Generation V

by M. L. Brennan

  We both laughed for a minute, and then I glanced over at him again. I remembered that when I was little, Matt always seemed to be laughing, and that he had a revolving series of girlfriends, but now there were a lot of frown lines around his perpetually tight-lipped mouth, and I knew that his relationships usually couldn’t outlast green bananas. I felt like I wanted to ask him more about it, but he was clearly uncomfortable, so I let it go while he started a long monologue about the Red Sox that lasted through the rest of the meal.

  When we were heading out, the waitress waved us off, pocketing the check, and I knew that she must know about the owners, and who Matt was. My stomach was full, but for a second I thought about the owner, still looking for a daughter who he must know was dead, and I actually felt guilty for the free meal.

  My guilt lasted through Matt dropping me back off and the rest of my shift. I managed to miss my bus again, and I counted all the things that I had to do on the long walk home. It was a warm afternoon, and I’d worked up a sweat by the time I got to my apartment. The door was unlocked, an unfortunate but not entirely unusual by-product of living with Larry, who on more than one occasion had lost his keys and just left the door itself unlocked when he went out.

  I opened the door slowly and cautiously, just in case a thief had finally taken Larry up on this repeated offer to steal all of our stuff. But instead of some crackhead bent on financing a drug addiction, I found something far more unexpected in our kitchen.

  Beth, my girlfriend—if I could even call her that anymore.

  I hadn’t seen her in almost three weeks, after a shared trip down to a film festival on the Brown University campus. It had been a great date, with lots of clandestine groping and making out intermixed with whispered comments about directorial decisions. Later, Beth got us into a festival after-party organized and hosted by the film studies department, and I’d finally begun hoping that we were getting over the whole sex-with-my-roommate business. She’d excused herself to go to the bathroom, and I was going for a second pass at the buffet table when a casual glance over my shoulder revealed what she was actually doing: giving her phone number to a doctoral candidate in his thirties who, judging by his bright red slacks, was clearly a tool. The evening had ended in one of those crappy party situations where you’re having a fight in a hallway, and everyone you know ends up walking past you. The result of the fight had not been positive—Beth had accused me of having repressively traditionalistic gender and sexual beliefs and told me to read Judith Butler. I’d ended up so much on the defensive that I actually apologized to her when I dropped her off at her apartment. Two days later she’d sent me a sixteen-page e-mail that outlined her view of what a modern and liberated relationship was supposed to look like, which boiled down to her being able to have sex with as many people as she liked.

  To give credit where it was due, it was really well argued, and the footnotes were flawless. I’d told her that I’d need some time to think about our relationship’s “new direction,” and we hadn’t seen each other since then. Mostly I’d been trying to come up with a better response to her e-mail than “You shouldn’t because it makes me unhappy (plus I really don’t want to catch venereal diseases).” Try as I might, I hadn’t been able to stretch that longer than three pages, and I had the distinct impression that word count mattered in this situation.

  Now Beth was unexpectedly standing in my kitchen, having apparently made use of the emergency key I’d given her. She was dressed in her usual mix of vintage finds and hippie chic, with her long black hair with its ebullient bouncing curls tied up with a pristine white scarf. I’d noticed that she almost always wore white clothing—she was obviously aware of just how good it looked against her flawless olive skin, courtesy of her Greek heritage. She was putting a used glass into the dishwasher (not one that I’d used—she’d obviously helped herself to a drink in my absence) when she spotted me. I was still standing in the doorway, finally understanding what deer experience when they see bright lights.

  Beth gave me a big, bright smile, the one that changed her face from an average level of cute to drop-dead gorgeous, and immediately rushed over to throw her arms around me and drop a very affectionate kiss on my mouth, reacquainting me with her tongue in the process.

  “Hey, sweetie!” she burbled when she came up for air.

  I was panting a little after the exuberance of her greeting. “Uh, hi,” I managed, trying to remind my sex-starved body that I wasn’t sure where the relationship was going. “This is kind of a surprise.” She was reaching Spanish Inquisition levels of unexpected, after all.

  “I know, I’m absolutely swamped with work lately. I’m really glad you’re here. I wasn’t going to be able to wait up for you.” Beth had eyelashes so long and full that it looked like she’d mugged a Disney character for them, and now she batted them at me.

  “Oh yeah, well, I understand,” I said, struggling to remain unmoved in the face of such eyelash action.

  Beth gave me another long kiss. One of the many things I liked about her was that she was only a few inches shorter than I was, which meant that neither of us got stiff necks trying to kiss, but she was clearly abusing her easy access. “That’s why I love you, Fort,” she said, making my heart flip around in my chest. “You understand that my thesis has to be my priority right now.”

  I could feel my face flush as I said, “Sure,” though I honestly would’ve preferred that her list of my lovable qualities be somewhat longer and more eloquent. Then I belatedly remembered those pesky relationship problems, and added, as seriously as I could given that she was completely wrapped around me, “But we probably should find some time to have a real talk.” I glanced around, trying to distract myself from how close she was and how long it had been since we did anything in this relationship other than talk, and suddenly realized that her visit had clearly brought some changes to my apartment.

  “Um,” I asked hesitantly, “why is my living room filled with drums?”

  “That’s what I was here for,” Beth said, letting me go and pacing around my kitchen, overcome with excitement and moral outrage as she unfolded her tale of woe. “The drumming circle is having incredible problems right now. We usually store the drums on campus, but Kyle accidentally left some of his weed in the storage room. I mean, the campus police are being complete fascists and accusing him of being a dealer or something, which is so typical of them to jump to conclusions about, just because of how much there was and a few crybaby narcs who reported him. Then someone was a complete snitch and called those Gestapo goons to say that the entire circle was getting high on campus property during our scheduled practices, which only happened twice at most. So we got kicked off campus, and everyone was completely bummed, but I told them not to worry, because I knew exactly where we could store the drums until we got reinstated.”

  There was a long pause while she caught her breath and I tried to take all of that in. Choosing my words carefully, I addressed the most pressing issue: “Beth, when did you join a drum circle?”

  “You are so funny, babe,” Beth said, kissing me again. “This will only be for two days, tops.”

  My brain had fizzled again when she kissed me, but after she pulled back it started working again and I asked, “You were smoking up on the campus? Really?” I’d never done any kind of drugs, acutely aware of the possible ramifications of what would happen if I lost the ability to self-censor my conversation, but Beth was something of a pot aficionado, and owned a number of shirts that clearly expressed her desire for its legalization.

  Beth ignored the question. “I mean, maybe a week at the most.” Another synapse-fogging kiss, but this one was quick and almost distracted. “I’ve got to run. This is the last thing I needed right now, but we’re organizing a protest for tomorrow and they need me to help make the costumes.”

  I shuddered at the thought of a protest. Beth had roped me into more than a few, and I was torn between being glad and concerned that for once she wasn’t asking me
to participate in the fight against the establishment. Then she turned to leave and I saw the fresh hickey on the back of her neck.

  Suspicion flared. “Beth, who the hell is Kyle?”

  But she was already halfway out the door in a whirl of burlap purse, jingling ankle-length skirt, and cruelty-free sandals. “It’s in the college bylaws that we have to be given a hearing within three months!” she called over her shoulder as she left.

  Then she was gone, and I was left with that familiar feeling of having just been caught in a hurricane. I tried calling her phone, but I went straight to voice mail three times. Finally I glanced at my watch, swore when I saw the time, and had to focus on getting myself to Madeline’s on time and presentable.

  I barely had enough time to run a load of laundry to get the stain out of my khakis and take one rushed shower before I dodged through the obstacle course of drums currently gathered in the living room and ran out the door. I tried calling Beth twice more on the road, again getting sent to voice mail, and ended up stewing in irritation for most of the drive down to Newport, until nervous anticipation slowly pushed its way to the foreground. Chivalry had been very specific about when I was supposed to arrive, because apparently vampire shindigs begin precisely at ten at night. Probably for the ambiance. I was secretly hoping that our visitor would have a Dracula fetish and would show up in a cape.

  Thanks to an elderly driver on Route 138, I pulled into Madeline’s driveway at a quarter of ten. I tucked my Fiesta next to Chivalry’s Bentley and hurried inside.

  Madeline and Chivalry were standing in the foyer. Madeline stood on the fifth step of the staircase wearing a long golden gown and an ermine overrobe, lacking only a crown to look like Helen Mirren in the opening shot of The Queen—assuming that Helen Mirren decided to revisit the role in about thirty years. Chivalry stood two steps below her and slightly off to the side, wearing a black silk three-piece suit complete with an ebony dandy’s cane and an actual top hat that brought to mind all manner of Oscar Wilde jokes.

  At that moment, I was extremely grateful that I’d splurged on the OxiClean and had gotten the stain out of my khakis. I was also very conscious that when it came to my shirt I’d been relying on bounce sheets and quick hanging to substitute for ironing. Chivalry had been very specific that this was a formal event, but given the way he was glaring at my tie, apparently I’d missed the mark a bit. Maybe it wasn’t Brooks Brothers, but it had looked pretty good in the thrift store. It didn’t exactly match the color of my shirt, true, but neon orange could be an accent color to green, right?

  As I stepped farther into the lobby, I felt a chill at the back of my neck and that innate lizard/vampire-brain knowledge. I turned and saw without surprise that Prudence was standing behind me.

  The fine tracings of early wrinkles around her eyes are what make Prudence look like she’s in her early forties. She works out a lot, and her extremely impressive body was on display in a floor-length gold satin dress that was cut to offer everyone a generous view of her overflowing décolletage. Her hair is cut in a severe bob, and I happen to know that its brilliant red color is the work of chemicals, not nature. It’s been dyed the same color since the late ’fifties, but Madeline has a turn-of-the-century oil painting of Prudence hanging in her sitting room that shows that her real hair color is a mousy brown. I try to focus on small personal hypocrisies like that whenever I’m around Prudence. I’ve learned that screaming and throwing myself at her might be personally satisfying, but ultimately comes to nothing more than a cracked rib.

  “Hello, sister.” I forced myself to speak normally. I can never look at her and not remember the way that Jill’s and Brian’s blood dripped off her shoes. Unfortunately, interacting with her is a fact of life.

  “This greeting is a sign of our strength and power,” Prudence said, her high voice cutting. She’s never been much for pleasantries. Her bright blue eyes were slitted in temper, and she looked over at Chivalry. “Didn’t you tell him how to dress?”

  “I believe that by the standards of his generation, Fortitude has dressed appropriately,” Chivalry said mildly. He was probably already planning the ways that he would corner me later and disparage my sartorial decisions, but Chivalry has always stood up to Prudence for me, and has often suffered the fallout.

  “I work with stockbrokers younger than him every day,” Prudence said. “He is dressed worse than the intern whose entire job revolves around bringing back lunch.”

  Apparently the tie had been a poor choice. Prudence and Chivalry both looked to Madeline, whose eyes had been fixed on the door the entire time.

  “What Fortitude wears is unfortunate but ultimately uncorrectable at this point,” she said. “Our visitor has just arrived. A show of unity is in order, my children.”

  There was a brief pause, and in the silence I could hear the sound of a car crunching up the gravel driveway. Apparently deciding that no tie was better than this tie, Prudence had it loosened and over my head before I even knew what was happening, and dropped it into the mouth of a convenient urn.

  I let out a less-than-impressive squawk of irritation. “That’s mine, Prudence!”

  “Yes, and now you are no longer wearing it and I have less desire to claw out my own eyes. Everyone wins.”

  I glanced up, but Madeline wasn’t paying any attention to us, and Chivalry gave me a very pointed shake of his head, letting me know that on this one he wasn’t going to get involved. Given that I had as much chance of winning a fight with Prudence as I did with slapping a jaguar in the face and not getting mauled, I gave my tie up for lost. I did give Prudence my best glare. She returned it with interest.

  Prudence positioned herself on the step just below Madeline, and the process of elimination left me trying to situate myself impressively on the lowest step, just to the side of Chivalry. I was uncomfortably reminded of posing for photos for my senior prom. On that occasion as well, I’d been a disappointment.

  There was the sound of footsteps now. At least an academic question had been answered—I didn’t feel the new vampire the way I felt my mother or siblings. With them there was a complete certainty about identity and location. With this one, there was just an odd little buzzing in the back of my head, as if I were standing too close to high-voltage wires.

  Three loud knocks on the door, then a pause. Madeline called, “You are granted hospitality. Abide by its rules and be welcome.”

  I elbowed Chivalry for the CliffsNotes translation. “It means that our visitor behaves himself or we kill him,” Chivalry muttered just loudly enough for me to hear.

  I risked one more question: “Where’s Bhumika?”

  “Already in bed. Now please shut up.”

  The vampire entered first. He was tall and lean, with a pouty lower lip, slicked-back black hair, and an almost feathery thin mustache. He had black pants, glossy black wingtips, and a dark purple shirt with a few too many buttons undone that exposed a few curls of dark chest hair. Even though it was a dark night with no moon, he was wearing designer sunglasses. I felt distinctly disappointed—the first nonrelated vampire I’d ever met, and he was a Euro-trash tool.

  Two more people stepped through the doorway to flank him, and my disappointment melted away to be replaced by nervous discomfort. On the vampire’s left was a cadaverously thin man, whose olive skin was pocked and scabbed on almost every surface. Nothing had scarred, and some of the marks sullenly oozed pus and fluid. Even as I watched, the man was digging his long nails at a gouge on his chin, yanking and scratching with frantic motions. He giggled quietly, and his eyes were scanning over everyone in the room yet not seeming to absorb anything. His teeth looked sharp, and he didn’t have a lower lip anymore, just a line of gnawed and sullenly bleeding skin that made me cringe. He was dressed identically to the vampire, but his shirt and pants were covered with dark, stiff patches where his dripping fluids had clearly already seeped.

  On the vampire’s right was a young girl with long dark hair that hung in two b
raids, looking like a high school freshman dressed up to play Juliet. Her neck and arms were covered with old and half-healing bite marks. Her eyes were dull and uncaring, already half-dead, and she never even glanced at us, looking only at the floor.

  “I thank you for your hospitality, Madeline,” the vampire said. His Italian accent was thick, and there was something in his voice that made me grateful that Chivalry was beside me. He took off his sunglasses and smiled widely. His fangs were extended, long and needlelike. “I am Luca, blood son of Dominic, who was nest-mate to your brother Edmund. I carry greetings and affection, and a desire for knowledge.”

  “Welcome, Luca,” Madeline said. There was a formality to this exchange that was weirdly offset by the incessant giggling of the skinny, and I was guessing crazy, man. “I am pleased by your greeting, and introduce you to my blood children: Prudence, Chivalry, and Fortitude. I hope that your visit here is fruitful.” She paused, and I risked a glance back at her. She looked completely at ease, despite all her formal trappings and phrasing. Prudence looked bored, while Chivalry’s face was deeply disapproving. Madeline continued. “I see that you have created a host. My compliments to you on your accomplishment.”

  Luca’s smile became even broader. “Yes, I am the first in Dominic’s nest to craft a functioning Renfield. This is Phillip, who I wished to speak to you about, and this”—his hand dropped onto the shoulder of the girl, who didn’t seem to even notice it, her gaze never deviating from the floor—“is my dear little Maria.”

  “You are all welcome in my territory,” Madeline said. “And now I believe that dinner has been served.”

  Luca walked forward and offered his arm to Madeline, who leaned on him and led the way to the dining room. Phillip and Maria followed Luca, trailed closely by Prudence, whose long skirt swished loudly on the floor. At the end, I grabbed Chivalry’s arm.