Suck It Up

by Brian Meehl

Leaguers want the same things any minority wants that has suffered the slings, arrows, and stakes of persecution.

  OUR SHORT LIST

  1. Respect.

  2. Equal rights.

  3. To make staking a hate crime.

  4. To put our holidays on the calendar.

  5. To have a parade on Vampire Pride Day.

  * * *

  8

  Portia Dredful

  Portia gripped the fat cheeseburger with its overhangs of lettuce, bacon, mushrooms, and raw onion. Her jaw yawned open, and she chomped down. Burger juice rained onto her plate.

  Almost seventeen, Portia didn’t look a bit like her mother. She got her looks from her father. Which was the only thing she got from him these days. When she was thirteen, her mother had hit the husband eject button, and Dad hadn’t stopped flying until he landed in Australia. Portia was six inches taller than her mother, with olive skin. Her languid figure was a mushroom stalk under a mad cap of curly, dark brown hair. Two of the few things her father managed to get right were the nicknames he had given Portia and Penny: the Gypsy and the Gremlin.

  As the Gypsy savored her first scrumptious bite of cheeseburger, the locks on the apartment door clacked. Her mother bustled into the kitchen, followed by a skinny kid in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans. Normally, Portia would have gotten the first word in, but her tongue was burger-tied.

  “This is my daughter, Portia,” Penny said. “She’s a recovering vegetarian.”

  Portia swallowed and spoke to the scrawny teenager. “You’ve obviously met Penny. She’s a recovering mother.” Her dark eyes shifted to her mother. “Your burger’s on the stove. Is this my punishment for not waiting for you? You bring home a stray?”

  “His name is Morning McCobb. And he, my darling daughter—”

  “Lemme guess.” Portia gave him a quick once-over. “He’s either a chess prodigy or winner of the latest reality show, America’s Next Top Geek?”

  Morning was torn between lobbing a comeback about him winning Top Geek only because she wasn’t allowed to win two years in a row, and wanting to thank her for being no Rachel Capilarus. Birnam no longer had to worry about him busting out in bloodlust and hanging his fangs on the first Lifer girl he met. It’s not that he thought Portia was ugly; she was okay. She just wasn’t a girl who would make him forget the poster hanging in the Bloodlust Management classroom: Just Say No to Chugalugs.

  “You’re not even close,” Penny informed her daughter with a tiny smile. “Morning is a vampire.”

  “Right,” Portia deadpanned, then positioned her burger for another bite. “Another freaky client from Diamond Sky PR, as in Pesos and Rubles.”

  “As in Pays the Rent,” Penny countered. “So be nice.”

  Portia stood up and shoveled a second cheeseburger onto a bun on a plate. “Okay, I’ll give him your burger.”

  Morning tried to stop the mother-daughter bout from escalating any further. “That’s okay, I don’t eat”—they both turned to him—“meat.”

  “Of course you don’t,” Portia said, slapping the bun top on the burger. “You’re a vampire.” She lifted it and squeezed juice onto the plate. “But we’ve got plenty of drippings.”

  “Portia,” Penny cautioned, “don’t be rude.”

  “Rude? Who’s being rude?” She dropped the burger back on the plate. “It’s my night to make dinner. You don’t show. You don’t call. Then you come home with some goth who doesn’t even know how to dress the part.” She glared at Morning. “I mean, what’s your angle? Are you the coming of the antivampire?”

  Morning returned her glower with a pensive look. “Yeah, that’s one way of looking at it.” Before she could fire her next shot of venom, he turned to Penny. “You know, maybe I should stay at a hotel.”

  Portia’s eyes bugged wide. “What? He’s staying here?”

  “Just for one night,” Penny explained.

  “Mom, I have to study. I can’t babysit him!”

  “Nobody said you had to. I’ll entertain him.”

  “Why should you entertain him when he could be a lot more entertained in a hotel room?”

  “He’s too young to stay in a hotel by himself.”

  “You put me in a hotel room by myself.”

  “That’s because you snore and I needed a good night’s sleep.”

  “Oh, great!” Portia eye-rolled. “Now he’s going to spend the night with his ear plastered to the wall waiting to hear me snore.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “Don’t be naive, Mom! He’s a teenage boy so saturated with testosterone he thinks anything a girl does is a turn-on!”

  Their cross talk was interrupted by the metallic pop of a ring top. They both snapped toward the sound. Morning’s silver case rested on the countertop. He held a small can with no label. Birnam had given him several unlabeled cans of Blood Lite for use before he came out to the world. He stuck a straw in the can and took a drink. The straw turned magenta.

  “What’s that?” Portia asked.

  He swallowed. “It’s like a protein drink.” He gave her an impish smile. “We’re all recovering from something. I’m a recovering eater.”

  Penny laughed.

  Portia didn’t know whether to laugh or call Bellevue to have the kid who really thought he was a vampire carted away in a straitjacket, with a two-jacket option to have her mother taken away as well for bringing home such a whackjob.

  Morning took another sip and stared at Portia. It was the first time he’d seen her when she wasn’t talking or chewing. She was prettier than he’d first thought.

  Portia stared back. Just because he’d cracked a good joke and thrown the ball back in her court didn’t mean she was going to look away. What really bugged her was the difference between his eyes and the rest of him. Everything about him—his gangly arms and legs, his plank of a body, his disheveled mop of hair, and his whiskerless face—said nerdy, attitude-riddled kid trying to slog his way across the messy flypaper of teendom. But there was something in his dark brown eyes that didn’t go with all that. It was like his eyes were older than the rest of him.

  Before she could decipher who he was, and what he was up to, she took her ball and left the game. “While you and the”—she air-quoted—“‘vampire’ are down here yukking it up, I’ll be studying.”

  Morning noticed that she air-quoted with just her index fingers. He wondered if in the ten months he’d been away from the city single-digit air-quotes had become the new thing.

  She grabbed her plate and climbed the spiral staircase off the kitchen. Portia was defaulting to her number one rule when meeting a guy for the first time: Assume the worst. Or more explicitly, every guy you meet is coming to bat to get to first, second, third, or all the way home.

  As she closed her bedroom door, she realized another weird thing about the domestic invader. He was so laid-back he seemed to be coming to the plate without a bat. It could mean one of two things. Either he was sneaky-clever, or he was gay. For the moment, she was leaning toward sneaky-clever, because, she had to admit, his crack about being a recovering eater was witty.

  Back downstairs, while Penny ate her cheeseburger and Morning sipped his Blood Lite, she asked him about his life. He told her about his years at the St. Giles Group Home, and the countless trial months he’d had with foster families that never panned out. He told her about his favorite nun at St. Giles, Sister Flora, and how she joked about installing a revolving door to accommodate his comings and goings.

  It was the kind of getting-to-know-him talk that Morning had hoped would set the stage for him CDing into one of the Six Forms and showing Penny he wasn’t some goth kid with fang envy. He was the real deal. But her daughter had complicated things. As much as he wanted to blow Portia away for being so bitchy, Birnam had stressed how important it was for his first CD to be nonthreatening, to keep the freak-out factor to a minimum. If he came out now, and Penny couldn’t keep it a secret, there was no telling what Portia might do. If a t
eenage boy sleeping in the guest room grossed her out, her reaction to a vampire doing the same would probably involve carving one of her bedposts into a stake. And the last way he wanted to end his first day back in Lifer-land was with a dart in his heart.

  After dinner, Penny left Morning in the living room to watch TV, and then retreated to her office off the living room. He examined their DVD collection: romantic comedies, old seasons of Grey’s Anatomy, along with a strange mix of foreign films and offbeat documentaries. He was amazed they didn’t have one superhero blockbuster. No Batman, no Spider-Man, no X-Men, nothing. Obviously, they were culturally deprived. He turned on the TV and channel surfed until he found the animated movie tribute to Watchmen, The Incredibles.

  After studying for her AP English test, Portia spent the next hour cruising the Web for short student films and video essays. She still hadn’t found a topic, a theme, or even a glimmer of inspiration for the ten-minute video essay she had to make as part of her application to NYU Film School and the other top-notch film schools that had to accept her. She had just started her junior year at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts, so she still had time. But making an audition film that’s drop-dead genius can take a lifetime. She only had a year.

  When the sound of a jacked-up action sequence from The Incredibles blared from downstairs, she remembered the weird guy who had a thing for a drink that looked like a Pepto-Bismol–beet juice smoothie. The guy who would soon be sleeping in the next room. The guy who was going to subject her to strange and disgusting noises in the middle of the night. The guy who had inspired her to check the lock on her door three times.

  Not finding anything inspirational on docsthatrock. com, Portia Googled “Morning McCobb.” Maybe if she discovered he was an escaped felon, called 911, and had him in handcuffs before she brushed her teeth, she could save herself and her mother from being splattered across the front page of The Post. The latest victims of the Magenta Milk Killer.

  She got one hit. It was from the website for The Lower East Side Voice. She clicked on it. A newspaper article filled the screen. The date was from the mid-nineties. There was a picture of a transit cop holding a skinny toddler. The toddler was reaching up and trying to take off the cop’s hat. She read the caption below the photo. “Officer Newsome and Morning McCobb.” The article’s headline bannered, “Rescue on the ‘Williams Bird Bridge.’” She read on.

  * * *

  If not for the heroic actions taken by Officer Phil Newsome, we would be mourning the last morning of little Morning McCobb. Last Monday, three-year-old Morning escaped from the St. Giles Group Home for Boys, evaded concerned citizens for three blocks, and ran into the middle of the A.M. rush-hour traffic coming off the Williamsburg Bridge. Waving his arms and shouting, “Go ’way. Not your bridge! Go ’way!” he was almost struck by several swerving vehicles. Directing traffic near the base of the bridge, Officer Newsome sprang into action, ran into the oncoming traffic, scooped up Morning, and saved him from serious injury or worse.

  After the toddler was reunited with a panicked Sister Flora from St. Giles, the nun explained what was behind Morning’s strange behavior. The night before, when Morning mispronounced Williamsburg Bridge as “Williams Bird Bridge,” Sister Flora made up a bedtime story about the Williams Bird Bridge and why pigeons fly. Before the story put little Morning to sleep, it also planted a bizarre notion in his impressionable mind: The bridge had been unfairly taken away from the pigeons. The next morning, the outraged toddler took it upon himself to correct this injustice. So he charged onto the “Williams Bird Bridge” to reclaim it for the pigeons. Fortunately, Officer Newsome charged after him and saved Morning’s first heroic act from being his last.

  * * *

  Portia read the article twice before she realized why she was so fascinated with this little squib of a story. What if her video essay was about this incident? Like a minidocumentary of then and now. She could do a dramatic recreation of the event, and then mix it with interviews with Morning, Officer Newsome, and Sister Flora. It would be so Ken Burns. But she needed to know more. Especially about the bedtime story the nun had told Morning. What kind of story would motivate a three-year-old to run into traffic?

  Portia grabbed her Sony Handycam, unlocked her door, and stepped into the hall. The TV downstairs was now off. The only noise was her mother’s voice on the phone in her office. She glanced down the hall. The door to the guest room was shut. Light spilled from underneath it. He’d gone to bed, but he was still awake.

  She moved to his door and raised a hand to knock. She stopped. She couldn’t believe what she was doing. It was so stupid. If she knocked and asked him about Sister Flora’s bedtime story, he would totally take it the wrong way. She’d be standing there in her baggy sweats and NYU sweatshirt, but all he’d see, in his testosterone-steeped stupor, would be a Victoria’s Secret model who had knocked on his door! A Victoria’s Secret model who had knocked on his door, and wanted to film something!

  Retreating to her room, she muttered, “It can wait till morning.” She chuckled at her unintended joke and re-locked her door.

  * * *

  FAQs

  CAN VAMPIRES HAVE CHILDREN?

  No. We’re a sterile race. Which is a good thing. An immortal race that could breed would soon turn the world into a mosh pit of immortals. Sterility is the price we pay for immortality.

  WHAT IS IMMORTALITY?

  An ancient way of being. Many species started out immortal. While a few species survive today that can live for hundreds, even thousands of years, mortality evolved in most species for two reasons. (1) It saves them from overwhelming their habitat. (2) Aging and death allows each generation to adapt and evolve in an ever-changing environment.

  In this way, people of mortality are a more evolved species than immortals. But we too can adapt to ensure our survival. Whereas vampires were once the most feared race on earth, we have evolved into a benign and peaceful people. Today, we are no more threatening than an apple orchard.

  * * *

  9

  Morning Mystified

  Early the next morning, when Portia’s alarm joggled her awake, she thought it was a dream that her mother had endangered their lives by bringing home a stranger and letting him sleep in the guest room. Then she saw the article from the Lower East Side Voice that she’d printed and left on her desk. It all came back to her, especially the part about the untold story of what had motivated little Morning to throw himself into traffic on the Williams Bird Bridge. And the fantastic idea she’d come up with for her video essay.

  After pulling on jeans and a sweatshirt, she ate a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. Except for bird racket coming from the back garden, the apartment was quiet. Her mother was still in bed. No surprise there. She was a night owl. But the silence coming from the upstairs was irritating. She noisily rinsed her bowl and clattered it into the dishwasher. Then she realized that even if she woke him up, of course he was going to pretend to sleep in. To keep up his vampire act, he wouldn’t get up until after sunset. Which was perfect. After school, she’d fire up her Handycam, park herself outside his door, and when he emerged, pepper him with questions about the Williams Bird Bridge. It would be so 60 Minutes.

  But to pull it off there was another bridge that needed mending. Before leaving for school, she slid a note under the guest room door.

  Morning, Morning,

  Wait—wait! Don’t tear this up ’cause you’ve heard that doofy joke a gazillion times, and ’cause you must hate me for being so rude last night. I’m blaming it on PTS (Pretest Stress). Being rude, not the lame joke. There’s no excuse for that. Anyway, having a “vampire” as a houseguest is a lot cooler than the last one we had, Two-Headed Harry. (Don’t ask.) Soooo…mi crib es su crib, and all that.

  Your new roomie,

  Portia

  PS Look forward to fangin’ out—oops—I mean hangin’ out with ya later.

  Morning didn’t have to pretend to sleep in. The
previous day had been long and exhausting, even for someone with the recuperative powers of a vampire. But his stay in horizontal heaven was cut short by Penny pounding on the door. She told him to hurry up and get dressed. He barely had time to swill a Blood Lite before they were out the door.

  Morning squinted against the sun brightening both sides of the narrow street. Penny hailed a cab. He stumbled into the backseat after her. He was barely awake, and only because he’d read Portia’s note. Her change of mood was an eye-opener, especially the part about “mi crib es su crib.” That could be taken a lot of different ways. When Penny gave the driver an address on the Lower East Side, Morning’s brain jolted to full alert. “We’re going to St. Giles?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that the first move in Mr. Birnam’s playbook?”

  “No,” Penny answered with a frown. “Your friend, or whatever he is, has a twisted sense of humor. His so-called playbook is blank.”

  Morning laughed.

  She shot him a testy look. “Did you know that?”

  “No.” He immediately got Birnam’s joke. A vampire had never been outed. How could there be a playbook for a game that had never been played? “But that’s a good thing,” he added. “Now you get to write the playbook as it goes.”

  “Yes, for as long as it goes.”

  “Why are we going to St. Giles?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Anticipation surged through him. “I haven’t seen Sister Flora for almost a year.”

  “Sorry, Morning,” she said. “When I called last night, they told me she’s moved on to other things.”

  He deflated. The nuns at St. Giles came and went, but Sister Flora had been there since his first day. As far as he was concerned, she was the only reason to go back. “C’mon, what are we doing there?”