Walk Among Us, page 12
So he imbibed aggressively, chasing psychedelics with hundred-dollar pours of rare whiskey until the world began to gyre, firmament and floor losing delineation, thickened to an ombré of moving colors. At some point in the evening, someone called out the arrival of strippers, but by then, Duke couldn’t care less.
“I’m going to miss you guys,” he slurred, toppling gracelessly sideward onto a cream-hued couch. “I really am.”
Someone propped him upright, draped an arm over his shoulders.
“Then stay,” said a male voice, shrugging with so much conviction that the motion jogged his voice.
“I can’t, Louis.” The name surfaced, tasseled with the largely eroded memories of their collegiate years: the bars, the strip clubs, the fake IDs, the shenanigans, the debauchery, the women. Louis, preternaturally self-possessed, had never been as awkward as the rest of them, and Duke recalled envying his confidence. “I already signed that contract.”
“Ah.” Duke felt the slow metronoming of Louis’s head beside him. “They’re going to make you pay a percentage of their relocation package, aren’t they? Fuck that. You got money. Just cut them a check and tell them to fuck off. The hell Iceland has that San Francisco doesn’t?”
“Hot blond women.”
“Fuck you—we’ve got that in spades.”
“Bottle blondes, though.”
“Come on, man.”
“It’s not that. It’s—” His voice emptied.
“What?”
A male voice shouted for the strippers to peel out of their lingerie. The music went from Billie Eilish to Marilyn Manson, levels adjusted so the latter’s trademark scrawling wail glittered like new ice. “Did I ever tell you where I came from?”
“Like, your family? I think you said you were from Lafayette.”
“Someplace like that,” said Duke, a bit of his pubescent accent creeping in. Louisiana had made more sense than Alabama, what with the romanticizing of New Orleans, the noted presence of French immigrants. There were two types of country: Hollywood and hick. Duke knew where he belonged and what he’d prefer to be associated with, so when teenage Duke decided on reinvention, he threw down with all things Cajun. “Hated it like hell.”
“Can’t blame you. The only places worth anything in America are the coastal cities. And the Gulf doesn’t count. Everything else? Pure swill. Sorry. No offense.” A long pause, broken up by drags from a blunt. “Hey, is it true that people in the boondocks never, ever leave? They just stick there forever? Growing old. Being scared of the outside world.”
“That’s a thing that happens, yeah.” Duke exhaled through his teeth, the world still smeared in his vision, leaking oil-slick colors at the rim.
“Everyone popping out kids at eighteen. Trailer-park living. Lots of meth.”
Duke thought of every dead cousin and every uncle, his or otherwise, pickling trauma in cheap bourbon and cheaper ’shine. And his brother, missing in action, gone for years now, leaving Duke to a family worth less than the lip of grime on an old deep fryer. “Unless you get a scholarship somewhere or end up in the military.”
“How often’d that happen?”
“Not enough.”
“Man.” Louis passed the joint over. “That sucks.”
“You have no idea.”
“Hey, it’s a privilege and an honor to have grown up white-collar with try-hard parents who think that money can compensate for neglect. I will take my purebred ignorance over growing up in a swamp, thanks.”
Duke guffawed even though he rankled at the way Louis had said purebred, at the fact he’d said the word so glibly. It reeked to him of patrimonial fetishism, a just-about crush on the spirit of eugenics. But Duke knew his manners, and Louis, Jesus help him, wouldn’t ever go as far as to commend the practice. They were both raised better than that. He was sure of this, Duke told himself. Thus reassured, he let his laugh thin to a chuckle, then a sigh, like an opening act.
“I would take that too. In a heartbeat. Call me Moby, call me white Jesus. Call me anything you like. I’d kill for that kind of life. And this new gig, it might give it to me. I want what you have, man. And I don’t mean the money. That I’ve got already. I want”—Duke dropped his voice to a confessional whisper—“I want the way you know none of it is ever going to be taken away from you. I’m so sick of being scared.”
The last word slid loose before Duke could think it through. He froze, joint touched to the flap of his lower lip as he tried to will the clock hands back. His only hope was that Louis was just as febrile with recreational analgesics and wouldn’t think twice about what Duke had divulged.
“Huh,” Louis said with a lilt that told Duke he was percolating the recent admission.
“If you even think about calling me a wuss—”
“I am sincerely offended. Do I look like the kind of guy who’d judge a frat brother for his vulnerability?”
And Duke thought yes.
“You tell me,” he said instead, voice stiff.
“I wouldn’t,” said Louis, earnest as the freshly baptized. “Not in a million years. I know where my loyalties lie, you know? ‘Brothers for life.’”
“‘Brothers for life,’” Duke whispered right back. Love, bright and grateful, engulfed him in that instant. “Thanks.”
“So, what are you scared of?”
It came out in a deluge. The volume of Duke’s voice, already low, became crushed by the terror that had sat locked for so long in the vault of his neocortex. To his lack of surprise, even laid bare under the light of another human being’s attention, that fear remained awful. “Being priced out of San Francisco. Being—”
“You don’t even live there, man.”
“Heh. Doesn’t matter. Same deal, same fucking deal. Being overwhelmed by all these new technologies because I’m not twenty anymore and I can’t just mainline Adderall to keep up with everything. Being stuck in my discipline. I am good at what I do, Louis. But keeping up with everything that Silicon Valley churns out? I can’t. My job takes all my bandwidth. If people decide they don’t need my expertise, I’m going to end up in an entry-level WordPress position.”
“Hey, don’t knock WordPress.” A finger wagged in the periphery of Duke’s vision, a hand stole the joint from him. “I know people who have made a very good living selling templates.”
“Dude, I don’t know if you’re fucking with me.”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” said Duke. “But that’s exactly the point. I’m scared senseless of being old. There is so much I want to do, but not enough time for all of it. This opportunity in Iceland, it’s going to fix some of that.”
“They going to make you immortal? If that’s the case, I hope there’s a referral program.”
Duke paused, inhaling through clenched teeth, the noise a sharp whistle. His vision had begun to steady, portending the necessity of more whiskey, more weed, more distractions. Not yet, though. Clarity was suddenly very important.
“What if . . . ,” Duke began, hesitated, the magnitude of what he intended so heavy, so ponderous, his tongue numbed at the concept. He tried again, wetting his mouth as he did. “What if.”
No luck.
“What are you trying to say?” Louis’s countenance remained abstracted, vague curvature and architectural cheekbones, no detail asides from those. Duke couldn’t recall what color eyes the man had, whether he was filamented with scars, if he’d had stubble or even the right face for a beard. There was nothing but an impression, one that amounted to the name Louis and fuck all else.
And one day that was all he would ever be: spare change in the pocket of Duke’s eternity, a few dilute memories. The revelation was a liver shot, knocking the breath from Duke as he stared at his friend. However, that did not have to be the case. Duke could, if he was willing, swear Louis to secrecy, reveal the truth behind his departure from Palo Alto, and plead with his sire to take in his brother-by-oath as well. The two of them were peers, matchless, at the top of their current game. One head was always better than two, and would his employers not be pleased to have twice the manpower committed to the Sisyphean ordeal of enumerating the world’s population?
At the same time, Duke was still metaphorically in gestation, still only a candidate for immortal life. A mere neophyte. Without clout or any value except what was prescribed to him by his sire—an idea that chafed terribly, but Duke wasn’t naive enough to expect immediate status, demands or no. Nor was he foolish enough to think such a misstep would go down well with the administration in charge of his new life.
Maybe in a few years, or even—a few decades.
Would that be so bad?
And it would give Louis time to steep in his specialty, develop new skills, gain a freckling of age spots, be humbled and improved by the passage of time. He would be more grateful that way, more comprehending of why Duke had made the decisions he did. A respect for your mortality, Duke felt, was mandatory in the process, and Louis, with his endless swagger, could use an existential crisis or two before being proffered forever.
Besides, they were never that close to begin with, Louis always at a judicious remove from the rest of them, not as in need for the structure the fraternity offered, the support, the security. But one way or another, he was still his brother, and Duke would love him like the sibling who’d left home too early. On days when he was feeling honest, Duke envied his aloofness. On other days, he resented that distance.
“Nothing,” said Duke, sweeping his guilt at the thought under a rueful chuckle. “I’m just high. Speaking of which, I think I’m going to go home and sleep it off. The fucking plane ride is going to be awful otherwise.”
He pried himself from the sofa, patting Louis on a bony shoulder as he went. Before he could disengage, a hand bangled his wrist and tugged.
“Hey, Marmalade,” said Louis, breath cool against the rim of Duke’s ear. “You did good.”
“What?” And then: “What did you call me?”
“Marmalade.” He could almost feel Louis’s mouth rictus. “Ain’t that what your mama used to call you?”
“How did you—” It was stupid. Saying those words. Duke knew, had known from the first swaying, singsonged syllable why and how Louis knew that nickname, yet he couldn’t stop himself. “How did you know?”
“I’ve never been more glad for someone’s self-centeredness. It would have sucked, having to kill an old friend for being a nice guy. But in the end, you didn’t disappoint. You stayed true to your inability to think about anyone but yourself. Ugly behavior, but goddamned appropriate.”
Louis dropped his grip.
“You’re one of them,” Duke said, hating himself for needing to verbalize the obvious. “Or, like Mara—”
“No. Not like Mara. Never like Mara. Don’t fucking try to put me on her level,” said Louis, his tone jovial despite the vitriolic objection.
“Okay,” said Duke, backing away, all the while fighting the primordial instinct to offer his belly, give in to the hope that if he had to die, it’d at least be quick. He wet his mouth, swallowed. “Okay, man.”
“Good. Now go home, Marmalade. Tomorrow’s going to be a big fucking day.”
Duke sank down on one knee and then the other, bent back over the lap of a small Indian woman, her hair a drowning torrent spread over his eyes, his face, the black strands fragrant with something Duke could almost put a name to, would put a name to if it weren’t for how the light was wicking from his vision.
He had expected more ceremony. A subterranean chapel gaudy with the regalia of the Ventrue, artifacts ensconced in the walls, tastefully backlit for effect. A speakeasy, cleared of its regular clientele, and a jazz band in the background like voodoo loa in attendance. A baroque museum, closed off for the evening, rife with old people in Venetian masks, smiling like they’d come to star in Eyes Wide Shut. Something cinematic. Not this. Not a second-floor apartment in downtown San Francisco, two blocks from Divisadero Street, the old woman and Mara engaged in small talk while a stranger bled him dry . . .
Rain, Duke thought suddenly. She smelled of a storm taking its first breath, the air turned crystalline. Of the week he’d spent in Mumbai, alternately riveted and fearful of the monsoon as it swept over the city, more alive than anything America had readied him for. Weakly, Duke reached a hand to palm the Indian woman’s skull, a lover’s intimacy, but his arm went slack partway.
He tried again. It felt important, somehow, to do more than recline limply as the woman exsiccated him, to be an active participant in this brutal, glorious, rapturous event. Except that, too, was more effort than Duke could muster. He was dying far too quickly. The revelation troubled him less than he’d expected it to, and for a moment a paring of Duke’s consciousness felt the urge to panic over the fact.
Cool fingers rapped his cheek.
He blinked, looked up through an ink-dark lattice of hair into the face of the old woman, her expression clinical.
“Help me settle a debate that we’ve been having, Marmalade,” she said, her touch arrowing downward along to the point of his jaw. “I told Mara there is no way that you even recall my name. I look too old, after all, for you to care about the idea of recalling my identity. As far as people like you are concerned, I’m scenery, at best.”
She laughed in that profoundly unsettling fashion of hers and chucked him under the chin, as though he were a precocious nephew and she, a proud grand-aunt.
The light was growing skeletal. Duke’s vision narrowed to spokes. The old woman was right. He couldn’t remember her name. His heartbeat became thunderous, the organ of its origin thrashing within his ribs, and Duke would have wailed for release if not for the overwhelming sublimity of this death. Though some animal region of his brain continued to rage, the rest of him was beginning to succumb, melt into a darkness that tasted so peculiarly sweet.
“No answer? That’s all right. We have eternity, Marmalade, for you to learn how to bend and scrape and lick my boots. You’ll wish you had asked.”
A wretched relief flooded him as his cognizance of the situation leached away, and finally darkness came. Duke, barren now of any thought, of any emotion but an infantile gratitude, tumbled toward the encroaching oblivion, eager to be done. No more fear, no more self-doubt.
Then a slender wrist pried his mouth apart.
“Drink,” commanded a voice.
And he, half sure he was already dead, complied anyway.
Monster
Duke woke up.
This surprised him, as he had no recollection of entering sleep or of anything more concrete than the tectonic certainty he’d enjoyed himself slightly too much. Duke roused slowly, in increments, with none of the vigor he was once accustomed to: an old man, his bones leaden with sleep. His disorientation grew as he took in the alien crispness of the air, a mineral smell that scrimshawed itself into the back of his throat and left his mouth dry and stinging with frost. The light was wrong too, lustrous yet diffused as if poured through a ripple of clear water. Duke knuckled at his eyes with a hand, gaze combing the high walls that framed him, the black-out blinds along one narrow window, an adjacent stairwell curling upward to a loft of a second floor.
The stucco walls were white, foliated at intervals with sheets of slate-gold glass and no other ornamentation, which was, Duke decided as he levered himself into an upright state, the reason for the strangeness of the lighting. Still, nothing could account for the decor: ascetic, rendered in cream and taupe, and almost entirely nonexistent. From where he sat, Duke could see a marble banquet table, its gleaming surface jet-black; a chair; and a hive of computer terminals and servers waiting for his attention. Some distance away, standing alone, a silver fridge that could have held two full-grown adult male bodies with space left to rent.
But nothing else.
His eyes went down and for the first time, Duke came to realize precisely what he was sitting in.
It was a coffin.
“Of fucking course.”
Like the rest of the house’s sparse furnishing, it was black, gorgeously burnished, angles razored, the sides as thin as cardboard. An inadequate layer of velvet cushioning lay beneath Duke, the house’s only nod to the vanity of human comfort. This was the home he had asked for. He recognized it now. The design, on the most molecular level, was his, but it had metastasized since, had been reinterpreted through the lens of a funeral director or, more specifically, an asshole with an intent to vex.
“Fuck,” said Duke, dragging shaking fingers through his limp hair. “Jesus fuck a cat.”
His blasphemy echoed disturbingly, the acoustics of his accommodations folding the sounds onto themselves so the reverberations came slightly out of sync. Duke shuddered, inexplicably embarrassed. His gaze dropped again, landing finally on the yellow Post-it note taped to the foot of his coffin.
It said We’re watching.
“Welcome, Mr. Guillo. We’ve been waiting.”
Duke jolted at the satin purr of a woman’s voice, its accent nominally Scottish, just enough of that burr to make her appealing but not enough to obstruct understanding. She was tall, as sleek as new tech. All of her was. From the shining topknot to her makeup to the catsuit she wore, the material reflective as oil, pebbled like skin. Even the smile, measured and patinaed with a daub of gold, gleamed like cutting-edge innovation.
“Who are you?”
A split-second pause. “We are your staff, Mr. Guillo.”
We. She had definitely said we, Duke thought. His focus clarified. He realized then there was not one woman but six in straight-backed attendance, each of them slim and sleeved in identical catsuits, every one of them dark-haired and calcium-complexioned. They did not smile. Duke, after a moment, realized their eyes were all the exact same shade of verdigris.
“Staff?” said Duke, unsure.
Five of the women looked to the first of them to speak.
