CHAPTER FIVE
On a Thursday night shortly after sunset, there is a flurry of activity in the Hogan-Summers apartment at a time when the husband and wife of the household usually are hunkering down over their musty books researching at the kitchen table with their child tracing letters on Xeroxed sheets with fat pencils. The resumes Spike has submitted have garnered three interviews and he is going out on all of them tonight, in one fell swoop.
"My hair's not right, is it?" Spike asks peevishly before the mirror that is his wife, begging her to translate his reflection.
"It looks fine, honey. Just fine," Buffy says encouragingly as she mists the top of his hair with a squirt of her favorite spray gel. "Just stop fussing with it!"
He grimaces. "Sometimes I think I should just go back to the old way. Peroxided, slicked back. I had a whole routine. I just had to make three clean swipes with my hand and it would be perfectly in place. Now that it's all wild, I don't know how it looks."
"Amazingly sexy," Buffy comments, running her fingers through the stiffened locks.
"I don't know if I want to look amazingly sexy for these interviews. If I were going to New York to become a stud, sure, but since I'm going out to the Sunnydale Shipyards, the Hampton Inn and the Elysian Fields Mortuary…"
"Button up a few of these buttons," Buffy suggests, noticing his blue shirt is gaping at gigolo level.
And he does. And the result is apparently professional magic. In his crisp blue button down and gray pants he almost looks like someone who could join the ranks of the working class and still have some class. But there's only so much Spike can do to disguise the fact that he is a hottie.
But still, Spike is unsure.
"Sweetheart, these trousers seem a bit more snug than the last time I wore them." He lifts his shirt and punches at the slight doughy roll just under his navel. "I'm getting fat, aren't I?"
"Oh no, honey. You look fine. Believe me."
"But this. This wasn't here before," he says, continuing to punch at his abs. "I'm too young for middle age spread! I'm just over 130, you know!"
"Oh, will you stop it!"
"It's those bloody blooming onions at Outback. I need to cut those out. They're all ending up here. God, I look like a bloody truck driver."
"Ooooh, breaker breaker 1-9, what's your handle?" Buffy says, pinching his sides.
"Honestly, I don't know why you sleep with me anymore."
"Because," Buffy says, pulling him close, "You're so hot, I would kick you out of bed just to fuck you on the floor."
Buffy is speaking in that sizzling rasp that makes Spike instantly hard. He takes her in his arms. "That good, eh?"
"That good," she says, kissing him on the lips and tingling at the squeeze he delivers on her ass.
That's what he will always find exciting and surprising about his young wife. They are always in tune with each other's arousal. Even now, as old marrieds, they bicker as two people do when living together in a legally recognized union, but they are always aware of their need for each other. Buffy is the most sexual creature, human or otherwise, Spike has ever been with. He often thinks that her willingness to please comes from her shaky start in her acquaintance with the realm of physical love in which her first lover told her she had a lot to learn. But he also likes to think she didn't get it right until she found the person to get it right with. Sometimes when he touches her between her legs and finds her warm and damp, he swears she stays that way for him.
But some sense does prevail. She breaks the kiss at its most heated and positions his wandering hands by his sides and not hers.
"Honey, you have to go out there. You've got a job to do. And you know what we say when there's a job to do."
"Right," he says, in a breathlessness he's not supposed to have. "Get it done."
She nods and smiles, exposing the full range of her shiny white teeth. "Get it done."
But he does fuck her before he leaves.
He finds himself first at the Hampton Inn. Having driven up to the stucco box on the side of the highway, he meets a man who could have come from a box himself. And if the box came from a shelf in a store, there would be a warning label saying, "May cause extreme drowsiness. Do not operate heavy machinery while encountering this person."
The man is friendly enough, exchanging what could rate as bons mots in some alternative universe in which humor exists only as an anomaly. "Is it hot enough for ya?" he asks, since this October has proven quite mild. Spike surmises that this man also turns asshole at birthday parties and attempts to sing the descant in "Happy Birthday." When you try the harmony in Happy Birthday you harmonize with losers who wish they were in a singing group and on stage and not at someone's birthday party.
"Well, this job requires you to stay awake," the man says, folding his hands against his girth and leaning heavily against the back of his faux leather chair.
Spike leans back against his own chair, still self conscious about his own "girth". "Oh, I can stay awake."
"11 to 7. It's quite a shift. You have all the crazies, all the morons thinking they can talk you out of full price for a room. And you have to put out breakfast."
"Do I have to cook anything?"
"No. You just have to put out some Danish. Donuts. Brew some coffee. That's about it."
"That I can do. I have a little boy. All I have to do is pour him some cereal and that's breakfast."
The man nods. "Basically, I'm looking for a warm body to stay here at night, close out the accounts for the day and feed our guests. Do you think you can do that?"
"I don't see why not." Although he knows he can't meet the criteria for the warm body requirement.
"And it's all the free HBO you can watch in the lobby."
"Oh, well that's a plus, isn't it?" Already he's got his cap set on many after hours Mickey Rourke film fests to come right in the hotel lobby.
"But I can't understand why you're applying for this position. Your resume is quite impressive. I see you have some experience in the legal profession?"
"I have?"
"It says here you worked for a judge."
"Oh, right. The Judge. Awful job, that. I swear he was bent on destroying the world. I didn't want any part of it."
The manager notes this with a thoughtful incisor against his bottom lip. "Who isn't in this town?"
Apparently one of the Weekly World News headlines about the goings-on in Sunnydale has converted a believer. All Spike can do is nod and smile.
The next interview is noisy and barely intelligible. Spike strides by a hulk of steel and bolts that will one day be a nearly indestructible vessel at sea, the shipyard supervisor assures him.
Above the din of riveting and welding, Spike thinks he can hear the supervisor say, "Working third shift---you have to mind the munchkins."
"Munchkins?"
"Yes. And sometimes there are mighty mice a floating."
Spike is certain he is hearing everything wrong. So far all he knows about the job is that he can expect diminutive characters from the Wizard of Oz and strong rodents treading water. Living as a human has severely damaged his vampiric hearing, he thinks. At last there is enough of a break in the assembly so that Spike can ask a question and hear the answer.
"Is it strictly a night job?"
"Third shift. Only third shift. Hardest shift to staff," the supervisor replies.
"Is any of it outside?"
"No. All inside. Inside."
Spike looks up at the windows, gauging how the sunlight might fall on him in the early morning hours if he were working one of these shifts. Even so, it all looks like hell to him. Sweaty, mundane boring business. He'd be better off clipping Ernest Borgnine's toenails for the rest of eternity.
Finally there is a blast of an air horn overhead and automatically, the men working on the ship turn off their tools, flip off their welding hats and disperse.
"Ah, the break. Dinnertime here at the shipyards," the supervisor explains.
Great, maybe I can find out more about the Munchkins, Spike thinks.
"I saw on your resume that you have some experience in welding. You worked for someone named Jim Amarra?"
"Yes. Jim Amarra Tunneling."
"You know, I've lived in Sunnydale a number of years, but I've never heard of that company."
"It was an ill-advised venture that only lasted a few days."
"What were you tunneling?"
"Well," Spike begins. "Tunnels, mostly. The mission was never really defined. That was a problem from day one and doomed the business on day two when it ended. We caused the collapse of a major freeway. Something we're not proud of, but it happened." Actually, at the time Spike was quite proud. Putting a snag in rush hour on that day was something he patted himself on the back for when he was immobilized by the chip and couldn't do any evil other than turning the Scoobies against each other, which couldn't be done, it turned out. Buffy's army wasn't as backbiting, or neck biting as his was and he should have known better.
"I noticed also that you haven't worked in the past five years. Is there a reason?"
"Oh, yeah. I have a son. I've been staying at home with him, but now he's in school."
"So you were a stay at home Dad?"
"That I was. My wife and I are looking to buy a house. Sort of need a second income to do that."
"Well, I wish you all the luck in the world."
With that comment, Spike surmises he is no a shoo-in for this job.
At the first rap of his knuckles against the front door of the Elysian Fields Mortuary, Spike feels a chill. And it takes a lot for a vampire to feel a chill.
He is greeted by a man whose face he has seen before. The garish visage of the ever-smiling greeter reminds him of the skeletal Gentlemen who stole hearts and voices from the populace of Sunnydale almost a decade ago. But his touch is not cold. He is among the realm of the living, but works in the land of the dead. Funeral directors always have that embalmed-like creepiness that comes from making a living from preserving the dead.
"This is a very simple job," the man says. "It only requires you to be here at night to receive our clients. As you may know, Sunnydale has the highest death rate per capita in the U.S. And three-fourths of the deaths occur at night."
"I'm aware of that," Spike answers as they make their way into the great white foyer of the funeral home with its pressboard wood furniture, demurred lighting and not lived in feeling.
"We are staffed twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. And business is booming."
Spike can only shake his head, wondering what Buffy and he have been doing wrong. They're on the job 24-7 and they slay until their knuckles are raw, but what more can they do?
"You would be in charge of receiving the dead, and seeing that they are shelved and tagged properly until the morticians can attend to them. That wouldn't bother you, would it?"
"Oh, no. Not at all. I've had some experience with the dead. I lived in a crypt for a while before I took to shacking up with the little lady."
"Really? You lived in a crypt?" the man bristles.
Spike is still inserting bits and pieces of his past life which are completely acceptable to vamps like himself, but completely unacceptable to those who are not undead. His wife is constantly nagging him to work on his shoot first and ask questions later responses, but he has a long way to go.
"I was…homeless, you see. I didn't have a job for a while. I had to live wherever the rent was cheap and it's dirt-cheap in a crypt. And you don't have to deal with a roommate's idiosyncrasies because they all died with him and marble is so much classier than cardboard, isn't it?"
"I suppose so," the man smiles cordially with discomfort still lodged odd stare. "That often happens to our men in fatigues."
"In fatigues?"
"You said in your resume that you were in the military. Something about involuntary service in 1999."
"Oh, that. Well, I was sort of a guinea pig for the government. They tried something on me that didn't exactly work and I'm not authorized to speak about it. Classified, you know. I'd have to kill you if I told you about it and I don't kill humans anymore."
At this time a bell rings. The man jerks his head to one side as a dog would hearing a siren and claps his hands. "Oh. You will get to see some of the work you'll be doing right now. We've just had an arrival."
The man leads him to a side door where a gleaming beige hearse awaits them. The driver gets out and goes to the back of the car as though to retrieve a trunk full of groceries.
"DOA," the driver says. "Found in the alleyway outside the Bronze. Been dead at least a day. A girl. Fifteen or so."
The man wheels out the gurney on which sits a human-sized black bag. The bag jiggles like black Jello as the gurney is rolled over the pavement and is delivered into the parlor. The driver then excuses himself, saying there's another that's been discovered on Elm, also DOA.
"It's a really sad job, working here. Especially when there are young people to process. You see some people so young, with such promise. And there's nothing we can do for them except give them a peaceful expression in repose."
They are in a room now, all white with steel tables, all adorned with clients draped in white sheets, festively garlanded with dangling toe tags. The man enlists Spike's help in lifting the girl's body from the gurney to the table and Spike is surprised how light she is, but how heavy she seems when she is placed on the table as though they are unloading a bag of bowling balls.
The man undoes the zipper of the body bag roughly, like he's opening a bag of sweets and salivating for its contents.
Inside is a very young girl, not nearly an adult and never will be at this point. Though rigor mortis has played havoc with her features, and she looks purple as a plum, she is sweet in her death, looking as though she just fell asleep on some ink. Her lips are drawing back and she is showing her white, unstained teeth.
But above all, Spike notices the blemish on her neck. It is the only imperfection on her.
"You get a lot of these neck jobs?" Spike asks.
"I beg your pardon?" the man says.
"Come on. A good lot of the stiffs who come in here are dead of neck trauma. I'm almost certain."
The man acts as though he doesn't know what the hell Spike is talking about. "We have had cases where the victim has incurred certain wounds about the neck that resemble dog bites, such as this, but---
"Don't play Jessica Simpson with me! You know this is a vampire town! If you don't know that, you're extremely behind the times. Or too willing to charge the grieving for embalming fees when cremation is so much cheaper."
The man's already rigid lips stiffen. "You don't know what you're talking about."
"Yeah? But I do. Don't ask me how I know, but I do."
The man gives him that smarmy expression that makes him think he's at a Tony Orlando concert in Branson, Missouri and he is doomed.
He won't get this job either.
Back in the apartment, Spike finds his son dressed only in his underwear and the red cape his wife wore many years ago as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween. He never saw her in it, but he has seen it in their closet and has wondered in what erotic setting it might turn up. He never imagined his son would be wearing it.
Buffy is running a sponge along the countertop in the kitchen, shaking her head defiantly. "N-O, no!"
"Oh, Mommy, please?" Daniel asks.
"No, Daniel. Don't ask me again. That's it. Live with it!" she says, squeezing the sponge into the sink.
"What's he on about tonight?" Spike asks, planting a kiss on his wife's forehead.
"Oh, he wants to be Captain Underpants for Halloween and I won't let him. So I'm a mean, mean Mommy."
"Look, Daddy! I'm Captain Underpants! I'm a super hero!" Daniel says, flexing his slight muscles and striking an appropriate super hero pose.
"Has the super hero had his bath?" Spike asks his wife.
"No. Super heroes don't take baths, he told me. And they don't pick up their toys or go to bed on time. So by his definition, he's overqualified."
"I'm a super hero, Daddy! A super hero!" Daniel proclaims as he races around the kitchen.
"So does your super strength involve the power of your stink? You make people sick because you smell so bad because you need a bath?"
"No. I'm strong. Real strong."
"Even super heroes need some tubby time every once in a while," Spike says, catching his son in a fly-by. He lifts him up, on one arm, letting Daniel know what super strength really is. "I think it's time for you to go into the living room and pick up your toys, don't you think?" he asks as he is basically bench-pressing his son.
Daniel is giggling now. "Super heroes don't have toys."
"Oh yeah?" Spike says, tickling his son on the ribs. "Then maybe we should return all those toys in the living room to their rightful owner since the super hero here doesn't claim them."
"No, they're mine!" Daniel says in ticklish glee.
"But I thought you said super heroes don't have toys."
"They're my toys, Daddy!"
"OK," Spike says, dropping Daniel gently to the floor, making sure he lands on his feet. "Go tidy them up. Put them all in the toy bin. And then get into the tub. It's late and you have school tomorrow."
Daniel is studying his father with an especially pensive glare. "Are you a super hero, Daddy?" he asks.
Spike looks over at his wife and sees her staring back at him with admiring eyes. She nods to herself as she continues to sponge the countertop in the kitchen.
"Yeah," he tells his son as he smiles at all the meaning of his wife's thousand-watt gleam. "I think I am."