I wanted to correct his terminology. I wanted to reason with him, to scold him for playing with fire. But more than any of that, I wanted blood.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Definitely,” he said.
My mouth opened instinctively as I bent toward him, and I heard him say, “Wow. You’re the real thing!”
That was the night I learned restraint. I took only enough blood to dull my hunger. When I pulled away from him, he looked up at me, his pupils dilated, an expression of ecstasy in his eyes. “You really did it,” he said.
I pulled away, wiping my mouth with my jacket sleeve. “Don’t tell anyone.” I didn’t want to look at him. Already I felt ashamed.
“I’ll never tell.” His hand rubbed at the wound in his neck, and he pulled it away to look at his blood. “Wow.”
“Put pressure on it.” I found a tissue in my jacket pocket and handed it to him.
He pressed the tissue against his neck. “That was amazing,” he said. “I — I love you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
He held out his free hand. “I’m Joshua,” he said. “And now I’m a vampire, like you.”
No, you’re not, I wanted to say. But I didn’t contradict him. He was only role-playing, after all.
I might have stayed on in Asheville forever. I had a place to live, friends (of a sort), and a willing source of nourishment. But gradually, I began to emerge from the haze. The way we lived made me more and more uneasy; every day seemed the same, more or less. I wasn’t learning or accomplishing anything. And every night, waiting for me, instead of sleep, was the fact that I’d killed a man.
I rationalized that he fully deserved it. The assurance with which he’d found the forest road and the way he’d laughed at my struggling persuaded me that he’d done to other women what he tried to do to me. Yet my behavior — purely instinctive — in the end could not be excused. Everything my father had taught me argued against what I had done.
At other times I questioned the value of that education. What did it matter to know history, literature, science, or philosophy? All that knowledge hadn’t kept me from murder, and it wasn’t serving me now in any practical sense. I’d survived; that was all that mattered.
During the months of haze, my dreams were murky, often violent, populated by beasts and shadows and jagged trees. In the dreams I ran, chased by something I never saw. Often I awoke with the sense that I’d been trying to call for help, but the words wouldn’t come; sometimes I wondered if the inarticulate sounds that I made in my dreams were actually vocalized.
I’d open my eyes to the same untidy room filled with the possessions of someone I’d never met. No one ever came to see if I was all right. Those were the times when I longed for the mother I’d never met. But what would she think of having a vampire daughter?
Gradually, my dreams began to take on more structure — as if I were dreaming chapters of a story that continued, night after night. The same characters — a man, a woman, a birdlike other — moved through a deep blue landscape among exotic plants and gentle animals. Sometimes they traveled together, but more often they were separate, and I, the dreamer, was privy to each of their thoughts and feelings. They were each looking for something never specified; each felt lonely or sad at times, but they all were patient, curious, even optimistic. I loved them without knowing them well. Going to sleep now seemed more interesting than being awake — a good reason for thinking it was time to leave Asheville.
Joshua was another good reason. He called me his girlfriend, although we’d never kissed or even held hands. I thought of him as a younger brother — pesky at times, but part of the “family.” He seemed always to be around, and he talked of moving into the house. I told him that I needed my space.
One night after dinner (a burrito for him, a half-pint of Joshua’s blood for me), we sat on the floor of my room, both of us leaning against the wall, dazed. Years later I saw a movie about heroin addicts, and the characters evoked Joshua and me in Asheville, in our postprandial state.
“Annie,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
“No,” I said.
He looked so young, sitting by the wall in his scruffy jeans, pressing a paper towel against his neck. I tried to always bite in the same place, to minimize possible infection. I didn’t know then that vampires are germ-free.
“Don’t you love me?” His eyes reminded me of those of another faithful hound, Wally — Kathleen’s dog.
“No.”
I treated him terribly, didn’t I? And no matter what I said or did, he stayed around for more.
“Well, I love you.” He looked as if he might cry, and I suddenly thought, Enough.
“Go home,” I said. “I need to be alone.”
Reluctant, but ever obedient, he stood up. “You’re still my girlfriend, Annie?”
“I’m nobody’s girlfriend,” I said. “Go home.”
Spring arrived, and the whole world turned green. The lacy new leaves on the trees filtered sunlight, their patterns reminding me of a kaleidoscope; the air felt soft. I stretched my fingers close to my eyes and watched sunlight shine through them, watched blood pulse through them. I told Jane that the day was like a poem. She looked at me as if I were a lunatic. “I’m majoring in sociology,” she said. “My days aren’t like poems.”
All I knew about sociology was what my father once said: “Sociology is a poor excuse for science.”
“By the way,” she said, “Joshua called this morning. Twice.”