Suck It Up

by Brian Meehl

  “Sleep in your bed?”

  “Yes. In case Morning gets any ideas, we’ll both be safer.”

  The staggering implication that Morning might be so twisted as to have sexual feelings for her mother turned Portia’s stomach. “Mom, he may be a pathological liar, but he’s not a psychopath. He doesn’t scare me.”

  Penny raised an eyebrow. “He should. He’s a vampire.”

  Portia was speechless, except for an inner voice telling her to turn off the camera. Did she really want to go through life with a video showing the precise moment her mother went stark raving mad? But it was too late. There she was, in the middle of frame, looking as normal as a cult victim.

  She lowered the camera, turned it off, and, for the first time in her life, looked at her mother like she was the child. “Okay, Mom. I’ll sleep with you.”

  As Portia brushed her teeth, she studied her reflection. She had always wished she had more of her mother’s perky good looks and less of her father’s long, aquiline features. But tonight, things had changed. If her mother’s DNA included the whackjob gene, maybe she was lucky she had more of her dad’s package. Then there was the best-case scenario. Her mother was just going along with the vampire thing because of some PR ethics code. Unlikely, Portia reminded herself; “PR ethics” was an oxymoron.

  She spit in the sink, looked in the mirror again, and asked some tough questions. At what point does the inside look at a PR agent become too inside? At what point does a filmmaker become a cannibal gnawing on the hand that feeds her?

  A fang of toothpaste froth slid down her chin. It yanked her out of her guilt. She scooped water from the faucet, splashed her chin, then took another mouthful, swished, spit.

  Returning to the mirror, she found her dark eyes hardened with resolve. Daughterly guilt wouldn’t stop Christiane Amanpour, and it wouldn’t stop Portia Dredful. Sure, blood was thicker than water, but truth was thicker than both.

  16

  A Tree Grows in Manhattan

  As sunrise reddened the Big Apple, Wake Up America had already been saturating TV screens with color for an hour.

  In the cavernous studio, Portia stood near one of the big cameras, shooting with her Handycam as Ally Alfamen began her interview with Morning and Penny.

  Even though she was the most popular host on the number one morning show, Ally had the same problem so many overly attractive and articulate women had in TV journalism. No one believed she could be one of the ball-busting guys. It was the main reason she’d agreed to Penny’s request to come on the show. It was her chance to show the world her newswoman chops.

  The floor manager counted down. Ally set her bright red lips in a friendly smile. The camera answered with a red light.

  “Welcome back to Wake Up America,” she announced cheerfully. “Which is exactly what we’re going to do with our surprise guest: give you a wake-up call on the story everybody’s talking about.” She turned to Morning and Penny seated on a couch. “Here’s the young man behind the story, Morning McCobb, and his publicist from Diamond Sky PR, Ms. Penny Dredful. Welcome to the show.”

  “Thank you,” Penny said.

  Morning nodded nervously.

  “Ms. Dredful—”

  “Penny, please.”

  “Of course, Penny,” Ally continued. “I’d be happy to make that small change.”

  Penny answered her little jab with a catty smile. “My name often has that effect on people.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Inspiring the lowest form of humor.”

  The crew responded with an “oooh” as Ally’s face stiffened. “Touché,” she said gamely, then turned back to camera and got down to business. “As you probably know, yesterday, Morning performed a stunt that has the country guessing his real identity. Is he a magician trying to break into the big time? Is he an actor playing orphan of the month for the Archdiocese of New York? Or is he what he claims to be? A vampire.” She turned to Morning. “Which brings me to something that’s been bothering me about your interview yesterday.”

  “What’s that?” Penny asked.

  “Everyone knows a vampire’s greatest enemy is sunlight. Yet you decided to come out of the casket in bright sunshine. If you’re a vampire, how can that be?”

  Off camera, Portia zoomed tighter on Morning.

  He cleared his throat and spoke for the first time. “The only vampires who can’t handle sunlight—who suffer from solar phobia—are the very few who still drink human blood.”

  “So that makes you a vampire who doesn’t drink human blood?”

  “Right.” He was glad to set the record straight. “Never had a drop in my life.”

  Ally’s face pinched in feigned confusion. “Let’s see if I’ve got this right. You’re a vampire who doesn’t avoid sunlight, doesn’t drink human blood, but does turn into a cloud of mist?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  She turned to camera and addressed her audience. “Which is exactly what we’re hoping Morning will do now, and blow away all those naysayers who believe”—she turned back to Morning—“that you are, for lack of a better word, a fraud.”

  Penny leaned forward, but Morning beat her to the punch. “Actually, Ms. Alfamen, I’d rather not do the Drifter, I mean, the mist thing. It scared some people yesterday, and the last thing I want to do is scare anyone.”

  Ally reached out and patted him on the knee. “Oh, Morning, I’m sure you’re perfectly harmless. Please, humor us.”

  Ignoring her patronizing tone, Morning dropped his chin to his chest to concentrate.

  There was a long pause.

  Too long for live television.

  Ally turned to Penny. “What’s he doing? Is he going to cry?”

  Penny opened her hands. “I have no idea.”

  Ally had seen enough. “Well, folks, there you have it. Sometimes it’s not pretty, but on Wake Up America we wake you up with the truth. Whoever, or whatever Mr. McCobb is, he’s certainly no—”

  A sharp, crackling sound snapped her attention to Morning. He seemed to disappear in a puff of white light. In his place was a small apple tree, no more than a sapling, in full white bloom. Its roots gripped the couch. His button-down white shirt ringed the base of the tree. Two of the longer roots wore his jeans.

  Penny gaped wildly at the tree. His second transformation was as mind-blowing as the first.

  Ally’s eyes blinked incessantly as she tried to make sense of what had happened.

  At first, Portia thought some circuit had fried in her flip-out viewfinder, until she looked past the camera and saw the white-blossomed tree where Morning had been. Her filmmaker instincts were overwhelmed. Her camera now shot a close-up of a cable snaking along the floor.

  The studio was so quiet you could hear an apple blossom drop. One did.

  Ally slowly stood and took a shaky step forward. She still didn’t believe the guest she had planned to take to the woodshed had turned into wood. To be certain she had to touch it.

  Morning couldn’t see, but he had the senses of a tree, as well as a glimmer of shadow-consciousness. He knew he’d taken the First Form, the Hider. Then his dim awareness perceived something reaching for him. It felt threatening.

  Ally’s hand trembled as she reached for a blossom-covered branch. The branch mirrored her fear with its own quiver. The blossoms suddenly dropped like dislodged snow. The tree creaked as its girth and height expanded.

  It was too much for Ally. She screamed and ran off the set. Her wake-up call had turned into a nightmare.

  Penny white-knuckled the other side of the couch.

  Portia still shot the floor. Her mental ship was more than capsized, it had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.

  Then it all ended in one swift motion. The tree bent over like it was trying to touch its roots. When it snapped back up, Morning was back in his human skin and his Epidex. His pants were still on, but his shirt encircled his waist like a life ring.

  In the pandemonium that fo
llowed, several things occurred.

  The show’s many producers reverted to what they did best. They focused on job one: the mental health and well-being of Ally Alfamen.

  The crew didn’t know if Morning was the next Houdini, a quick-change artist from another dimension, or precisely what he claimed to be: a vampire. But they did know the difference between a major and minor autograph opportunity. They swarmed around him.

  Still slightly dazed and drained from his CD, Morning couldn’t escape. He submitted to the barrage of pens and markers. As he scrawled his signature on scripts, hats, and coffee mugs, he couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling that his CD had been far from perfect. He felt like a gymnast who performs a difficult move, almost loses control, but gets away with it.

  Portia remained in drop-jawed shock-lock. Her arms hung limply at her side. Her camera dangled uselessly from one hand.

  Unable to hold back a Cheshire-cat grin, Penny stepped next to her. Torn between the exaltation of knowing Diamond Sky PR was about to soar to a new galaxy, and motherly concern, she touched her daughter’s arm. “Are you okay?”

  Portia snapped out of her catatonic stupor. “Mom!” she blurted with a wild gesture, almost clocking herself in the head with her Handycam. “Is he for real?”

  “It seems so.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I tried.”

  “I mean really tell me!”

  Penny graced Portia with a knowing look. “Sweetheart, you’re sixteen. There’s going to be a lot of things I really tell you that you won’t believe.” She glanced at the excited crowd engulfing Morning. “Now, if I were you, I’d get some footage of his first fan swarm.”

  “Ohmigosh!” Portia raised her camera and got a shot as the meaning of Morning’s legitimacy sank in. The potential for her video essay had just catapulted past a Michael Moore exposé, past the greatest documentary Christiane Amanpour could ever imagine. But only if she cut a major deal. “Mom, here’s the thing,” she declared, still shooting. “From here on, wherever you’re taking Morning, I’m going too. The documentary I can make will pay for college and my first feature.”

  “So it takes a vampire to get you interested in Take Your Daughter to Work Day?”

  Portia ignored the dig. “Or week, or month, or whatev, I’m going with.”

  Her mother nodded. “Okay, as long as you go as a filmmaker and my assistant.”

  “Deal.”

  As the throng of autograph hounds broke up, and a producer tried to get the show back on the air with the male host, Penny had gained an assistant but lost a client.

  Morning had disappeared.

  17

  The Fire Knight

  Morning shoved through the exit door into an alley. Hurrying toward the street, he yanked out his cell phone and speed-dialed.

  “Hello, Morning,” Birnam answered cheerily. “I just saw your second outing. I thought the tree was a brilliant touch.”

  “No it wasn’t!” Morning shouted. Pedestrians turned and looked. He hustled down the sidewalk and lowered his voice. “Didn’t you see what happened? I almost grew into one of those trees in The Wizard of Oz. If I had an apple I probably would have beaned Ally with it. But it’s not like I needed one to scare the crap out of her.”

  “I think she overreacted.”

  “No,” Morning insisted, “I overreacted. I did exactly what you told me not to do: frighten a Lifer. But that’s not the worst part. I felt something in my shadow-conscious take over. I wanted to scare her. For all I know, next time I’ll CD into something that really hurts someone! I don’t wanna do this anymore, Mr. Birnam. I wanna go to San Diego and disappear.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Are you still there?”

  “Yes,” Birnam said calmly. “I understand why you’re upset, but let me explain something, and listen carefully. Our third commandment, to not frighten anyone with our powers, is an ideal. We strive for it, but we can never completely achieve it. Because of our past, and because we’re different, there will always be someone who’s scared of us. But you’re going to show the world that the Lifers’ fear is more about them than us.”

  Morning rushed down the sidewalk, so immersed in the call he didn’t notice the man standing in the doorway of an electronics store. Birnam watched Morning hurry by, then returned his gaze to the bank of TVs in the window. They all replayed the same clip: Morning’s transformation into an apple tree. “And I might add,” Birnam said into his phone, “after your last performance, it’s too late.”

  “No it’s not,” Morning protested. “I could—”

  “By the end of the day, hundreds of millions of people will know who and what you are,” Birnam said sternly. “Turning back now is as impossible as turning back into a Lifer. Like it or not, you’re our first ambassador to people of mortality. What you do in the next few days will determine the future of our race. You said it best, Morning. You can be a superhero or a supergoat.”

  The connection went dead. Morning stopped and jammed the phone in his pocket. He wasn’t sure what to do: go back to the studio or keep going, keep running. Then something across the street caught his eye. An American flag hung in the still air above a huge bay door. It was a firehouse. He frowned at the memory of another Lifer dream that had been cut short: becoming a firefighter. The urge to visit the old ambition pulled him across the street.

  The sun sliced into the open bay, illuminating the front of a pumper truck. Its red paint and silver chrome sparkled from a recent washing. A tongue of water darkened the sidewalk.

  Down the street, Birnam watched his troubled “guinea pig” scurry across the wet sidewalk and disappear into the bay. There was no point in stopping him. He knew Morning’s temptation to reclaim the past would come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. And until he faced all his temptations, the great experiment wouldn’t be over.

  The firehouse was silent except for the drip of water. Morning figured the firefighters were upstairs having breakfast. Their bunker gear hung on the wall in a long row.

  He stared at the row of bodiless suits. Each hanging figure was topped by a wide-brimmed black leather helmet with the fire company’s red insignia on the front. Underneath each helmet hung a black bunker coat with three yellow and white reflective stripes across the back, hips, and hem. Thick black trousers reached down from under the coats, stretching toward boots waiting on the floor.

  He mouthed the names firefighters used for their bunker gear: Personal Protective Equipment, PPE, turnout. “Turnout” was his favorite. It said action, dashing off to the rescue. Which, for Morning, is what the suits looked like they wanted to do. Like the costumes of all superheroes, the outfits seemed to have a life of their own. The neon yellow stripes quivered in anticipation, like bumblebees gathered in a hive. He imagined the alarm sounding, and the suits—unable to wait for the flesh and blood that rode inside them—jumping off their hooks, dropping into their boots, leaping on the truck, and speeding off to fight the fire themselves.

  As the fantasy wailed through his imagination, an even wilder vision careened through him. What if he could become both? A superhero and a firefighter.

  He almost laughed at the absurdity of it, and scolded himself. He hadn’t entered the firehouse to indulge in fantasies. He’d come to revisit the family he had once hoped to adopt when he turned eighteen.

  He moved around the other side of the fire engine, past the cab and crew cab. The expanse of detail took him back to the hours he’d spent memorizing the weaponry on one of these war wagons. He glanced up at the neat bed of folded fire hose. “Two-and-one-half-inch crosslay matidales ready to go.” He scanned the gleaming chrome of the pump panel. “Discharge gauges with crank wheels to adjust GPM, gallons per minute. Intake gauges and bleeder valves.” He touched the most massive valve protruding from the panel like a chrome horn. “Six-inch steamer valve.” He slowly walked along the back half of the rig. “Storage compartments, irons box, a five-hundred-gallon tank c
apable of pumping twelve hundred and fifty GPM.” His eyes caught the long steel nozzle protruding from the top of the truck. “Rear-mounted deck gun.” Swinging around the back, he stared up at the bed of heavy hose folded like a giant stack of fettuccini. “Five-inch LDH, large-diameter hose.”

  “With an accordion fold,” a voice sounded.

  Morning’s heart almost shot out of his chest. Spinning around, he found an old fireman sitting in a chair against the wall. He had a bushy white moustache, and his swept-back hair was as silver as the chrome on the engine. His face was a craggy wall of old leather. He wore bunker trousers, held up by wide blue suspenders, and an FDNY T-shirt. A paper wrapper with a half-finished egg and cheese roll rested on his knee.

  “I’m sorry,” Morning blurted, “I didn’t know—”

  “You didn’t know I was here, but it seems you know a few things about my rig.” The fireman’s voice graveled with smoke damage.

  “Yes, sir, I do.” Morning was relieved the man didn’t seem to recognize him.

  The fireman gave him a friendly wink. “All right, let’s see what you know. If I’m the one that just washed her down, who am I?”

  “The chauffeur,” Morning answered.

  The old man’s mustache spread into a smile. He pointed his meaty hand at the engine’s running board. “The chauffeur says have a seat.”

  Morning sat on the chrome running board.

  Taking a bite of his sandwich, the fireman chewed and talked at the same time. “Lemme guess, you wanna be a firefighter, right?”

  He wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Have you thought about it enough to know whether you wanna be a firefighter or a fire knight?”

  The term caught Morning by surprise. He thought he knew firefighter lingo inside and out. “What’s a fire knight?”

  “A firefighter knows the equipment; a fire knight knows the code.”

  “The code?”

  “It’s all right here.” The fireman plucked at the FDNY emblem on his shirt. “Know what this is?”