Dead collections, p.4
Dead Collections, page 4
I was napping in my office when the phone rang, and this time I had the sense, even in the gelatinous half sleep of five p.m. on a Saturday, not to pick it up. I was lying under the electric blanket, a long habit of mine—although the heat didn’t really get into me, it was comforting to feel it against the fuzzy skin. A book and my laptop, with its endless fan of movies, were at my side. Silence. Brief drooping of lids.
The phone rang again, the second bank of rings coming right on top of the first, like two rows disappearing in Tetris. I got up, scattering my things, saw Elsie’s number, and picked up.
“I’m here,” she said, and her voice was warped and weak. “Can you come up and get me?”
“What’s happened?”
“Nothing. I just hate driving, and—I had a bad night last night. I know I’m really early. I wasn’t sure I’d catch you. Sol—are you okay?”
“Why would I not be?”
“Don’t patronize me. Why are you never not at work? Why didn’t you give me your cell number?”
“Look,” I said. “No. I—I’m going to send you up a card.”
“What?”
“I can’t come up. I’m sorry. It’s a long story. I don’t get cell reception down here anyway—”
“Are you on the run from the law?” Her voice was a little calmer now.
“No. You need to go to the elevator on the far left—I’ll put my keycard in it—to get down to the basement. I’ll send it up to you. You come down to me.”
“Are you sick?”
“No more than usual,” I said, a half-truth for which I despised myself as the receiver went down, but sometimes we can’t tell the whole one without the half first, like titration.
Illness wasn’t the right word for my vampirism—I saw vampirism as something that fundamentally disqualified me from life, that limited me to a half-life or a third-life, depending on the time of the year—and I knew that calling myself sick made me too sympathetic. Perhaps it even suggested I was dying, while in fact by any medical measure I was already dead. But there I was, three hours before the time set for our date, which was supposed to be the comfortable, chilly after-hours time of seven p.m.—jamming the door open button on the elevator, conscious of dear Elsie shifting her weight and looking down at her expensive shoes fifteen feet above me. I leaned my head against the wall for a moment and thought of her presence moving toward me.
God, she was exactly my type too—which is to say the kind of person I’d been in the nineties. Goth when I could afford it, owner of too many garments that laced up, hair gone bronze or gold or metallic purple with overdyeing, nose ring like a little magnet, home-sewn costuming of upholstery fabric, cheap velvet, cheap chenille, expensive tastes on no budget until you have a budget, and then the same tastes, baked in. I knew the person who was about to come out of that elevator, and we were about to find out just how afraid of that I was.
* * *
—
She embraced me as soon as she stepped through the doors. I was surprised to realize that she was much taller than me, and that there was sun and wind caught in the wiry black snares of her coat. I felt her supporting herself on me, just a bit, the way muscle is supported by bone. Then we parted, and I kept my hands on her waist for a moment.
“Are you okay?” I asked her, partly to stop her from asking if I was.
“I’m scared of driving on these highways,” she said. “I make myself do it, but it’s getting worse. Last night I barely even slept, knowing I’d have to drive at night. I almost canceled. But finally it got to be too late, I knew it was too late to cancel. But, Sol—are you all right? You said something about being sick.”
“Not seriously,” I said. “Come and have a cup of tea. I’m, uh—I’m scared of driving too. I sold my car years ago.” I didn’t mention that it was because cars are mostly windows.
I took her to the break room: gingham tablecloth, plastic scrims of blue skies over the fluorescent lights. The electric kettle made its settled little sounds. I sensed Elsie calming down just slightly, and then Florence came in.
“Hey,” she said, in a dead voice.
“Hey,” I said, and half rose, as if to greet a visiting dignitary. “I didn’t know you were coming in. Elsie, this is Florence—the assistant archivist here.”
“Hi,” said Elsie, with a tired smile.
“Sol,” said Florence, “what’s this about?”
“I am here on a Saturday,” I said, “doing some work, and my date came over a little early. Why do you ask?”
There was a peculiar tight energy about Florence. I mistook it for the tension of a person who expected to be alone; now I realize that it was the tension of a chess player who sees a mate in five, but is not quite confident enough to announce it. The tension of someone who knows that they need to manage this carefully. All nerves, no breath.
“Why did you let your date”—here Florence nodded to Elsie, as if to say: This is you—“come over early?”
“Sometimes dates do that,” I said. “It’s not unknown. Florence, what is this about?”
“I just asked you the same thing, and then you pointed out that I’m just your assistant.”
“You’re not—it was the other way around, wasn’t it?”
“Nope,” said Florence, and now she was swinging. “You’re bringing people here for sex. Why?”
“I’m not,” I said. “Where are you getting this? I’m—”
“There’s wet washcloths on the floor of your office. There’s clothes. There’s a dildo.”
“I don’t own—”
“I literally saw it five minutes ago. Are you telling me I don’t know what a dick looks like? I was married to a man for fifteen years.”
“The packer,” I said. “I do have a packer. I’m—I’m sorry you saw that—”
The kettle, which had been boiling, clicked off. Elsie said, “Do the two of you want to step it down for a second?”
“Why would I want to do that?” asked Florence politely.
“Let me put it this way. What do you want to come out of this?” Elsie looked—not calm, not resolute, as tense as either of us, but nonetheless there was a firmness about her. “What do you expect to get out of it?”
“What are you implying?”
“I’m saying that if you’re unhappy with the way Sol keeps his office, or you think something inappropriate is going on, you should go to HR about it. Right now your only audience is Sol, who you’re accusing, and me, who’s going to defend him. You need to think strategically, if you’re making a complaint.”
“Maybe I will,” said Florence icily. “Thank you for your advice.”
“You are wrong, though,” said Elsie, “about the office. Or you’re wrong about me. I just got here. That’s why I have my coat on.”
“Oh, yes,” said Florence, “you’re a great detective.”
“You have no idea who I am.”
“You’re Tracy Britton’s wife.”
“I was her wife, yes.”
“I’m going to go,” said Florence. “You’re right, Mrs. Britton, this isn’t going anywhere.”
“Oh, please,” said Elsie, but Florence, making a sort of time-out gesture with a flat tight mouth, was already on her way out the door. We stood there and listened until the elevator dinged.
“I was going to say, ‘Oh, please, Mrs. Britton is my dead wife’s homophobic mother,’” said Elsie. “So perhaps it’s just as well.”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For helping.”
“Oh, no, I think I made it worse. What is her deal?”
“She’s . . .” I got up and paced the room. “Um, I think she just hates me.”
“She’s your assistant?”
“She’s the assistant. Not mine specifically. I hired her a few years ago—I was the one who really wanted to hire her. Nobody else liked her as much as me. But she really hates me, and I think it’s partly for good reasons.”
“Which are?”
Words were cascading out of me now, hyperkinetic and hypermobile. “I’m a terrible boss. They keep promoting me, is the problem. Because I’m so good at entry-level archives shit, but it turns out I’m bad at administration. So to replace me, because I’m bad at administration, I hired someone who’s no good at entry-level archives shit and just grandstands around the office all day. And she knows I know.”
“Well, if you see what’s wrong, you can fix what’s wrong.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t like that I’m trans,” I said, aware of how weak it sounded. “Been pretty open about it.”
“Was it stupid of me to tell her to go to HR?”
“No. They’re okay. I should have gone to them about her. A long time ago. The thing is that I didn’t expect it—I always assume that when she says things, she must mean them innocently. I think I’m a pretty innocuous person—maybe it’s all a front, I guess, a way to be cute and harmless and abdicate responsibility for all my sins—”
“Sol,” said Elsie.
“Yeah?”
“What has she said to you?”
I told her about the articles, the discourses on her wife, but I added, “But she’s right. I mean, she’s wrong, but she’s right. I stay in my office every night. It’s the only way to be safe from the evening and the morning.”
There was a shiver of reaction in her face, a faint sigh, as if to say, I sure can pick ’em. But all she said was, “What do you mean?”
“I’m a vampire.”
The words slipped out easily, easily as a tongue between lips. I’d rehearsed those words a thousand times, said them perhaps five. My boss and HR knew, and my mother, but as for telling my friends—I’d lost them, even the oldest of them, rather than do that. It wasn’t that I was ashamed. It’s that I was dead, and when you’re dead, nothing on that side of the river means much to you anymore. My friends had turned to sunlight; they had vaporized, and I stayed underground, where dead people belong.
But when I said it to Elsie, it was just a fact. And her shock, though it came, was a sympathetic shock, two bodies vibrating at the same frequency.
“You are?”
“I got too afraid to be anywhere but here,” I said, my voice cracking open. “When this first happened to me, I once spent a whole day in a bathroom—the single-person kind—with wads of toilet paper stuffed under the door. Someone who worked in the coffee shop finally figured out someone had been in there since dawn and we had a shouting fight through the door. I had to yell that I was a fucking vampire through the door at everybody.”
“Jesus, Sol. I’m sorry.” She was smoothing, smearing, at my hair.
“I’m used to it.”
“A vampire. Jesus.” She pressed her palms to the side of my head and stared into my face for a long moment. “I know you’re not as young as you look, but sometimes you look twenty-two to me.”
“A young twenty-two?”
“A very tired one.” She pulled my face to her shoulder. “And one who needs to stop talking now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I like you because you’re a talker. I can’t fault you for it. But you’re making me feel like your mom.”
“Oh,” I said, lifting my face away. “Oh, God, why don’t I just stop doing that?”
She touched my shoulder, then pulled away, going to the kettle, pouring hot water into cups. “Let’s go sit in your office, yeah? We can sit on the couch where you’ll feel safer. I bet it’s nice; there’s even a dildo.”
“Oh, you can’t bring drinks in there.”
Elsie glittered her eyes at me. “Are you kidding? You just copped to sleeping in your office, and I can’t bring my drink into the archives? I even had one before.”
“There are some rules that matter and some that don’t matter.”
“Sol.” She bent back over me, her hands tight around the muscles of my upper arms. It made me feel both strong and weak, full of power and exhausted. I closed my eyes and felt her mouth on my mouth, cool and slick with red lipstick, going on easily. Just a faint brush of a kiss like a brush of paint.
“You’re beautiful,” I said automatically.
“Come. Come.” She led me into the archives proper and I steered us into the office, kicking the packer under the desk on the way in.
* * *
—
I sat her down on my black leather couch, which is a very unsexy—neutering, really—thing to make out of black leather. Like a deflated animal, that couch; I inherited it from the previous occupant. Then I realized that she had never taken her black fleece coat off. I offered to take it, and she undid the buttons and arched her body up so that it fell away from her, but didn’t go any further. Her eyes went glassy, inert, like a sleeping computer, and suddenly I felt very fond of her. I said, “You’re really afraid of driving, huh?”
“She used to do all the driving,” said Elsie, and rolled her head a little on the back of the couch. “I know everything I say about her is like a cliché. Nobody wants to be a cliché. Nobody wants to be boring. But I can’t ever get her out of me.”
“You sound like it was miserable.”
“On the contrary,” she said wretchedly. “It was great. The trouble is that I can’t remember the great parts. Sol, don’t talk about me. There’s nothing interesting about me.”
“I used to think I wasn’t interesting.”
“What changed?”
“I transitioned. Turned out I was interesting, I just didn’t want to look at myself.”
“Oh.” She made a fretful sound. “Hah—well, I don’t think that’s in the cards for me. Look at this.” She gestured at her lush and mutable body, her wrap dress with the pattern of chevrons, the cleavage almost comically decorated with a little chevron necklace.
“That’s what I thought too, though. I didn’t think my body could change that much, until it did.”
“Well, you’re different, you’re—flat,” she said, as if the adjective had had to drop a long way toward her. “I mean, you have a very boyish body.”
“I really didn’t used to. And I still have this ass.”
“I know,” she said. “Come sit by me, you’re making me nervous.” I sat, and she said, “You’re still making me nervous.”
“You need me to sit differently?” I had my knees up on the sofa, my legs tucked under me; it’s how I always sit. She reached out and touched my knee. Her touch was again almost as cold as mine, and I had the impression she was reaching out for comfort as much as to comfort me, as if my knee were a life jacket floating on water.
“You’re freezing.”
“Yes.”
“Do you feel it?”
“No.”
“How did it happen?”
“They do it with a blood transfusion,” I said.
“On purpose? Who’s ‘they’?”
“Well,” I said, “it’s a weird disease. People used to get it through rat bites—from infected rats. When they didn’t get it from other vampires, of course. Most bites don’t infect people, but nobody knows why, and nobody really knows what controls it. It’s dangerous in other ways. You can die of infections from having a person’s teeth bite into you. Um, it’s messy. I don’t like it very much. My body temperature is in the sixties. My heart and my lungs don’t have to work. My fucking testosterone barely works anymore—trans people who meet me think I just started transitioning. I feel disgusting. I’m amazed that you weren’t disgusted by kissing me. Isn’t it like kissing a dead person?”
“I couldn’t be disgusted by you. Kissing your mouth was like—slipping into a pool in hot weather. When you’re very hot, and you need to cool off or you feel like you’ll die. And your mouth is soft—cool and soft—like milk.”
“Oh,” I said. She slipped her arm around me, with an apologetic, supplicating look, and put her other hand on my belly. I fell apart into her then, my head against her shoulder. The part of me that’s always a little outside my body started bleating its little questions: Am I sleepy? Am I turned on? Am I relaxed? And then it hushed, because I was in a state of awareness of her body, which slipped into me suddenly, as if I had fallen a short way. The heat radiating off of her was like a hot sidewalk with light dancing on it. I wanted that light for my own.
“Tell me how it happened,” she said again.
“Tetanus.”
“Tetanus?”
My face doesn’t redden anymore, and when I would normally have blushed, I just felt a density to the cold, like a fusion of cloudy glass. A greater solidity in a face that normally felt like water; a sudden freeze that cracked my cheeks. I rubbed my face between my thumb and forefinger. “I almost died of tetanus and they gave me this to keep me alive.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“Most people haven’t. If you’ve ever heard of the Milwaukee Protocol for rabies—”
“No.”
“You put the person in a coma and give them antiviral drugs.” I was talking as much as I could in order to avoid the simple pull of her body. “The idea is that since the disease uses the body’s own strength and activity against it, minimizing activity in the brain keeps the damage limited—so you have a chance to build up antibodies before the disease kills you. It doesn’t work, is the problem. The first person they tried it on did live, but she was an outlier for a couple of different reasons. But it gave a doctor in Washington State—Meta Dinius—the idea to treat tetanus a different way. I don’t understand at all how it works.”
“Go on,” she said. She had brown eyes, and their corners were the softest pink, a softness that wasn’t like a wet eye at all but like fur, a rabbit, a bunny.
“I reached into this coffee can of pinback buttons,” I said. “They were yes on 19 buttons, 2010. It was a failed pot legalization law. The can was full of rust, and so were the button backs, and I don’t know how it happens—archival stuff just twists its way into your flesh sometimes, dried-up old rubber band bits, God knows what—but one of these pins just went straight under my nail and deep into my finger.”
