent, or I would die an early death anyway, from scurvy.

“You’re not on that Atkins diet or anything are you?” Kendra said.

“No, just holding out for the entree.” The waiter arrived with our dinners just then, thankfully forestalling the inevitable discussion (scientific treatise, more like) on what those diets did to a body.

Everybody dug in hungrily and I forced myself to ignore the enticing aroma of Alan’s juicy, rare T-bone and speared a plump garlicky shrimp and popped it in my mouth. Almost immediately, my mouth caught on fire and I gulped down half the contents of my water glass.

“You okay there?” Becky said, laughing as I gasped and blotted my eyes with my napkin.

“I’m fine. What’s in this stuff? It’s really spicy.”

“It’s just scampi,” she said. “The same thing you always get. I don’t think there’re any chili peppers in it. You could have gotten a stray one though.”

“You’re probably right.”

I examined the next shrimp carefully before eating it, but it, too, burned like a mouthful of Scotch bonnets. I felt nauseated, and for a moment I thought I was going to hurl then and there, in front of all my colleagues. I excused myself and managed, just, to make it to the ladies’ room before I threw up.

When I came out, Becky was waiting for me.

“Did you just get sick?”

“Yeah.” I grimaced. “I think the shrimp’s bad.”

Becky put a comforting hand on my back. “You poor thing. Do you want to go home? I can make your excuses for you, if you want.”

Kendra joined us. “Are you okay?”

“Bad shrimp,” Becky said, answering for me. “She’s going to go home.”

“That’s terrible,” Kendra said. “I’ll go back and tell everyone so the rest of the department doesn’t come in here?” she said it as a question.

“Thanks,” I said gratefully. Becky went out ahead of me, collected my purse, and saw me to my car before I shooed her back to the table so she could finish her dinner.

I’d felt fine ever since the shrimp had come back out, and as the experience didn’t seem to have squelched my hunger pangs, I found myself pulling up to a drive-through window on the way home for one of those obscenely large burgers. I ordered it rare, E. coli be damned.

As I scarfed it down in my car in the parking lot—the fast food maneuver of shame—I faced what happened at the restaurant. I wondered darkly who had suggested ordering the scampi for me, and whether it had really been done out of altruism. The shrimp had been fine. I’d put money on it. However, when you order scampi, with the shrimp comes a lot of garlic.

It was the garlic that had been the problem. Or rather, I had been the problem for the garlic.

I had seen horror movies where the vampire backs off cringing and hissing whenever someone shoves a garland of garlic in his direction. I had always thought the vampire’s response a little excessive, but now I totally understood. If a tiny bite of garlicky pasta sent me, only part vampire, reeling to the ladies’ room, I can only imagine what it did to someone like Will.

It got me to wondering about vampires. I pretty much knew from experience the disgusting things were true. The problems with sunlight? True. My skin was a freaking nightmare. The taste for blood? My sudden interest in licking the raw juice off the steak packaging when I came up from the supermarket was close—and gross—enough for me to buy into that one. And as for the reflection in the mirror, well, mine had gotten so dim I had long since resorted to rubbing gunk on every reflective surface in the science wing, including the glass display cabinets that lined the hallway, so everyone’s reflection would look blurry.

But what about the cool things? I mean, when did I get to turn into a bat?

I thought about Will. He seemed so normal—aside from the fascination with my neck and wanting to kill me and all, of course. But was he alive or was he really dead? I understood now why someone had coined the term
undead
—they really did need another category for someone like him—but that’s all it was, another category. It didn’t tell me what Will
was
.

What did he do when he wasn’t trying to recruit new members or harassing me? I tried to remember if I had seen him drink anything at the club that first night but drew a blank. Do vampires ever eat regular food? I wondered. Do they have to shower? Brush their teeth? Do they get colds? Surely they don’t sleep in coffins like they do in the movies, I thought with a shudder.

I was getting close to my apartment, and as I looked for a parking space, I wondered where Will lived. Somehow I couldn’t picture him in the moldy old castle traditionally associated with vampires. He seemed too modern for that, and on a practical note, there weren’t any moldy old castles to be had in Long Beach. I could picture him living somewhere cool, like a chrome and glass house right on the beach, if all that light wasn’t such an issue. Actually, the light would be an issue wherever he lived. How in the world did he get around
that
problem?

I wouldn’t have to wonder for long. I could just ask him. He was standing on my front porch talking to my mother.

With all that had gone on, I had forgotten that I was supposed to meet her for our monthly movie night.

With a skill I didn’t know I possessed, I crammed my car into a tiny parking spot a half block away and ran full-out down the street toward my apartment. I couldn’t hear what Will was saying to my mother, but whatever it was, he had definitely captured her interest.

As I ran up the path from the sidewalk to my building, Will leaned toward her and my heart leaped in my throat. If anything happened to her…

I put forth an additional spurt of speed. But I wasn’t in time to stop him.

“I adore your daughter.” Will’s low voice carried clearly through the night air. He was speaking in that confessional way that drove mothers to plan their daughter’s wedding—or get rid of the boyfriend.

My
mother clasped her chest in delight. And why wouldn’t she be thrilled? He was handsome, charming and well-spoken.

“I think I fell in love with her the first night we met,” he said. “I noticed her right away—she has the loveliest hair, like a sunrise…”

“She
does
have pretty hair.”

I flew past my mailbox and took the stairs two at a time.

Will drew closer to my mother. “I find her intriguing. She’s the sort of woman a man wouldn’t get tired of, even if he spent an eternity with her.”

My mother looked ready to propose
for
me.

“Oh, God,” I said between gasps of air. I took the last two stairs in one flying leap.

The sound of my voice—or my heavy breathing—alerted Will to my arrival. He sent a startled look in my direction, kissed my mother’s hand, and managed to slip away before I could get to him and kill him. My mother was too enthralled by what she’d heard and the fact that I’d finally brought home a man with lovely old-fashioned manners to notice he hadn’t really said a proper goodbye—or that he’d seemed to have gone the wrong way. The walkway dead-ended around the corner. I was a little curious to know how he planned to get down, but hustled my mother inside before we could find out.

“Jo, dear,” she breathed excitedly. “I’ve met your Will!”

“Why don’t you sit down and relax, Mom.” Damage control. I needed damage control. I didn’t know what Will was up to, but this couldn’t be good. For her own safety, my mother needed to avoid him like the plague. But by the look on her face she’d already welcomed him into the bosom of the family and was imagining her beautiful grandchildren.

“He’s very handsome.” My mother sat genteelly on the sofa. “You’d have gorgeous children.” Yep. Right on schedule. “You didn’t even tell me you were dating anyone. And here I was so worried that you were all alone.”

I let the unfeminist remark go. I had bigger problems. I racked my brains. Will was gorgeous, polished, charming and seemed to dote on me. How could I convince my mother he wasn’t perfect when he was—except for that tiny personality flaw of wanting me dead, and for all I knew, her too. It was a mark of how desperate I was to keep her away from him that I considered telling her the truth.

“What does he do?” she asked, tipping her head to one side to look up at me.

And there it was. My opening. “I’m so glad you like him,” I gushed. “He’s an assistant manager at the coffee shop around the corner. That’s how we met!”

Her face fell. “Assistant manager?” she said falteringly.

“Oh, yes! He just got promoted. After five years!” I knew for fact our neighbor’s teenage son got promoted in a similar job after only eight months and he was the dumbest kid I’d ever met. “I’m so proud of him.”

The little hiccup of joy in my voice clinched it.

My mother quickly changed the subject.

Jo one, Will zero.

To my great delight, Saturday morning dawned gray and drizzly, which meant I could go watch the Bayshore boys varsity soccer team play our biggest rival without turning into a patty melt. I slathered on sunscreen with an SPF in the stratosphere, donned a waterproof jacket with an oversized hood that shadowed my face and wound a scarf in Bayshore’s colors around the small part of my face and neck that still showed. Dr. Ngata would probably say that my precautions weren’t enough and I should wear the mask, but I figured why not live on the edge? I was half dead anyway.

As soon as the coffee pot had discharged enough liquid to fill my industrial-sized travel mug, I drove over to the soccer stadium.

Both sides of the stadium were packed with fans whose colorful, team-inspired attire, waving team pennants, and homemade banners made the institutional gray stands as bright and festive as a parade route during Mardi Gras. A cheerful path of damp and drooping maroon and gold streamers and balloons that nodded and ducked in the wind directed me down a soggy path to the Bayshore side, where a loud, energetic crowd waited for the game to begin. Soccer was a big draw at Bayshore, commanding the sort of frenzied following usually reserved for football, and attendance was even higher than usual. From the snatches of conversation that blew my way as I stood in the aisle looking for a seat, I gathered the game had become something in the way of an Irish wake for Bob. Without the alcohol. Mostly.

About the time I was ready to give up looking for her, Becky appeared out of nowhere, waving her arms and yelling my name. It took me a moment to recognize her—her petite figure was wound so many times with an extra-long, extra-wide Bayshore scarf she looked like a maroon-and-gold-striped barber’s pole. Becky never ceased to amaze me. I had never met anyone who could pull off hip punk rocker one day and ardent high school sports fan the next.

She pointed behind her to an alcove near the team bench where enterprising rays of sun would have to get through three feet of concrete if they wanted to touch my fair skin, and I clambered down the bleachers and squeezed in next to her just as the ref blew the whistle to start the game.

“Whew!” I stamped my feet in a vain attempt to knock off some of the water before it soaked in. I cupped my hands around my giant stainless steel coffee mug, glad for the warmth and wished I had thought to bring a seat cushion to protect my hindquarters from the cold bench that seemed to drain the warmth from my body. The ugly weather might be good for my skin, but the rest of me still preferred it warm and sunny.

Down on the field, the difficulty of controlling a wet ball made for conservative playing. After a few minutes of watching the two teams pass the ball back and forth in the middle of the field, Becky’s rapt attention began to wane. She kept one eye on the game but turned slightly toward me so we could chat. She pointed to my coffee mug. “I see you’re subjecting your stomach to its usual morning acid bath. You must be feeling better. Want some?” She proffered a cardboard container of lukewarm tortilla chips and orange liquid cheese masquerading as nachos.

I shivered and pushed it away. “I was feeling better until you put those in my face. How can you eat those things? The smell alone nauseates me.”

She grinned, loaded up a chip with plastic cheese and several pale green rings of hot jalapeno, and chomped down ecstatically. “Mmm. These are great. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Ugh. Talk about setting your insides on fire! Isn’t a little early the morning to be eating such spicy food?”

“Are you kidding? You should see what my mom eats for breakfast. She makes a tofu chi-gae that’ll knock your socks off.”

“What’s chee gay?”

“A spicy soup—lots of garlic and hot Korean chili paste. Trust me, a couple jalapenos is nothing.” She grabbed the Bayshore pennant off her lap and jumped to her feet, yelling as our sweeper stole the ball from the other team and booted it down to our forward line. I got to my feet, too, as Bayshore scored the first goal of the game.

By the end of the half, I had unwrapped my scarf from around my face and was waving it energetically as a makeshift pom-pom. Our boys had continued to dominate the field and were beating the snot out of the competition. Our left wing scored his third goal seconds before the ref called the half, sending the Bayshore fans into a frenzy.