"He--he checked out?" My voice shook, made my words waver in a way that made them foreign, unrecognizable to me.
"I'm afraid so," the voice replied, becoming impatient with my repetition.
"Sorry." I muttered. "Thanks." The phone beeped as I shut it off, a flat, mechanical click that emphasized the emptiness of the house around me. I pulled the wicker chair of my kitchen table out and sat, dumbfounded. When I began to laugh, it took me a moment to realize the sound was coming from me. Hysterical swells came from me, lined up and bounced off the walls, smacking me in the face with their reverberation. My aching muscles, my tired body begged me to stop, but the horrendous sound that contained nothing but humiliation and blinding anger kept coming, rolling out of me like a fountain. When warm wetness hit my cheeks, then my chest, I realized the laughter had turned into sobs, but by then I'd been paralyzed, left stranded on an abandoned island, left to face myself alone.
The clock on the stove said that it was 11:00; I had classes today, had to get to campus by 1. So I walked, slowly, to the bathroom, turned on the water and stared at my reflection. My hair was tousled, rumpled from sex and sleep; my eyes were smoky from leftover makeup and my mouth was red, bruised from kissing. The steam slowly veiled my face until all I saw was the soft, blurred impression of features. The bathroom was warm, humid with steam that wet my skin before I stepped under the hot spray. When I did, lifting my head to let the water massage the tired skin of my face, my knees went weak; I hit my back on the side of the wall and slid down on it so I was sitting under the water, left to catch my breath as the stream poured on my head, down my body in droplets that hit the tile beneath me heavily, loudly, like tears. I didn't shed any more. I couldn't. I'd been used too deeply and was now left empty for it. Eric had played me. It had probably been too easy for him. He'd probably enjoyed it, enthralling the naïve mortal, and I'd trusted him. Willingly.
After a few deep breaths, my muscles relaxed. I found myself getting up, shampooing my hair and scrubbing my back with a loofah, the scent of my oatmeal body wash leaving my skin smelling like a warm winter morning. I scraped a little too deeply when I washed the blood off my chest, but I wanted him off me, out of me. Gone. My hands shook when I opened the shower door, but I straightened my back, wrapped a towel around myself and stepped into the light of the day, resigned to having been made a fool. I'd had my moment of pity, and now I would continue, hurt, but wiser. I stood in the hall facing my kitchen and looked at the impersonal space around me; no pictures of family or friends hung on the walls; the furniture was from Ikea, modern, clean and bare. I swept a hand over my head, though my soaking hair. The apartment was cool; my body was steaming, left trails of condensation as I walked through the hall to my room and pulled on khakis and a short-sleeved shirt. The task was done too quickly so I went to the bed, laid back and sat quietly while a bone-deep fatigue unfurled in me, in my blood. I wanted to shut my eyes, to let the day blur into a mix of barely-conscious awareness mixed with the enigmatic images of sleep, but I had work to do. I breathed in, deeply, and then realized what a mistake I'd made. The bed smelled of him, of his cologne, his body. I rolled away, disgusted, and went to the bathroom. My hair had cooled and the rivulets that dropped off chilled me as they soaked into my shirt, rolled down my back.
***
The drive to campus was boring, filled with frustration over drivers who couldn't actually drive. It had begun to rain, heavily, and traffic had slowed. As a New Englander who was used to dealing with far worse on a regular basis, I found myself shouting expletives at the drivers around me. I made it to the parking lot near my first class with minutes to spare, and sprinting through the rain because I'd forgotten my umbrella did nothing for my mood. But I was there, albeit slightly unprepared. I'm meant to look over my notes for my Constitutional law class the night after work, but instead, I'd been feeding into the game of a sick vampire. I kept my head down when the professor came in and began scribbling furiously as she spoke, hoping she'd ignore me.
My friend, Jessica, came into the class after the lesson had begun, nodding an apology at the professor. She sat next to me, pulled out her notepad and looked at me for a beat too long before turning her attention back to the drone coming from the teacher.
"So, who can tell me what the fundamental constitutional principle is, and who it was inspired by?" She looked around the room, her sharp brown eyes catching mine when I made the mistake of looking up.
"Elliot?"
"Uh," I answered, oh-so gracefully, but then had a burst of realization. "The principle is that citizens may do anything but which is prohibited by the law, and the government may not do anything but which is authorized by it."
"And it was based upon whose idea?"
"John Locke."
"Good, Elliot. Moving on, what are the main differences between a unitary and federal constitution?"
I stared at my notes, knowing the answer, but unsure of how. Jess tapped my arm lightly, mouthed 'good job' at me with a smile, and turned back to her paper while I had a miniature mental breakdown. I'd skimmed the chapter for this class a week ago, after the fact, but hadn't touched it since. And I remembered everything. I could see the words on the page in my mind, even. Something was very different, and as I went across the topics of my other classes, I realized I remembered everything I'd read--in the past three months. I was a wealth of knowledge, a literal Rolodex of information.
Eric's blood, it seemed, had effects far greater than anything I'd ever suspected. When, eventually, the class ended, Jess and I walked out of the building, blinking in the light of the suddenly bright day.
"Want to sit by the statue for a bit?" She asked, tilting her head so her brown locks spilled down her back, rippling attractively in the sun. I nodded my assent, and we sat on the hard marble base of a fountain that spewed water from an enlarged set of scales.
"You look good," She said as we sat down. I shrugged. "But sort of sad," she noted, and I froze, thinking of some sort of excuse.
"This is over so soon," I said, looking at her with what I hope passed for a wistful gaze. "It's sort of scary." Jess pulled at her blue cardigan, seemingly sympathetic to my manufactured plight.
"I know," she sighed, toeing the ground with her worn-down Converse sneakers. "You going back to Rhode Island?"
"Yeah, it's where I'm taking the bar."
"Mm. Lucky me, staying right here."
"Dallas is…. nice," I struggled out, obviously stretching the truth a bit.
"Yeah. Thanks." But the words were playful; she was teasing me.
"I'm a New-Englander at heart, Jess, you know that." I laughed at myself, remembering the rocky acclimation that took place my first year. Jess had been there for me, always. But she didn't know about my job, only knew I worked in a hotel in downtown Dallas. And I wasn't privy to letting her know anything more.
"I know, I know. You'll always be the same cold, unfeeling girl I know and love." I play-punched her arm, chuckling at the stereotype.
"God, that first day I was here and people were saying 'hi' to me; I was so confused as to why!" She chuckled with me, and we chatted about nothing, really, before lapsing into a comfortable silence dotted with the occasional people-watching comment.
"What do you have next?" She asked, glancing at her watch.
"Global Governance."
"Ugh, with Brovern?"
"The one and only." Brovern was a professor that tended to spit when he spoke, and looked down his female student's shirts. Often, and obviously.
"Have fun," she said, gathering her things and standing. "Off to Food and Drug for me." I waved at her, watched her retreating back.
"Hey," She called, turning around. "Wanna do a study group this coming Monday?"
"Sure," I replied. I'd taken the day off from work to do so, anyway. "Meet at yours?"
"Yup. I've got food, but bring caffeine. Lots."
"Sounds good," I said, and she headed off, looking down at her watch again. I sat still, tilted my head up to the sun, soaked in its heat and waited until it was a reasonably close time to head off to my next class. I'd prepared for this class, and the information was cemented into my head, a part of me like my birthday or social security number. It was just there. I listened closely to the instructor, and groaned internally when we were told we'd be kept late to watch a film, 12 Angry Men, that I'd seen before, and were going to have to point out all the inaccuracies and treatment of the law in a discussion afterwards.
I slumped my head into my elbow, barely focused on the black-and-white figures on the screen, but eventually the credits rolled and the discussion got to the point where students began to beat a dead horse. We were dismissed, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I headed out to my car in the now dark and mostly deserted parking lot. My shoes had tiny heels to them, and they clicked loudly so my footfalls surrounded me, made it seem like I was walking with a crowd. With each step, though, I felt a strange jittery energy buzzing at my skin so I felt like a dog with its hair standing up, unsure of exactly what's wrong, but frightened all the same. When I reached my car and unlocked it, sat dazed on the cloth seat, waves of sadness, of anger and pain flowed through me, obvious as a drug hitting my system. I had no idea what was wrong--yes, Eric had hurt me, but his betrayal wasn't the cause of the soul-crushing abandonment I was feeling. I wrapped my hands around the steering wheel and waited, tense, like a junkie who needed a fix, until I saw the last few cars parked near me drive off. When no one was within hearing distance, I let loose the screams that had built up inside of me and felt a small release, a tapering to the degree of wretchedness that engulfed me like an ocean around a fish. But the slight relief didn't last long; it was replaced almost immediately by a force that ripped me apart, tore from the inside out with such insistence that I clapped my hands over my heart, expecting it to shoot out from my chest because nothing else could burn like this, could squeeze everything inside of me so tightly that I just wanted to die, to let everything fade to black--the pain, the hole that had been carved so carefully, so exquisitely that it had left me conscious enough to feel every aching moment.
I dragged air in, felt like I was breathing through a straw while my head spun and my eyes began to flutter before rolling back into my head. But before I could let go, let myself slip away completely, a random memory popped into my head. I was about fifteen years old and stood at the top of a steep mountain, gazing down at the hairpin turns with glee; under my feet was a snowboard that I scooted forward carefully on, then tipped the nose of the board over the edge. A burst of adrenaline leaked into my blood, my mind, and I laughed at the high as I pivoted, curving this way and that as I carved the snow. I had been breathless in the face of the natural beauty of the pure surrounding whiteness.
As the memory faded, I felt a bit better, a little less like my lungs were in a vice, so I brought another memory to the surface, this time of a summer during my undergrad career. My friends and I had snuck into a private lake during the middle of the night and swam far out to the docks; we jumped in, felt relief of the water against the humid air. We wrapped ourselves in the slick wetness, became weightless if just for a second and existed only moment-to-moment, leaving rational thought behind.
My heart began to slow, so I kept remembering the good in my life, let the pleasure of my past adventures and excitement stream through me until I was back inside my own head, able to turn the car on and shakily make my way home. Upon entering the house, I didn't stop to undress, instead fell into bed fully clothed, and was out, dead for all intents and purposes. For this, I was grateful.
***
The next few weeks were rushed with monotony. I studied for my exams, though I needn't have, really--Eric's blood had given me an intense appetite for reading and a photographic memory. Upon finishing my last law book, having read cover-to-cover, I found I could call back specific lines in paragraphs, down to the page. So when I should have been busy, desperately trying to push every fact possible into my crazed mind, I was bored, had too much time on my hands, time that was spent rehashing the nights I'd had with Eric. I thought back on his touch, his words and actions--they'd seemed so real, so genuine. And I thought I could read people so well, so easily--that I could catch anyone in a lie. Guess not.
I went through the motions of everyday life; meeting Jess for study sessions, going shopping, getting groceries, but no matter what I did, the world became more and more gray every endless day. I didn't know where my apathy was coming from, and I couldn't help but indulge in it, allow it to cover me like a film of cigarette smoke. I breathed it in, allowed it to settle inside of me until I started questioning the need to shampoo my hair. Work returned to its boring pace; no vampire princes trying to figure me out or sweep me off my feet. The vampires were polite, business-like. I was used for what I was, a breathing food source, and nothing more. Their cold hands held my neck, my shoulders and they drank carefully, economically. I slid away from each encounter hating myself that much more.
So it was on a normal, nothing day, almost three weeks after Eric had bedded and bailed on me that an odd letter arrived. I'd spent the morning lazily, lying in bed, wondering whether I should actually work my last night at the hotel, or call out on my shift. I'd finished my last exams carelessly, knowing every answer I scribbled was right, a copy of the textbook sentences down to the punctuation. My apartment was packed completely; I was waiting to leave that weekend, to go back to Rhode Island and prepare for the bar. I got out of bed around two and saw a few letters next to my door. I frowned; I hadn't heard the mailmen slip them through the slot. I picked up the first envelope and slit it open, groaning out loud when I saw the address. It was from my bank, containing what I expected to be the first arrangement of payment for my student loans. I scanned the letter for a few seconds before it fluttered out of my hand, landing on the floor like a paper snowflake; I repeated the last sentence of the message in my head with disbelief: We thank you very much for paying off your loan with us in full. We appreciate your loyalty and hope you choose us for your banking needs in the future.
I joined the paper on the floor a few seconds later. When I could feel my knees again, I walked stiffly to my phone, called Randy, thanked him for employing me and regretfully informed him that I would be unable to go to work that evening. After that, I called my bank, asked if there had been a mix-up, but was rebuffed when I asked how over $100,000 had been transferred from an account that couldn't have possibly had my name on it.
"I'm sorry," the over-cheerful voice said on the other end of the line. "But we aren't at liberty to give the name on the account."
"But it's my account--how did someone access it in the first place?"
"I'm sorry, but I honestly can't discuss this. Is there anything else I can help you with today?" With that, I hung up the phone and toyed with the idea of throwing it against the wall. I was so wrapped up in my own confusion that I didn't notice the sun go down around me, or the soothing calm that was spun inside of me, relaxing me from the tips of my toes up. I paced around my apartment, avoiding boxes, and tried to figure out the identity of my mystery benefactor. The sound of the doorbell stopped me in my tracks, though, and I went to answer it, unsure of whom it could be. Jess and I had said our goodbyes the night before.
"Yeah?" I answered, swinging the door in toward me so I could peer out into the darkness.
"Hello, Elliot," a deep male voice replied. The figure stepped under the brightness of my weak porch light, illuminating his flaxen hair and strong features. He towered over me, even while slouching slightly to fit under my porch roof.
Eric.