Christopher Buehlman - The Lesser Dead

She was just about to look at me; I can always tell when you’re about to look at me. There came the eyes. Brown eyes. I would have thought blue. I smiled, she smiled. Quick shy looking-away game, but one of us would peek again in ten seconds or so. The only other person on our car was an older Chinese woman reading Danielle Steel, Passion’s Promise , don’t make me laugh.

The third time girlie peeked at me I leaned back and swung around gracefully on the pole, sort of an ironic comment on the awkwardness of flirtation, right up her alley. She laughed. Also, I was charming her a bit so I looked twenty-two-ish, like she was. Maybe more like twenty-five. She looked like she knew what she was doing, and she fit nicely in her jeans.

I remember her down to the button, not because I fed on her or slept with her—I swear, Your Honor, I never touched the lady—but because of what I saw next. You know how that is? Like you remember the book you were reading when somebody told you Elvis Presley died ( Exodus by Leon Uris, don’t be impressed, I never finished it) or what you were wearing the night you lost your virginity (a tweed coat and suspenders, but don’t think “how cute”—I was already a vampire so it was weird).

The point is, I remember this girl because I stood with her on the ledge of great and permanent change, though neither one of us knew it, and she would never know it. The ledge was mine only.

I was about to see one of them .

But not just yet.

Not until Lexington.

And we were just coming up on 68th.

More people got on, but I wasn’t paying attention to them.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why would you say that?”

“Why not?”

“It just seems a funny thing to say before hello or anything.”

The train started moving.

“Maybe one day you’ll want to remember the first thing I ever said to you. Maybe it should be more interesting than ‘Hello.’”

She liked that.

In the next car, past the tangle of unreadable Magic Marker graffiti that had sprouted on every subway car like chest hair on a Greek, through the porthole window and the graffiti on that, too, hooker-smelling briefcase man was writing something down on a little notepad, wrinkling up his mustache; he didn’t like whatever he was writing. He was just about to look at me. He looked. First time I saw his bored eyes behind those slightly tinted big brown eyeglasses so much in fashion. My reflection and the girl’s swam over him like giant ghosts. A kid behind him, not his, sat alone, and that struck me wrong though I wasn’t thinking about it yet because the train was moving from the lit space by the platform into the darker space of the tunnel, my real home, Cvetko’s home. And I saw tough girl’s reflection turning toward me, her reflection in profile, so I turned also and looked her straight in the nose—I did mention she was tall? She giggled, warm fake-fruit smell of chewing gum riding her out-breath, and I took her chin in my hand to point her mouth down at mine. Her eyes darted at the Chinese woman, but I guess Danielle Steel can write the hell out of a book, because the Chinese woman’s face was like eight inches from the page.

My lips brushed the girl’s; I put my hand on her backside and she didn’t push it away. After a second, though, she pulled back, smiling in that “wait a second, what’s going on, wise guy?” way that really means, “We’ll be fucking soon but I don’t want you to think I do this all the time. Even though I probably do this all the time.”

Then the train swung around a curve in the dark and she stumbled on her platform shoes. I caught her; I don’t stumble, we’re all half cat. Her fingers lingered on my forearms and she looked at me, but I looked away. Something caught my eye in the next car. It was the kid. A little girl. Long black hair like an Oriental, but she was Anglo. Pale skin. Pretty but haunted. She was sitting two seats closer than she had been, though I never saw her move, holding a Raggedy Ann doll she didn’t seem interested in. She was looking at briefcase-hooker-notepad guy.

He looked back at her. And stared. It was all wrong.

But here’s what else was wrong: She was wearing makeup. Like a lot of makeup. She looked more like a doll than Raggedy Ann did.

My new girlfriend was oblivious, said, “So what’s your name?”

“Joey,” I said, distracted.

The train swerved again and the lights flickered, but I could still see. The Chinese woman looked up from her book. Something moved on the next train, in the dark.

Now the girl was holding the man’s hand, like she was his daughter. But she wasn’t! She was charming him. A vampire? That young? She looked seven.

Now she looked at me.

I couldn’t remember the last time I had a chill, but I caught one.

She looked through me.

Was she a vampire?

I didn’t know what she was.

At Grand Central, she got off the train with that guy, just a girl and her dad walking home. He left the briefcase, just left it and looked at it and left it anyway, and that one fact let me know in my black, dead heart that he would never get on another train. I knew it again when two little blond boys joined the girl, one of them taking the man’s free hand, one of them skipping alongside. The boys were pale, like her, no makeup, just very pale. The hooker-smelling guy looked stoned, drooled all over himself, but nobody in the subway gave them a second glance. Why would they? This was Grand Central Station; Hare Krishnas were dancing ecstatically near a bag lady with a Burger King crown on, a drunk guy was puking in the trash can but holding up a slice of pizza so he wouldn’t get any on it.

And a happy family was going home, only the children weren’t children, and Daddy had dying to do.

“Aren’t you going to ask me my name?” the girl said.

“No.”

I went to the Village as planned, went to the loudest bar I could find—the Ammonia. It wasn’t as cool as CBGB’s—Chinchilla only went to CBGB’s—but I found the girls were consistently hotter at the Ammonia. Like just a little less punk, just a little more hot-poser. Okay by me. I wasn’t part of the fucking movement. And the bathroom at the Bowery place was fucking raunchy, even by guy-who-lives-in-the-subway standards.

Anyway, the Ammonia.

Kids jammed up the doorway, fast, blurry guitar licks hammering out the door through the hot jungle of limbs and vinyl, beery musket-puffs of breath billowing up under the streetlight. This under the eyeless gaze of Gilda Radner, a poster for her live comedy album; I say “eyeless” because some less successful comedian had ripped square holes where her mouth and eyes should have been, like the blackout smudges in a porno, only with brick showing through. The doorman, a sort of badly shaven ox-shank in a clownishly small porkpie hat, pushed two fingers into my shoulder as I tried to slither under his gaze.

“How old are you?” he shouted over the exploding guitars.

“Fifty-nine,” I shouted back.

“Cute. Get out,” he said.

“Be friendly. Buy me a beer,” I said.

He blinked twice, the charm hitting him like a baby’s fist between the eyes, then he said, “You want a beer?”

“Love one.”

Oxbody actually abandoned his post, shoved two girls out of his way, and deposited me at the bar like a cop bringing a collar to his desk. He gestured, the bartender nodded, and soon a frosty Molson Light was fizzing before my eyes. I tipped the bartender a quarter and swigged. I like beer okay, and I can keep it down if I have blood in my stomach. Food’s a different story. I won’t barf if I’ve got blood in me, but the food-processing factory isn’t what it used to be and just digesting something wears me out. There’s more, but you don’t want to hear about that. Basically, if I eat food it’s just for show, and I’ll pay for it later. Drinking anything but blood wakes the pee-works up, and that’s no fun, but every once in a while it’s nice to feel like you’re still a person.