Speaking of which, if you want to know what I’ve learned in my extended time on Earth it is this: beer is good.
I’ve never been much of a deep thinker.
* * *
We finished tapping out the keg that evening, and I immediately earned my stay by providing funds for more alcohol. After that we got along fine.
Turned out Nate was a history major. You’d think with me being immortal I’d be able to help him with that.
“No, no, this isn’t right,” I said, skimming Nate’s copy of The French Revolution: a cartoon history. We were sitting at the table—a cheap folding card table—in their dining room. Books and papers were strewn across the surface, leaving precious little room for one to put one’s beer.
“C’mon, I got a test on it tomorrow,” Nate said, staring unappreciatively at me. “What’s wrong with it?”
I tossed the offending tome onto the floor. “The French Revolution was a street brawl that got a little out of hand. Everything that came after that was a massive rationalization.”
“Pretty sure I can’t say that tomorrow.”
“I can tell your professor myself. You want me to? I was there. He’d probably appreciate my input.”
“Cut that out, man,” he urged, picking up the textbook.
“Sorry. Maybe you should drink some more. I find it helps.”
“No, I gotta study. Seriously.” Nate wasn’t much fun sober.
Gary was the more laid-back of the two. He didn’t know what his major was, but he’d shown a great talent for keg-tapping with a minor in drooling. From the kitchen he said, “That’s so cool,” as regards my immortality. He said this every twenty minutes or so, usually unprompted. In the kitchen, he was fighting a losing battle with a team of roaches that reportedly held a box of Cocoa Crispies hostage this morning and were unwilling to end the siege twelve hours later.
“It’s not cool if it gets me an F on this,” Nate barked.
“So, you’d rather just regurgitate what these books tell you than know what really happened?”
“Exactly.”
“No quest for truth? Where’s your spirit of exploration?”
“You never went to college, did you?” Nate asked.
He had me there. So, I let him be and joined Gary, which was just as well. When you’re immortal you find there are only so many faces in the world, and to me Nate looked exactly like a Bantu tribal prince I used to hang out with. I kept having to remind myself not to speak to him in Xhosa.
In the kitchen, Gary was standing on the counter with a can of Raid and firing indiscriminately into the cupboard, undoubtedly rendering everything in there inedible, including the compromised Cocoa Krispies.
“Any luck?” I asked.
“It’s only a matter of time, my friend. They can’t hide behind the macaroni forever.”
My money was on the roaches, and I was about to say something to that effect when something under the kitchen sink made a loud bump.
“The hell was that?” Gary asked.
I shrugged. “Really big roach?”
Granting the bugs a temporary reprieve, Gary hopped off the counter and pulled open the door leading to the sink.
“Aahhh!” he shouted. He scampered back like he’d just seen a human head.
“That’s who you remind me of!” I exclaimed.
He looked at me like I was insane. (Not an unreasonable assumption. I was insane for about eighty years in Macedonia. Long story.) “What??”
“Roman soldier named Cassius. He was afraid of anything with hair.”
Gary pointed to the sink cabinet mutely, bringing me back to the present. Nate popped his head in. “What’s going on?” he asked.
“Tell me you see that too,” Gary said.
I leaned down and pushed the door open. He was hiding behind the garbage disposal.
“Oh, hey, Jerry,” I said. “What are you doing down there?”
Chapter 2
Had a particularly unpleasant day today. Kopalev called it a “general physical.” I think it was just an excuse to shove his hand up my ass. But I’ve never had a physical before, so how would I know? Maybe that’s standard procedure. And if so, no wonder men avoid doctors whenever they can. Felt like he was looking for car keys in there or something.
He’s a pretty cheery guy, Doc Kopalev, or Viktor, as he keeps telling me to call him. Sometimes it seems as if he’s unaware I’m not precisely a volunteer. And I get the impression he hates his boss—or partner, depending on whom you ask—about as much as I do, which makes me wonder why he’s doing this. Pretty sure he’s here of his own free will.
I’m eager to probe him for details but that might have to wait, just because the whole hand-up-ass thing is going to take some time to get past. Haven’t had anything like that done to me since Athens. Didn’t enjoy it then either.
* * *
I first met Jerry about two years ago, in Pittsburgh. Nice guy, but one of those types you can only stand in short bursts. First time we met we were inseparable for about three months, during which time he managed to nearly get me arrested five times. Which may very well be why I left Pittsburgh for Cleveland—I can’t remember. Jerry never got arrested either, of course, and if he had they wouldn’t have been able to hold him for long, given he’s only about ten inches tall.
Gary was decidedly freaked. He held up the can of Raid defensively as Jerry rose to his feet and crawled out from under the sink.
“You wanna tell frat fucker to ease up over there?” Jerry asked. When he spoke Nate leapt five feet straight backward, knocking over the overflowing trash can behind him. “Christ,” Jerry said, spotting Nate, “another one. Boo!”
They both screamed.
Jerry is an iffrit. Iffrits are crude little beasties with poor impulse control and vast appetites for all sorts of debauchery—basically Freud’s id personified. It makes them a tremendous amount of fun, but only when one is in certain moods.
“It’s a… little person…” Gary observed.
“HEY!” Jerry blasted. It’s hard to believe a voice that loud can come out of something that small. “I’ll fuck you up, frat boy.”
“Guys, guys. He’s a friend of mine. Calm down.” Neither of them looked interested in calming down. “Look, he’s harmless.”
“Fuck you, Adam,” Jerry said. He liked to think of himself as a bad ass. Hard to pull off when the only thing you can justifiably intimidate is a Ken doll.
“Jerry…”
Nate stepped cautiously closer. “He’s… naked.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” Gary agreed.
Like every other iffrit I’ve ever met, Jerry preferred to go without clothing. And, he had a hard-on. Again, pretty much like every other iffrit I ever met.
“Suck on it, asshole,” Jerry said, grabbing himself demonstratively.
“I’m gonna be sick,” Nate muttered.
It was all starting to come back to me. Jerry showing up unexpectedly in Boston, following a crowd to the party…
“Must’a passed out…” Jerry began. Then he noticed the empty keg we had yet to return, and looked at me, aghast. “Are they OUT OF BEER? What the FUCK are we still DOING HERE?”
“There’s some in the fridge,” Gary pointed out helpfully.
“Aces,” Jerry said. He ran to the refrigerator, yanked it open, climbed in, and shut the door behind him.
Gary and Nate stared blankly at the door, then at me, then at the door again.
“Wow,” Nate said.
“Totally,” Gary agreed. “Dude, we gotta throw another party.”
* * *
There are a lot of human-like species out there, on the fringes. An average person might encounter one such species in an entire lifetime, if lucky. (Or unlucky. Many can be quite nasty.) I, of course, have met all of them.
You’ve probably come across an iffrit once or twice without even realizing it. You just mistook it for something else. For instance, Jerry told me he once lived fo
r nearly a year in the Metropolitan Museum in New York pretending to be a very excited Greek statuette. When the place closed down at night he’d sneak into the executive cafeteria and polish off the liquor supply. They fumigated the place four times and fired three sets of guards before someone figured out that the ugly Hellenic Adonis knockoff in the corner changed poses every day.
* * *
Nate and Gary threw another party on Thursday, which is evidently the start of the weekend when you’re in college. I certainly wasn’t about to complain, and Jerry didn’t mind at all. As crude and brazen as iffrits generally are, they all adhere to the basic survival imperative and avoid being seen—as themselves—as much as possible, so he appreciated a roomful of people he could come out and party with. And Jerry can party.
“He’s so cute,” exclaimed one buxom blonde gleefully as Jerry performed one stunt after another.
“I’ll show you cute, sweetie!” he exclaimed, grabbing himself again. This generated a raucous round of laughter.
“Hey,” I said to the blonde, “I’m immortal, you know.”
“Uh-huh. Oh look!” Jerry was giving himself a blow job. Again. How does a guy compete with that?
Frustrated at having been thoroughly upstaged by a talking kewpie doll, I grabbed Jerry off the mantle. “Okay, gang. Let him rest, he’ll be here all week.”
“C’mon, Adam!” Jerry complained loudly. I wended my way through the crowd and carried him into the bathroom, shutting the door.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I was doin’ great!”
“You need a time-out,” I said. “Before one of those girls makes the mistake of assuming you’re harmless.”
“Jealous?”
“Very. Asshole.” Sometimes swearing at him is the only way to communicate. Iffrits are much like New Yorkers in that way.
“Fuck you. I think the blonde likes me.”
“Fine, but you’re cramping my style,” I pointed out.
“Chasing younger women again, Adam? You dog.”
“Only because I don’t know anyone my age. Now calm the hell down or I’ll flush you.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Watch me.”
He plunked himself down on the bar of soap and sulked. I made a mental note not to use that soap in the morning.
“What are you doing in Boston, anyway?” I asked him. “Thought you were having too much fun in Cleveland.” Jerry had followed me from Pittsburgh to Cleveland which, I presume, was one of the reasons I left Cleveland for Boston.
“I didn’t tell you?” he asked, perking up.
“You might have. I don’t remember.” I can be something of a blackout drunk. Immortally speaking, it’s sort of convenient sometimes.
“If I tell you, will you promise not to flush me?”
I considered it. “Okay. But no funny stuff tonight. I plan to crash here for a while, and I don’t want you wrecking things.” By funny stuff I meant Jerry’s peculiar brand of seduction—get a girl drunk, wait for her to pass out, and then spend the rest of the night in her pants. I mean that literally. That blonde wasn’t going to think he was so cute after she found him curled up in a post-coital slumber in her panties.
“I saw her,” he said simply.
“Saw who?”
“Her. I saw her. Fuck, Adam, the one you keep talking about. I saw her.”
I stared at him. “You’re lying.”
“Bright red hair and pale skin, just like you said.”
“She’s dead,” I argued. “I told you that.”
“Didn’t look dead from where I was sitting. Creeped the fuck outta me. Swear to Baal, my scrotum got sucked right into my asshole when I looked at them blue eyes.”
I could have sworn I never told him what color her eyes were. My heart skipped several beats and threatened to stop altogether. Had he actually seen her? “Where was this?” I asked quickly.
“I was polishing off the JD supply at Sully’s, right? You remember, that little dive on the East side? Yeah, so I was up on the bar and showing myself a good time when I saw her face. In the window, I mean. Peeking in on me. Think she was looking for you.”
I grabbed him by the little shoulders. “Did she say anything? Did you talk to her?”
“Oww! Shit no. I just… you know, stared back. I told you, that chick freaked the fuck outta me. Anyway, I blinked, and she was gone.”
I let go of him. “All right,” I drained the last of my beer from the party cup. I thought she was dead. It didn’t seem possible. But why would he lie?
“Listen,” I said, “thanks for telling me. You didn’t have to come all the way here for that.”
“Hey, no prob. This place is a better bar town anyway. So, you wanna open the door now?”
I opened the door and let him scamper out to continue his Iffrit Unnatural Acts performance. He stopped at the doorway.
“Hey, what the hell is she, anyway?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t think she’s human, bud. Seriously. Not that I give a shit about your ass, but I’d do everything I could to stay the fuck away from her.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Thanks.”
Not the first time I’d gotten that warning. Probably wouldn’t be the last. He couldn’t understand. Every other face I’ve ever known eventually aged, sagged, and died. Jerry’s would, too. But the first time I’d gazed at the red-haired woman with the haunting blue eyes was over ten thousand years ago. Human or not, she was the only other immortal I’d ever seen.
Chapter 3
The thing in the cell next to mine is definitely not human. It’s much too strong.
I’ve been hearing this deep pounding noise every night since I got here. Kind of like the sound of distant artillery. Never knew what it was until this morning, when Ringo took me on my daily walk to the lab. We strayed a bit closer than usual to the second building, and whatever’s in there attacked the door. I swear, the door nearly buckled. Which is pretty amazing since just a cursory glance would tell you the whole structure is reinforced with steel.
More tellingly, Ringo flinched. It takes some kind of big ugly to make a thing as nasty as Ringo flinch.
They don’t let it out. At all. Or feed it. I think they’re just waiting for it to die of starvation.
I just might know what it is.
* * *
I was in America the last time I saw the red-haired woman.
It was 1922, and I’d ended up in Chicago at the height of Prohibition. (Why anyone in their right minds would want to ban alcohol is beyond me. What I was doing in a country that banned it… well, that’s a story for another time.) I was dating a girl named Irma, who fancied herself a “flapper.” Irma was a college girl, technically, but hardly spent any time in classes, which came as a bit of a shock to her moderately well-off, stoic Protestant parents when they got around to looking at her grades. She’d discovered illegal booze, short skirts, and heavy petting sometime around her freshman year and said, bring it on. Which was what I liked about her.
I do date, in case you were wondering. I am also—and this I consider a welcome byproduct of my immortality—completely sterile. Imagine if I wasn’t. Between my direct descendants and their offspring, we could people an entire continent. I think about these things.
But yes, I do see women. Men too, at one time. I spent about a century and a half as a homosexual. It ended up being far too much work, so I didn’t keep it up. (You never really appreciate women until you’ve tried pleasing another man. Just trust me.)
My relationships don’t last very long, mainly because it’s hard to grow old with someone when you don’t grow old. Consequently, I’m often the Courtier, Secret Lover, or more recently, the Transitional Boyfriend. Most of the women tend to be fairly young from a societal standpoint (“young” meaning something different depending on which century we’re discussing) and in the exploratory phase of their sexual lives.
Okay, and I like younger girls. Sue me.<
br />
It was a Saturday night, and we were in a speakeasy called Looie’s. You wouldn’t know it was a club by looking at it because Looie’s was in the basement of a former fish market in a run-down neighborhood on the edge of Lake Michigan. It was an ugly, dark place that always smelled of cod and human sweat. The cement floor was covered in sawdust and on Saturdays, there was a live jazz band that was nearly impossible to hear because so many people came to dance there that the sound of scuffling shoes over the sawdust and cement made a rasping sound that drowned out almost everything else, and because the amplifier hadn’t been invented yet. The bar—a crude, wooden table hastily erected by Looie himself—only served bathtub gin and sacramental wine, neither of which tasted particularly good.
I loved the place.
I began that memorable evening standing at the end of the bar, watching the Saturday night masses bump each other on the dance floor, and watching Irma. She was standing in front of me bouncing up and down with the kind of effortless grace I always admired and never had. (Immortal and utterly without rhythm, that’s me.)
“Come on, Rocky, I wanna dance!” she pleaded. I was calling myself Rocky at the time.
“You are dancing,” I pointed out.
“With you, stupid!” She undulated her way over to me and rubbed up against my side, which made me think of doing something with her other than dance.
I looked into her eyes and smiled. She really was beautiful. Maybe today she’d be something less than special, what with almost no chest to speak of and a figure that could be described as boyish. But her legs were long, her eyes were a fascinating green, and she had a nose that was nearly as perfect as Cleopatra’s. (Or so I’ve heard. Never met Cleopatra.) Her brown hair was cut in what might be called, fifty years later, a Dorothy Hamill style. I gave her a decent kiss, which she deserved.
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