Suck It Up (10 page)

13

The Williams Bird Bridge

Portia yanked out her Handycam before he changed his mind. She framed him in the flip-out screen and hit record. “It seems like you have a thing for this bridge.”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“Last night, when I read the article about you trying to take back the Williams Bird Bridge for the pigeons, it never told the nun's bedtime story that made you do it. Do you remember the story?”

“I don't remember it, or even running onto the bridge and the cop rescuing me.”

She deflated. “You're kidding.”

“No.” He shook his head. “But Sister Flora told me the story countless times.”

Portia perked back up. “Cool.”

He dove in. “The night before the bridge thing, Sister was tucking me in, and for some reason she told me the name of the Williamsburg Bridge. When I asked, ‘Why are cars on the Williams Bird Bridge?' my messing up the name gave her an idea for a story.”

“What did she call it?”

“‘Why Pigeons Fly.'

Morning felt his chest tighten with anxiety. He ignored it. If he couldn't tell a story to a regular girl with a camera, he'd never be able to talk to Ally Alfamen, much less flirt with the next Rachel Capilarus that came along.

“Once upon a time, before pigeons knew how to fly, all the pigeons in Manhattan lived on the other side of the river, in Brooklyn. To get to Manhattan every day, the pigeons walked across their own private bridge, the Williams Bird Bridge. This was fine until the traffic on the other bridges got so bad that the cars and trucks started using the Williams Bird Bridge too. This led to a war between the pigeons and the cars. The pigeons lost the war when the mayor banned pigeons from using their own bridge and ordered them to get to Manhattan by learning to fly like the other birds, or taking the subway. Since the pigeons didn't have money for the subway, they had to learn how to fly.

“Now, according to Sister, when she got to this point in the story I wasn't convinced. So she told me that we know the story is true because every time a pigeon hits a car or a person with bird poop, they're letting us know how they feel about losing their bridge. Well, that was all the proof I needed. It made me mad that the pigeons had lost their bridge. So the next morning, I tried to be a superhero and take it back for them.”

Portia zoomed in tight. “After the cop rescued you, did Sister Flora tell you the story wasn't true?”

His eyes shone with pleasure. “No. She's smarter than that. She told me that taking back the bridge wasn't a good idea because if the pigeons ever got it back, they'd forget how to fly. And wouldn't it be terrible if pigeons didn't know how to fly.”

“And that was the end of it?”

“Yeah. Except for the expression me and Sister have.”

“What's that?”

“Whenever we want to say something is impossible, we say, ‘Yeah, right—when the pigeons take back the Williams Bird Bridge.'”

Portia didn't have any more questions, and widened the shot.

The silence made him uneasy. It was broken by a tune bursting from Portia's jacket.

She turned off the camera, dug out her cell phone, checked the ID, and flipped it open. “Hey, Mom.”

“Where are you?” Penny demanded.

“On a bridge.”

“What
bridge
?”

“The bridge Morning is standing on.”

“Thank God! Is he all right?”

Portia's eyes darted to Morning. “Are you all right?” He nodded. “He's all right.”

Penny's voice dropped an octave. “I want both of you home, this instant.”

Portia chuckled. “Yeah, right—when the pigeons take back the Williams Bird Bridge.”

Morning grinned and heard Penny's voice on the phone. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Don't worry, Mom. I'll explain when we get home.”

As the two of them walked off the bridge toward the darkening skyline, the silence belied their tumbling thoughts.

Morning was preoccupied with the wordless tether that seemed to connect them. It felt like a weave of two silences: the one of being alone, and the one of being with someone who didn't require talk. But there was also part of him that distrusted it. Being so laid-back with someone was too soon, too easy. And, for all he knew, the connection he was imagining only flowed one way. After all, she'd been crystal clear. She wanted his story for her video project. She was the interviewer, he the interviewee. Nothing more. It reminded him of a lame joke he'd heard back at the Academy.
What happened to the vampire who fell for the first mortal girl he met? She turned him into a sucker.

Portia was trying to untangle her own snarl of thoughts. Yeah, she'd gotten some incredible footage of the faux vampire, but she was haunted by the feeling that her exposé of the media-industrial complex had taken a wrong turn. It was turning into a sympathetic portrait of a con guy. But that's not what disturbed her the most. She had totally believed his tales of paper boats and bedtime stories. She was even charmed by them. If that was the case, she was being sucked into his lair. Her guy credo—
assume the worst
—was flirting dangerously with the romantic abyss so many daffy girls threw themselves into:
Assume the best.
She hated that in women. One minute you're young, vivacious, got a career on cruise control, then bam!—you have a head-on with some guy who knocks your brain into the backseat, and the next thing you know you're pregnant and being towed off to the junkyard of domestic life. Just like her mother.

Just like her mother.
The words blared in her head like an alarm, yanking her back to the only thing that mattered: the video essay that was going to get her into film school. But she was right, it
had
taken a turn. From a Michael Moore rant against the powers that be, to a documentary with no ax to grind. An intimate profile of a troubled and tragic teenager. That was it, she thought. It was so
In Cold Blood.
She even had a new title.
Portrait of the Con Artist as a Young Man.

14

The Loner

Several hours later, on the West Coast, the sunset lowered its red curtain into San Francisco Bay. Then, just as April showers push worms out of the ground, the sinking sun pushed another species to the surface.

Loners.

A lean young man in a charcoal gray jogging suit ran effortlessly through Golden Gate Park. His shiny black hair unfurled in his wake. Despite his long strides, he didn't breathe any harder than the walkers he passed in the gathering dusk. While his smooth, chiseled face made him look nineteen, his gray eyes seemed older. No wonder, they had been drinking in the world for over a thousand years.

Ikor DeThanatos ran out of the park and slowed to a silky walk. His full mouth stretched into a smile as he spotted his destination: a “refreshment stand” he often visited because of its ample supply of young blood laced with dreams. The Fog City Cybercafé.

A couple minutes later, he leaned against the counter near the window, pretending to drink a latte. He surveyed the room and the wide selection of human vessels warming their faces before glowing laptops. He spotted a pink young woman whose head nodded toward her screen, then bobbed back up. Either she had found something on the Internet worth worshipping or she was the kind of sleep-deprived, caution-deprived young thing who could be tapped for a few pints. Or, if her ambrosia was exceptional, the full five quarts.

To get a closer look at the drowsy feast arousing pressure in his gums, DeThanatos glided across the room with the pretense of fetching something from the reading rack. Halfway there, an image on a laptop caught his eye. He thought he'd seen a falling cloud of mist erupt into human form. He halted behind the shaggy young man sitting at the laptop, which now framed the image of a skinny boy in a black bodysuit.

The young man turned and threw a grin at his curious onlooker. “Did you see it?”

“Just the end.” DeThanatos's voice veiled his concern. “What was it?”

“News clip. Totally cool. Wanna see it?”

“Sure.”

The young man swept the cursor to the play button on the screen. “Check it out.”

As DeThanatos watched the clip of Morning taking the form of a Drifter and then exploding back into human shape, his eyes seethed like small thunderheads. He squeezed his latte so hard the top blew off. Hot coffee cascaded over his hand.

By the time the young man turned and saw the coffee spill on the floor, DeThanatos was almost out the door. “Hey, dude, chillax,” the young man shouted. “It's not like it's real, it's Hound TV.”

Back in Golden Gate Park, DeThanatos raced through the darkness. Reaching a giant eucalyptus tree, he pressed his back against the sinewy trunk and dug his long fingers into the smooth bark. He had to inform the others. He had to convene a Rendezvous. He tilted his head against the tree, shut his eyes, and focused the power gathering within him.

Back in the Cybercafé, a young woman in an apron lifted a mop to clean up the coffee puddle on the floor. Before she could drop the mop, the puddle ruffled. The woman's eyes snapped up. Heads jerked out of computer hypnosis. Frightened faces found others, confirming the vibration coming through the floor.

“Tremor!” she shouted. “Everyone out!”

By the time they all reached the street, it was over.

The call for a Rendezvous had been sent.

And Ikor DeThanatos was on his way to the Mother Forest.

THE OLD COMMANDMENTS

The International Vampire League no longer believes in the Old Commandments. We have reinterpreted them so that we can live peacefully among Lifers. However, in the spirit of full disclosure, here are the Old Commandments of the few Loner vampires who still roam the earth.:

1. Thou shalt not age.

2. Thou shalt not crave anything but blood.

3. Thou shalt not leave a mortal with memory of thy darkest powers.

4. Thou shalt not destroy thy maker.

5. Thou shalt not destroy thy blood child.

We leave it to vampire historians to tell the full story of how we transformed the Old Commandments into the
New Commandments
. But here's a hint. We consider “blood” to be a metaphor for the lifeblood of every civilization: culture.