by S. K. Een
anyway—is that Abe doesn’t expect S. Nakamura to be listed two dozen times in the phone book, and he’s not wrong. There is, in fact, only one listing for Port Carmila (a D. and A. Nakamura) and the address is easy to find: Abe doesn’t have to bother with a map search to know that 23 Wakeland Drive is close to Port Carmila’s new cemetery. It couldn’t have been easier to chase Steve up, but once he has both the number and the address, he dithers even though he has the absolutely-valid excuse of returning Steve’s blazer. The receptionist at the hospital told him that Steve had been released early that morning, and while Abe takes that as an indication that he must be okay, it gives him another reason to do nothing. After spending all night—the night of his birthday, and just the thought makes Abe cringe—in the ED, he must be asleep. Steve won’t want to be disturbed. Abe can ring tomorrow, or the day after. Possibly never, except for the blazer—but he can take that back to Feeders. They’ll hold it until Steve comes to collect it, especially if Abe asks Louis to do him a favour.
It’s not as though there’s any logical reason to chase him up. The bet is over, Abe feels reasonably certain that Steve isn’t going to go around kissing vampires in a hurry if ever, and Steve is straight, so what’s the point? Steve could be wrong about his heterosexuality, but even if he is, he’s still unlikely to want a boyfriend, or even just a friend, who can kill him with a single kiss.
What he owes Steve, perhaps sooner rather than later, is an apology.
A night of sitting on the couch, not-reading, while his feet and legs healed was more than enough to leave Abe feeling thoroughly shit about not doing so the night before. It doesn’t matter that it won’t change anything. If he’s not a monster, he has to apologise.
The memory of wanting to taste Steve’s epinephrine-touched blood almost inspires nausea—he needs to leave Steve the fuck alone for Steve’s safety and Abe’s sanity—but he knows what Mum and Dad will say if he dares ask them … or, at least, he knows what they’d say if he asked them before he turned, before they began to handball their opinions to Great-Aunty Lizzie. He knows what Lizzie will say, too, but how can that be right when everything Abe knows about being a decent person—vampire, human breather, zombie, whatever—demands an apology?
It’s a ten-minute drive from Abe’s flat to Steve’s parents’ house, one that he can only stretch out to fifteen minutes by driving at school-district speeds. The house, a single-storey red-brick California bungalow, is situated directly across the road from the new cemetery, something that strikes Abe as a trifle morbid and a failure of town planning besides: residential street on one side, cemetery on the other. Who thought that, in Port Carmila, a good idea?
Three cars fill the driveway: one small sedan, one four-door Land Cruiser, one rusting Toyota ute covered with peeling bumper stickers. Abe drives past the house twice before getting up the courage to pull over. Meeting new people, he tells himself, is a much less daunting task here than it was at home. Sure, Steve’s family aren’t like to welcome him in, but he just has to hand over the blazer, say sorry and leave. He wrote out a card and tucked it in the blazer pocket just in case Steve’s parents run him off their doorstep. Not even the truth that these people can’t actually hurt him helps ease the frantic rattling of his thoughts, so he sits in his car for a few minutes more, staring over at the front windows of the house. Perhaps he should just leave. Perhaps he should get someone else to return Steve’s blazer. Perhaps…
The repeated twitching of the lace curtains at the left-hand window suggests that someone, at least, knows he is there, and when Abe can see a face staring at his hatchback, he guesses it’s well past time to grab the blazer and get out of the car.
The front door opens before he has a chance to knock: a middle-aged blonde woman, clad in an oversized polo shirt, jeans and bare feet, stares at him with raised eyebrows and a too-amused smile. A military-type combat knife rests in a sheath strapped to her left leg; a cloth reeking of metal polish hangs in her left hand. That smile isn’t what Abe expected to see, but he’s not sure that amusement is much better a response. What did Steve tell his family, anyway? Nothing? Everything? Enough that if Abe gives his name, they’ll know he’s not a random stranger off the street? Enough that if he does, Abe will be legging it for the hatchback?
“Uh, hi,” he says, unable to help the feeling that he’s spent far too long just staring at the woman in the doorway. “Um. My name’s A—Abraham—Abe—Browning. I ... um...” He holds out the blazer. “I wanted to, well, just return—I didn’t mean to take it, it was an accident, but—”
She furrows her brow, her eyes drifting from Abe’s pinstriped shirt to his polished shoes. “You’re the vampire Steve picked up?”
Abe doesn’t know what else to do but nod.
“You look so normal,” she says. “Oi, Akihiko! Doesn’t he look normal?”
A second figure joins the woman on the other side of the screen door: a man short enough to duck underneath his wife’s outstretched arm, wearing jeans, ugg boots and an open dressing gown. Steve clearly got his looks from him—the man looks like an older-but-still-rather-boyish version of Steve, albeit with much shorter, less interesting hair. He says something Abe doesn’t understand—he never figured that there’d come a day when he’d regret learning high school Italian over Japanese—and stares with what looks to be shock before finally speaking in slightly-accented English: “He does look normal. Normal!”
Abe stares in shock as he pushes the screen door open and holds one hand outstretched; Abe takes it and Akihiko pumps it up and down with an enthusiasm that surely can’t be warranted.
“Please, come in. I’m Akihiko Nakamura, and this is my wife, Debra.”
“Sergeant Nakamura,” she says with another broad smile. “Please, come in. We don’t have any blood on hand, but if you would like water, or anything else, don’t hesitate to ask. Steve’s in his bedroom. He says he can’t sleep during the day, but I bet you anything he’s out of it right now. Do you have long? I don’t think he’ll mind if we disturb him.”
Before Abe quite knows what he’s doing, he’s stepping into the hallway; Akihiko closes and locks the doors behind him. Abe stops and stares, dumbstruck for the second time in as many minutes: the hallway is decorated with a row of dusty, crooked photo frames and a shining, spotless weapons rack bearing several short swords, staffs with long blades, hooks and axeheads attached to the shaft, ammunition belts and five different assault rifles.
The little handgun holstered at Steve’s back quite suddenly seems like nothing worth the noticing.
Debra darts in and wraps her arms, her warm, living arms, around Abe’s still chest; Abe, positively stunned by the affection of strange breathers, just stands there.
“Thank you so much, Abe. Greg says someone ringing for help so quickly made all the difference, and Steve said something about you talking to him, and, well, you know it’s going to happen someday, living here, but there’s no guarantee a zombie will make it through sapient...”
Zombie? Steve? Abe swallows and stares at her. Does she not realise it happened because of Abe? “It’s nothing,” he says, feeling rather more like he wants to throw himself off the edge of a cliff. “I just wanted to make sure that he’s okay. And, um. Blazer?”
“This way. Aki, how about you get our guest a glass of water?” She tugs at Abe’s wrist and leads him down the hallway, not giving Abe the chance to demur or refuse. “We’ll see if he’s awake, will we?”
He now knows, Abe realises, just why it is Steve can not only talk the hind leg off a donkey but also be so demonstrative with his kisses. He’s not flirting at all, in fact; he’s just used to being around people who touch each other and strangers without thinking about it, so much so that a hand on the thigh probably doesn’t mean anything at all.
Not that, now, any of that matters.
Debra pushes open the second door, revealing the dimness that comes from drawn shutters and a pile of abandoned clothes. Abe recognises the T-shirt and jeans from the ni
ght before. “Steve?” Her voice is just low enough not to waken someone deeply asleep. “You awake?”
Silence lingers long enough for Abe to contemplate escape plans, and then he hears a low, groggy-sounding mumble and Steve’s usual speaking voice. “Just resting my eyes, Mum. Shut up.”
Debra breaks into a grin, clearly not believing this for a second; Abe can’t help a returning smile. “Do you want a visitor?”
“Tell Jack I’ll ring him tomorrow.”
“What if it’s your vampire friend?”
“Abe?”
“Go in,” she says as she gives him a light shove to the lower back. Abe takes an unwilling step forwards to balance, and then he’s halfway through the door, Debra walking back down the hallway in all apparent contentment to leave a vampire with her son.
There’s nothing for it but to go in, Abe thinks, but he stops just inside the door and stares, startled despite his nerves. Steve has a small, rather poky sort of room, but the half-drawn venetian blinds—a relief, since it means Abe can take off his sunglasses—provide light enough for a vampire to see the coils of rope on the floor, harnesses hanging from wardrobe doorknobs and a collection of assorted clasps, clips and buckles on the bedside table, along with a glass of water and a