"Uh, yeah, he’s like a career counselor. You know. Helping me figure out what to do with my future."
Cat announced that she was going to see how her computer was coming along, and left the two of them alone in the hall. Now the stale house air seemed to crackle and bloom. He wanted to seize Sejal and hold her close. He wanted to shrink her down and carry her around in his tiny pockets.
"Maybe I should blow off my appointment," he said. He couldn’t remember how to stand. What did he usually do with his hands? "The company is better here."
Sejal was looking at a potpourri arrangement on the side table. "Your future is important," she said.
YOUR FUTURE is important, Doug thought as he biked the last few blocks to Stephin’s house. What did that mean? Important because she wants to be a part of it? He wondered if it was possible he was going to marry Sejal. He pictured the ceremony: huge families, lots of pink and red and orange, flowers everywhere, molting flakes of gold. Sejal with painted hands, in some complicated outfit, wrapped up like a present. Doug with a big mustache for some reason.
They get married and then they live together in some cramped little New York apartment. The trains rattle their knickknacks every fifteen minutes, but that’s okay, they have each other, taking long walks by the river and breakfasts in the park.
They don’t move to New York, they sail the world instead; and at each port of call the local constabulary calls upon them to solve mysteries in their own playfully pugnacious fashion.
So far away was Doug that he almost missed Stephin motioning to him from a bench in the park across from his house.
He had on a wide-brimmed hat that Doug thought looked effeminate. Like something his mother would wear to garden. But then he remembered his new, complimentary outlook.
"I like your hat," he told Stephin.
"I like your hooded poncho. I believe we share a bad habit of not feeding enough? I am a bit sensitive to the sun."
"Why did you meet me out here, then?"
"Because I believe, regardless, that I need to get out of the house. Can we walk and talk?"
"Sure. Um…is it okay if we don’t meet too long today? I have a lot of homework to do."
They walked deeper into the park, away from the house, past groups of kids playing with foam swords. It looked to Doug like the sort of game he and Jay and Stuart used to play. He had to resist an urge to shout at the kids, "Run! Vampires!"
"I don’t doubt you have homework," said Stephin, "but that’s not really why you’re impatient to leave, I think."
"How do you know that?"
"I’ve been watching people a long time. I’m good at reading them. And you’re a teenage boy, which makes you about as challenging as Dick and Jane."
Doug huffed. "Fine. It’s a about a girl — big surprise, right?"
"What’s her name?"
"Sejal."
"Hm. A little padma from the subcontinent, eh?"
"Mmmm, sure. Yeah."
"Does this Sejal also know about your condition?"
"About being a vampire?" asked Doug. "No. No, definitely not. I wouldn’t tell her. It would be dangerous."
"And yet how very dangerous not to. Can you afford not to tell her? If you truly care? The Vampire’s Dilemma — you must have these kinds of human connections to retain your humanity. And yet they’re impossible. And without them you’ll become nothing but a hunter and a hermit."
And a fucking downer, thought Doug. And a completely depressing pain in the ass.
They circled the park, twining in and out of its concrete paths. At all times Stephin seemed to be distantly watching his leprous house.
"So," said Doug after a long silence, "did you ever have…someone? Were you ever married?"
"I never married. But, yes, there was someone."
"What happened?"
Stephin cracked a rare smile. "What a question. He died."
"Oh. Sorry." He? You’ve gotta be kidding me.
"We’ve been away long enough," Stephin said, then turned abruptly toward the house.
Inside, seated again in the small study, Stephin seemed more animated.
"So it occurred to me after your first visit that we’d spent the better part of the hour not talking about anything. I blame myself. This time I’ve made a list."
Doug straightened.
"First, Miss Polidori has been most insistent that I glean certain information from you. Her ghoul Asa has been at my door twice in three days. Someone should do that man the favor of killing him, and I mean that in the friendliest sense. So. Perhaps you’ll tell me about the hazing that got you into our little fraternity."
"Um. You mean…you want to know how I became a vampire? Like my origin story?"
"If you don’t mind telling me."
"I guess I don’t."
"Spare no detail, please."
Doug looked at his fingernails and told Stephin about the cabin in the Poconos, near Hickory Run, and the vampire that had come at him through the trees. The vampire was naked and wounded; the vampire held him down and fed. Then there was a bat where the vampire had been, and Doug told Stephin of the coyotes and what came after. When he finished, Doug had been speaking uninterrupted for seven minutes, and even now Stephin said nothing. Doug looked up.
"I am quiet," Stephin said, "because I’m trying to remember if you’ve always had such trouble with pronouns or if you’re merely trying not to divulge that your corruptor was another boy?"
Doug sighed. "Yeah. Another guy."
"Is this so terrible?"
"It wasn’t a gay thing or anything. He’d just been made a vampire himself and he was out of his mind."
"In the Poconos. Near Hickory Run."
"Yeah. He’s an okay guy. We’re sort of friends. I hope you don’t have to tell anybody I told you. I don’t want him to get in trouble."