Charlie Huston - Half the Blood of Brooklyn

She smiles ear to ear.

– Because when I’m eighteen, I’m gonna exercise my voting shares and take over Horde Bio Tech Incorporated. And I’m gonna put it to work finding a cure for the Vyrus. Because, you know what?

She takes a drag.

– I’m not just my mom’s daughter. I’m also my daddy’s little girl.

She blows smoke out her nostrils.

– And he was a genius.

I polish off my drink.

– He was a fucking loon.

She flutters her fingertips.

– Well, yeah.

I head for the bar.

– And you’re following right in his footsteps with that crap.

She puts her feet on the floor.

– Where are you off to?

I put my glass on the bar and look at her.

– Figure I know now what you wanted to talk about. Figure I know you’ve grown up spoiled as your mother and whacked as your father. Figure my curiosity is sated and I’m leaving now.

– No, that’s not it.

I snag the bottle I’ve been drinking from off the bar and turn my back to her. I’m on my way out.

– Mind if I take this for the road?

– Oh, Joseph, you’re just afraid.

I hear her stand behind me.

– Is it the girlfriend thing?

I stop.

I turn.

She drags off her clove.

– Cuz I get that. Sela says that Lydia says that you have a girlfriend and Lydia thinks that she has AIDS and that you take care of her. Which Sela says Lydia can hardly believe and she thinks you must be using her as a Lucy or something, but I totally believe it because I know what you can be like. I know you like to have something to take care of. But what I don’t get is, Do you really not fuck her? Because that’s what Sela says Lydia thinks because of the way you talk about the Vyrus like it’s something you can catch from a toilet seat or something.

I think about the night I saved her life. I think about that, and it keeps me from doing something to shut her up, something to shut her up forever.

She stubs her clove in the silver ashtray.

– Because you can’t, you know. You can’t get the Vyrus from a toilet seat. Or from fucking. If you could, Sela would have given it to me by now. Not that that’s scientific or anything. But it’s true. You can only get it from the blood. I’ve learned that much so far. But you’re probably just scared of fucking her because you’re scared of, you know, intimacy and all that. Because you know you’re gonna die horribly and you don’t want to take her with you or whatever stupid cliché. But here’s the cool part.

She walks toward me.

– If you did give it to her, if you bled into her and made her like you, that would cure the AIDS. And then.

She stops and reaches for the bottle in my hand.

– If I really can cure the Vyrus like I think I can.

She takes the bottle from me.

– You could give her the cure. And she wouldn’t be sick at all anymore. And neither would you. And you could do anything. You could be as normal as anyone, whatever that means.

She taps the stud in her tongue against the mouth of the bottle and drinks.

– If normal’s what you want.

This child, standing in front of me, talking about things I might want, talking like she knows something about anything, talking about my little life like she understands what any of her words mean or could mean to me.

This child, I do my utter best not to kill.

But that doesn’t stay my hand.

I slap the bottle from her and it shatters against the wall and I bring my palm across her face and send her to the floor.

She looks up at me, blood trickling from her nostril and the corner of her mouth.

– Who’s my mama now?

I’m on my way out when Sela comes through the door. Her jacket’s off, she’s wearing a leather vest over her implants, the muscles in her shoulders and arms cut by iron.

I plant myself and get ready to put my boot in her balls and she blows past me straight for the girl.

– Baby.

– I’m OK.

– Stay there, I’ll get some ice.

– I’m OK.

She props herself up on her elbows.

– He didn’t do anything I haven’t had done to me before.

Sela comes from the bar with a towel full of ice and cradles the girl’s head.

I start for the door.

Amanda bares her teeth, blood smeared across them.

– Don’t leave so soon. We haven’t even talked about what happened that night.

I’m on my way.

She’s still talking.

– I always thought they were nightmares. Till Sela told me what she knew.

Halfway to the door.

– But she doesn’t know much. Only you know all of it. Do you know what I dream about? I bet you do.

At the door.

– Do you dream about it? Is the cold shadow in your dreams too?

I stop.

I turn.

I wish again for a gun, to shut her up.

– Don’t talk about it. It knows you. Never talk about it.

She touches the bracelet on her wrist.

– I dream about you too, Joe. Should I be afraid of you?

But I’m not listening anymore. I’m gone.

What’s inside is inside for a reason.

What’s hidden is hidden for a reason.

What’s buried is buried for a reason.

The cab gets me back down to 10th Street. The keys get me back in my apartment. The code turns on my alarms. The trap door takes me down to the basement room where I live in secret. The combination opens the safe and puts a gun in my hand.

But none of it will protect me.

It’s been in here before.

Doors and locks don’t matter. Hiding places are where it lives. A gun won’t stop it. But I stand there in the middle of the room with a gun in my hand anyway, scenting for it. Searching for dead spots in the air, places where odor has been drawn from the atmosphere by its passing. Dreading that talking about it might have brought it back. Keeping myself from diving beneath the covers to hide from it.

The Wraith.

And to hide from the other things little Amanda Horde had to say.

To be normal.

Like I was ever normal. Like I was ever any different from how I am now. A cure won’t make me better. It’ll just make me more like a regular son of a bitch. Like the Vyrus makes you into something else. It doesn’t. If you get it, if you survive, it’s because you were already the kind of person who will drink blood.

And how do you know if you’re that kind of person? You don’t, not till your mouth covers a fresh wound and you find yourself jamming your tongue in it and sucking.

Is that the kind of person Evie is? If there was a cure, I maybe wouldn’t have to find out.

If a cure is possible.

Now that I got a gun in my hand, I’m gonna go talk to someone about it.

– Jeez, Joe, am I glad ya came by. Been calling you since I got here.

– How long’s he been this way?

– I don’t know. I came around, he was like this.

– Uh-huh. You just dropping by?

Phil rubs his nose.

– Sure, I guess. Just paying a visit.

– ’Cause you guys are tight that way. You pop in every now and then.

– Well. Well. Didn’t say we were tight. Sure we’re friendly, but tight might be a little of a, you know, an overstatement.

– You carrying, Phil?

He runs hands over all his pockets.

– I look like I’m carrying? Don’t I wish.

– Not for you, for him.

He reams out his ear with a fingertip.