A Taste of You

by Jennifer Stevenson

  I hear his step on the stairs and quickly float back up to the ceiling, where I’m waiting when he comes in. If I were corporeal, my heart would be hammering.

  He looks tired.

  He lies down on the bed in his clothes. He turns on the TV and flips through the channels at a rate that seems manic, typical male, although I know that everybody but me watches TV these days. Finally he picks a golf tournament and settles down there.

  The longer he watches TV, the tireder he looks. I can feel his heartbeat slowing, feel his energy level dropping as he lies there with the remote in his hand. His eyes move, but they’re not following the screen. He’s thinking.

  I’m watching the blare and color of commercials flash over his face and thinking that he’s not as meat-faced as I had remembered. It’s a much more sensitive face. Little muscles around the mouth, the eyes, under his chin when he swallows.

  He snaps off the TV. It’s dark in his room now. Light from the street outside blazes in the curtainless window. He gets up and pulls the shade two-thirds down.

  Then, to my awe and thrill, he undresses.

  Nice. Nice everything, Agent Nick.

  He seems only average height with his clothes off. It’s not a desk-worker body. No extreme bulges or crazy wedge-shaped torso or any of that, but he’s solid, all the way down, and no jiggle. Just a little hair on his belly.

  I’m beginning to think maybe I should leave.

  Nice cock, though. Light brown, smooth-looking, and, I can smell, quite clean.

  Sheesh, Hel, why don’t you try to suck him off? You slut.

  I stop thinking.

  He drops to the floor and begins doing pushups. Holy crow. Will you lookit that. He does pushups smoothly for what seems like two minutes, than flips over and does crunches, then side pushups, then some planks, then I lose track because I’m just watching, thinking with detachment somewhere in my derby girl brain, too much upper body stuff and not enough on his legs. Men never understand how important leg strength is.

  But mostly I’m just ogling.

  Eventually he gets up and puts on a robe and goes out, locking the door. I hear the shower start down the hall. When he comes back, he is clean and his hair is wet. Smells like lemon soap. What, doesn’t he use his own shampoo? Must be whatever they offer at this stink-hole hotel.

  He hangs the robe on a hook by his jacket and I’m blitzed by his nakedness again.

  I really should get out of here.

  He sits down on the edge of the bed. Looks at the jacket or the wall or something over there. Immediately I think of the notebook in his jacket pocket, and I want to steal it and read it from cover to cover.

  He gets into bed under the sheet. I feel a whole-body sigh escape my immaterial self. He lies with his arms behind his head, staring, it seems, straight up at me. I start feeling hot.

  I move toward the opposite corner of the little room.

  No use. His eyes track as if he can see me. Uh-oh.

  I study his face a long time, but I conclude that he’s just staring at nothing. His expression crossfades from grim to light, and now he smells horny. I check. Yup. A little woody tenting the sheet. I wonder if he’ll whack off while I watch. Oh God.

  But no. The sheet gets really, really tenty. He never touches it.

  His energy changes. I glance at his face. His expression darkens. He groans and turns over on his front, pushing the pillow away, and covers his head with his arms.

  I watch for a long time. Eventually I realize he’s asleep.

  What if I rematerialize and snitch that notebook?

  What if I rematerialize and crawl under the sheet with him?

  Okay, that’s enough, Hel. The part of me that’s kept me from losing it completely and doing stupid stuff for more than forty-three years now drags my incorporeal butt to the hole in the window and I trickle out, retrace the path home along darkened streets, and slip into my apartment through the keyhole.

  I lie awake for a long time, thinking. Well, remembering. I can’t say the brain is doing much higher cerebration.

  Damn, he looked good doing pushups.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I take a radical step the following day.

  Huneefa spreads the skin at my left temple and holds it in place with adhesive tape. “Your skin is beautiful.”

  “My skin is fifteen years younger than I am,” I say, truncating that figure by a good thirty years. “I want a promotion. I’m sick of getting carded.”

  “You won’t be forever,” she says, inaccurately but with great feeling. “Okay, here comes the first swab.” She swabs my temple with something cool, and very shortly I feel a kind of peace there.

  “I can see your point,” she says conversationally as she clanks around in her little tray of instruments. “You sure about this color?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I’m not sure, but I’ve checked the color against Jilly’s skin, not having any other person in my life with my gene base to compare with. Jilly’s wrinkles are a fine gray with tones of brown. Like a henna that has aged before it faded.

  This is what I want. I want to look old enough to buy a beer. I want to date a man who is nice enough to say No to a teenager. I want a raise at work. Maybe if I have wrinkles, I’ll look scary when I give ’em the old Bela Lugosi glare. Come ... here. I want to be taken seriously by the world.

  Especially, I want to be old enough to have sex with a nice man.

  It remains to be seen if Agent Nick is really nice. He may have just had an isolated attack of conscience. If he’s as underfunded as he seems to be, maybe he is on the low end of the totem pole at his agency because of his conscience. Maybe he doesn’t send people to Hinky Guantanamo and they get mad at him for it. Maybe he has kid sisters.

  Maybe I’m fantasizing too hard here.

  I want to know all about him. My insides hurt with wanting it.

  I feel a tug on the skin of my temple, far away, and a buzz begins in my ear.

  “Close your eyes,” says Huneefa.

  I close my eyes.

  I chose Huneefa for two reasons. She has the finest line work of any tattoo artist in the city, and she has the best energy. She’s playing some kind of sitar music right now, which twangs around in my head while she draws extremely thin, faint lines from the corners of my eyes. Crow’s feet, she calls them. Cool. I drowse, listening to the sitar zing up and down the ladder of notes, defining a space inside my head made of yellow, glowing, zooming strings of light.

  I think about how I got here.

  How I became an energy vampire.

  o0o

  It was that night when I dipped into Jilly’s tip apron as usual, at 3:30 a.m. after she came home without a date for once and fell asleep. I’d been awake almost two days, watching Svengooli’s vampire film festival, and I was sick of my life. I was sick of taking care of carefree Jilly, sick of chasing men from the door who had maybe followed her home once but now she didn’t want to see them again, sick of her sudden disappearances and breezy explanations, sick of cleaning up after her and worrying about things she wouldn’t worry about. I had had no sense, forty-three years ago, that I would be in a blind panic today because I wouldn’t have her forever. When you’re seventeen, you know you’re going to live forever, and your mom is forever, but you don’t actually think about it.

  The coin had whispered such promises to me. And I’d thought it all through very coldly and logically, standing sleep-deprived and wobbly-legged in the dark, furious with Jilly drunk and asleep in the next room, wishing I could be the taker for once.

  I planned to be the perfect vampire. No blood, natch, I was vegan, I couldn’t have stood it. None of those dumb cartoony loopholes like vulnerability to sunshine and religious symbols and running water. I’d sleep in a bed. I’d have supersenses, and I’d be superstrong, and I’d turn into a mist and fly away if anyone bothered me. And if they messed with me? Sssssssuck! They’d just disappear in a puff of dust. That way I wouldn’t make ne
w vampires. And I’d be forever young — I knew how carefully Jilly checked the mirror every day. I was no fool. I knew what the world was like.

  But I was a fool after all.

  o0o

  I’m fixing that today.

  The tattoo machine buzzes.

  I try not to think about what if this fails. If my skin will reject the ink. If Huneefa will botch it, or if I won’t like the effect. If the lines are too thick. If the color looks glaringly wrong. If it gets infected — I haven’t had so much as a cold for forty-three years. If it bruises or sends blood or pigment under the skin and makes me look freaky, damaged, punched in the eye. Huneefa has told me I’ll have to wear bandages at first. How long will it be before I can see the “normal” look?

  I’ve thought all these thoughts many times, for several years. I just never wanted it badly enough to put myself through this.

  Now I want it.

  I want it.

  The machine buzzes.

  I am in the zone, a place that rings with sweet and sour soaring electric sitar notes that skid across the darkness in my head like trippy fireflies, like Tinkerbell on acid. I am at peace.

  The air fills with the smell of scorching skin, mixed with a weird burnt sugar smell. I work very hard at not thinking about it.

  Four hours later I wake up in the recliner, which has a kind of curtain around it like the curtain they put around a hospital bed. I hear Huneefa working on someone else across the shop, talking softly to them. They don’t answer. I feel hung over. When I reach up and touch my face there is a big bandage on each temple. Oh, right.

  Huneefa comes over to my chair.

  “You’re awake! How do you feel?”

  “Hung over. I liked that music. What is it?”

  She listens. “Eddie Vedder on the uke.”

  “No, the one you were playing for me.”

  “Oh. Bill Laswell.” She gets me up out of the chair and I shake out the tingles in my legs and go up to the front desk to finish paying her and get the aftercare sheet, which she talks over with me maybe four times.

  I repeat after her, “No soap. No abrasives. Let it peel if it wants to. I get it, I get it,” I say when she launches into it the fifth time.

  “I want you to have a good experience,” she says.

  “Thanks. I do, too.” I sign the credit card slip.

  “Come back in two days and let me see it.”

  What have I done, I think, as I stagger out into the dank afternoon. It hasn’t rained, but it might any minute. Bus exhaust is acrid and heavy in the air. Robin-song predicts rain before nightfall.

  o0o

  Next morning, my cell phone has four messages on it, all from Agent Nick. I call him back while I’m taking the garbage out.

  “Where have you been?” He sounds tense.

  “What’s on your mind?” I say. Some idiot has left the dumpster lid open. Makes my job easier. I have the garbage bag in my left hand and my poodle cane in my right, with my phone jammed between my ear and my shoulder. I take a good look around. There are shiny tooth marks in the metal edge of the dumpster lid.

  “Don’t go out of contact. I’m responsible for your safety.”

  “Really?” What a delightful idea. Nobody’s been responsible for my safety but me, for as long as I can remember.

  “I’m coming over tomorrow to give you the tracer and the instruments. You’ll take them with you when Katterfelto sends you into the blue zone.”

  Tomorrow? I’ll still have the bandages on. My fuzzy head starts to clear. “Drop them by my apartment. If you put them in a little envelope, you can stick ’em through the mail slot, and I’ll get them after work.”

  This next part is tricky. As I hoist the garbage bag into the air and swing it over the edge into the dumpster, I touch the point of the poodle can to the metal and give it a zap.

  Something yelps under the dumpster.

  “Don’t lose them. They’re expensive. And another thing,” Agent Nick says. “I want you to take a leave of absence from work. We can get this Katterfelto thing cleared up much quicker if you have more time to spend over there.”

  “This means you’re going to pay me something on account,” I say. “Because I only have so much paid leave coming to me, and I’m afraid I may need it later in the year.” If and when Ma gets any sicker. My tummy feels hard and cold at the thought.

  Silence from Agent Nick. Then he says, “How much?”

  I look under the dumpster. Little button eyes shine back at me.

  I jab the poodle cane under there, a warning. Then I flip up the lid, let it slam, and hustle back indoors.

  “Twenty-five thousand,” I say, shooting for the moon. There’s no guarantee I’ll get any of the money promised me, after all, and what could I do if he stiffs me?

  “Okay. Give me your account number and I’ll have it wire transferred.”

  “Your ass,” I say. “Bring it in cash when I see you. I’ll have my leave arranged for the following week.”

  “Better get a safe deposit box,” he says.

  “So you can confiscate it later?”

  “Time for your cranky pills, Ms. Hel. Your bite is weakening.”

  I smile, and I’m afraid he’ll hear the smile in my voice if I answer, so I hang up.

  By then my bandages will be off. Also, I’ll have a chance to take a look at that power tower without any Feds or mad scientists hanging around. I have an idea.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Once the bandages come off, I go back to the blue zone, alone this time, and I have my skates with me. The power tower line is much spookier with nobody else nearby. It is very easy to think of these steel giants as alive, motionless only because they want to be. I gear up on a convenient curb, knee pads, elbow pads, wrist guards, helmet with mouth guard, and my skates, which are fitted with outdoor wheels. No way do I want my indoor wheels getting cut up by broken glass or rough asphalt.

  I remember stories I’ve read of people who come out of the blue so confused, they can’t remember their names.

  Geared up, I skate slowly down the street. The neighborhood is all dead factories.

  On the factories’ front lawns and parkways, the grass has grown tall, waving faintly like wheat in the breeze. Doors and first-floor windows are boarded up. It’s sad and spooky, in spite of the peaceful summer sun and a lake breeze.

  The tower with the blue zone at its foot looms over the empty factory. I remember hearing voices, or thinking I’d heard them, when Katterfelto brought me here.

  On the edge of the factory’s parking lot, I stop and listen.

  There. A voice like a promise, a come-on, a lure. I can’t understand what it’s saying, but I can feel it tickling me, teasing me.

  O-kay.

  Very slowly, I roll up to the edge of the blue. It seems to be a very small blue zone, like a cloud concealing the base of the big power tower.

  what do you want? what do you want, hel?

  The voice is deeply familiar. Weird.

  what do you want? anything you want, you can have. anything at all, hel.

  The hair stands up all over my body.

  The blue seems to soak outward, like a cloud sinking to the ground, covering me.

  I’m beginning to remember where I’ve heard this voice before. It was coming from a coin in my hand. I remember that it knew my name, and I remember what I asked it to do for me.

  The blue closes in around me.

  And then I hear another voice.

  “Been in there two minutes. No, she’s not wearing a tracer. I told you, she threw it away. Why would I bring up the coin?”

  I gasp.

  Nick says, “That’s need to know. Are you giving me clearance to release that to her? Boss, she’s only twenty-four.”

  So he claims to believe that? He hasn’t admitted it to me.

  Nick protests, “I really wouldn’t suggest—”

  I don’t stay for more. The longer I listen, the louder Nick’s voice gets. E
ither he’s coming closer, or the weird distance-warping quality of the blue is shifting him nearer to me. Time to get out of here.

  I look down at my skates, then carefully turn around until I am facing them a hundred eighty degrees away from their original position.

  Then I roll. Toward my car, I hope.

  As I roll, I hear something huge moving over my head.

  I look up.

  Above me, the power tower is bending over. It’s bending in half. The long arms of its line carriers stretch and lower until they touch the tower halfway down. Then the arms bend in the middle.

  The power lines stretch like taffy. They sing like screaming guitar strings.

  It looks for all the world as if the tower is bending over, putting its hands on its knees, to look at me, a bug down here at its feet.

  I put on a burst of speed and sprint away on my skates, through a feeling of loss, through what feels like fifty yards of blue fog, although I know the blue zone can be only a yard or two deep, and then I am falling on wrist guards and knee pads onto the smooth black asphalt of the parking lot.

  Panicked, I roll over and stare into the sky, half expecting to see the angular metal crown of the power tower peering down at me.

  Nope. It’s standing up straight like always.

  My heart hammers like mad.

  Right now I would be positively glad to see Agent Nick show up with his you-stupid-little-girl expression.

  Nothing moves.

  Then I hear his voice, again distant, and so faint. My vampire-ears are picking him up. No human ear could catch him.

  “Wait, I see her. She’s out.” He sounds hugely relieved. He starts swearing. The other person he is talking to is not quite audible. Probably he’s on the phone.

  I listen harder, straining, focusing.

  Now I can hear the other voice. “Don’t tell her about the coin yet. If she’ll go in there cold, she’ll go in for any reason. Come up with something else.”

  This is a man’s voice. Gentle and friendly and bossy at the same time. I feel my hackles rise.

  Now that I know Nick is watching, I feel completely safe. I stand up. I look up at the motionless power lines. I look at the asphalt. A daddy-long-legs spider walks down my leg, across the tip of my skate, and flops to the ground. He seems to be headed for the blue.